BLE: Help connecting Inkbird through Shelly 2PM Proxy

[petwri]

I am trying to connect my Inkbird IBT-4XS through a Shelly 2PM acting as a Bluetooth Proxy. But HA doesn’t seem to recognize the Inkbird at all.

The Shelly is in Active Scanner Mode which is enabled in the Integration config, and the Shelly Bluetooth Gateway and RPC are enabled.

I cannot connect to the Inkbird though. When I install the Inkbird integration, I get an error stating that no device was found on the network. When trying to enable the bluetooth integration (which, according to the Inkbird Integration Docs is required), I do not get the Shelly listed as a bluetooth adapter.

I know the Shelly doesn’t support actual connections, but only listens to advertisements. Does the Inkbird support this or am I out of luck with my Shelly?

Thanks for any help on this!

[Edwin_D]

Buetooth proxies don’t show up as bluetooth adapters, and my Inkbird sensor (other model) does not require active connections. So it should just pop up.

I did get fooled once with a device I had previously connected and ignored. If that is the case for you too: use the filters at the top right to see if you hid it.

If not, I fear this particular model is not yet supported. You could try to search the esp docs to see if the esp does have support for it. Then you could just add it to the esp straight away without relying on the proxy.

Seems like @paddy0174 made it possible for you:

Inkbird BT thermometer iBBQ with ESP32

I recently purchsed a bbq grill and wanted to use a thermometer, that I can integrate in HA without much hassle. As it turns out, there is not yet an easy solution to use with already existing components. So I did some searching and found a few tutorials, that integrate the Inkbird Bluetooth thermometers into HA, but none of them use components like ESPHome (and it’s BLE stack). So I decided to try my luck and see, if there isn’t another way of integrating these devices into HA. And here it goe…

[petwri]

Why would esp be involved in any of this? I thought this was part of the BLE integration?

[Edwin_D]

There is an esp inside your shelly acting as a bluetooth proxy. But it seems HA itself has no support for your device (yet), so the messages arrive at HA but no one listens to them.

There is however support for those messages in the esp itself. So you could put the support for the inkbird inside the shelly (in the same way you added the proxy to the shelly), using the description in the link I posted.

[petwri]

Ahh I didn’t know the shelly was esp-driven. That opens up completely new possiblities! Can you recommend any how-to or tutorial on where to start?

[Edwin_D]

How did you get the bluetooth proxy inside the Shelly then? I assume you already converted the firmware to EspHome.

[petwri]

No I did use the native firmware of the shelly as well as the “official” HA integration. You can enable bluetooth scanning mode from the config of the Shelly integration:

[Edwin_D]

Oh, wait. I did a quick search and it seems shelly might have added support for it in their own firmware? Then it would be more difficult.

Not impossible probably, but it would require flashing the shelly with esphome, that may not be suited for the fainthearted:

Shelly Plus 2PM | devices.esphome.io

[petwri]

I can enable bluetooth, bluetooth RPC and bluetooth gateway in the Shelly 2PMs firmware. All 3 are active and I get a MAC-address:

But it seems like the shelly cannot actually act as an adapter (see here), but it should pick up advertisements. I have already picked up various other devices (apparently some of my neighbors also have “smart” devices ), but the Inkbird has not yet shown up.

[petwri]

I’ll try esphome through docker and then check if flashing the shelly would be an option.

I already got 32 projects ongoing, why not start 33?

[Edwin_D]

I edited in a link in my previous post. As I said there, it may not be suited for the fainthearted. I would personally consider buying a €9,= esp instead of risking damaging a €22,= shelly.

[Edwin_D]

@petwri

I already got 32 projects ongoing, why not start 33?

Be prepared, ESPHome might be more fun, and more time consuming, then half of the other projects you got going put together in the long run

[petwri]

I have now managed - for the sake of testing - to activate my Intel bluetooth adapter which is installed in HA’s host machine. It’s just rather far away from my shelly, so I might run into connection issues. But I just thought I might use it for a trial-and-error-run.

But still - no Inkbird shows up.

[petwri]

And there it is:

[maxym]

If you are using shelly cloud, then Enable Blootooth Gateway enables sending proxied ble data to Shelly Cloud. A BLE device has to be paired using Shelly App PRIOR TO THAT. I suppose it supports Shelly devices only but who knows…

If you use mqtt, then you have to use scripts in order to proxy ble data. In this situation you have to be able to decode data of particular ble devices. The collection of scripts contain an example decoding more devices than shelly.
You can try.