Apologies if my post seemed flippant; I honestly thought you grabbed the 10 MAC addresses out of thin air. Ha
Seeing it in the docs actually makes me feel better; at least I have a good idea why it didn’t seem to be working. I’ll plan to just leave my phone transmitting for the long haul to see if it ever actually picks it up and works as intended. I’ll also be sure to report back if it does to help the next person having the same issue.
In regards to ESPHome, manual entry is exactly what I had to do. The ‘suggested’ way of auto scanning literally showed no devices and it took a bit of digging before I realized that no, I wasn’t doing something wrong. I absolutely LOVE ESPHome, but I’ve had more than one situation where the suggested methods in the docs simply don’t work and I’ve just had to find alternative methods on my own. Don’t ask me how much time I spent initially trying to compile YAML files on the raspberry pi 3 I had running HA before I figured out you need something beefier to handle it…
Although I still don’t understand why one companion app is capable of detecting beacon from the other and HA iBecon can’t, I now feel better after reading this thread. I thought I was too dumb to understand the docs and was not doing something properly.
I still did not had success with EspHome Bluetooth proxy as well.
To do some “troubleshooting by elimination”, you might try using a different app to send out a virtual beacon signal. In other words, don’t use the HA Companion app.
If everything works and the virtual beacon shows up in the HA iBeacon Tracker integration, that should confirm to you that the HA Companion app is the problem. If not, then not.
For iPhone, there is an app called iBeacam (for using a beacon to click the camera button on your phone) that has a feature allowing you to send out a virtual iBeacon broadcast. I just downloaded it and confirmed it works.
For Android, you can trying searching in the Play store for “virtual iBeacon” to find an app to do this.
Also, JR, for your reference, this is how I set up the HA side of things to create an automation that runs when the beacon (or virtual beacon in your case) gets within a certain range or leaves range of the scanner (in my case, the rPi base unit running HA):
I’ve tried (in the past) the virtual beacon app from another app, can’t remember its name now, and no luck. However, you remind me that I did not tried it with esp bt proxy. In any case, I can find the virtual beacon (from third part app or ha companion app) using a scanner on my phone or laptop Bluetooth. I tried (send and receive) with android and iphone, works between them but never received by the HA. That lead me to believe something was wrong with my dongle (ha runs on a miniPC with external dongle), the dongle is in the list of compatible devices and works with bt thermometer around the house. I am still not convinced that it is not the dongle, but seeing so many people with similar behaviour around leads me to believe that the integration is, at least, not clear in its documentation.
Anyway, I am running some tests with esp bt proxy, so I will take the opportunity to do more extensive test on the bt dongle as well. One thing catching my attention is the logs from ha, the Linux kernel does not have the proper firmware files for this dongle and it warns that on boot. However this is a flaw of ha kernel, my laptop does not produce the same error. I will signal that in the hassos ticket system. But even without the firmware files available, it works with ble thermometers…
I’ve ordered another dongle from Amazon to have comparisons
So I’ve had my phone broadcasting via the HA app for nearly 3 weeks now. From what I found on Google, it sounds like Android cycles through MAC addresses daily so it SHOULD have been plenty of time for the ‘10 addresses’ that the docs say are required. Nothing has ever shown up.
I previously tried a dedicated beacon app with no luck (and confirmed with another device it was broadcasting correctly), but didn’t let it run for the 10 days. Anecdotally, it seems that every post I’ve read of someone who got it to work is on an iPhone. I’m wondering if there’s something about Android (or at least certain versions, since it’s so fragmented) that keeps it from playing nicely with HA.
Finding this integration very mysterious!! Previously I’ve used monitor.sh and I’ve TOLD Monitor.sh the MAC address of my bluetooth beacon and it’s instantly found it.
The way this works is confusing me.
I can see my beacon appearing in the debug logs but so far it’s not appeared as a device_tracker.
However, if this has a “killer feature” of being able to detect iphones with their randomised BT MAC addresses that would be amazing!
An additonal data point that seems to point to something specific to the HA Companion App. I’m not using the HA iBeacon integration. Using a Shelly, I’m scanning and printing out all BLE advertisements. I can see a PawScout beacon and BlueCharm beacon but I cannot see the beacon from the HA app. However, from another Android device, I can see the HA beacon using a number of different apps. With the nRF Connect Android app, I’m not only able to see the HA beacon advertisement but I can also clone it. When I readvertise that cloned beacon from the nRF Connect app, I am able to see it from the Shelly.
The CSR8510 A10 bluetooth dongle I am using has no issues integrating some Govee bluetooth lights. After loading the iBeacon Tracker integration no devices show up there… (espicially no the BLE transmitter of the companion app).
However using the bluetooth_le_tracker I have no issue discovering my the BLE transmission of my phone/companion app…
I had the same issue as you. My HA server is not detecting anything in the iBeacon tracker. Although the iBeacon monitor in the android app is showing beacons…
They have a bug report there: https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/80357
Not sure if this will get fixed or if this is brought to maintainers attention.
There are so many issues (2.2k+) opened there, and this is just one of them.
Maybe a really stupid question… But do I need to keep my Bluetooth on my phone enabled for this to work? Or is it enough yo have the BLE transmitter enabled in the companion app settings?
According to the documentation:
“The system will not automatically create iBeacon devices for beacons that do not broadcast their name to avoid inundating your system with transient devices.”
My bluetooth proxy log shows:
[23:14:45][D][text_sensor:064]: ‘BLE Devices Scanner’: Sending state ‘{“timestamp”:1407,“address”:“51:CA:83:B0:D4:EB”,“rssi”:-82,“name”:“”}’
[23:14:45][D][text_sensor:064]: ‘BLE Devices Scanner’: Sending state ‘{“timestamp”:1407,“address”:“39:41:F1:2E:5C:28”,“rssi”:-89,“name”:“”}’
[23:14:45][D][text_sensor:064]: ‘BLE Devices Scanner’: Sending state ‘{“timestamp”:1407,“address”:“0B:94:93:C2:96:1E”,“rssi”:-68,“name”:“”}’
[23:14:45][D][text_sensor:064]: ‘BLE Devices Scanner’: Sending state ‘{“timestamp”:1407,“address”:“51:CA:83:B0:D4:EB”,“rssi”:-83,“name”:“”}’
(there are others WITH a name, but those are TVs and other devices)
My point is… It looks like the HA Companion App doesn’t broadcast a name and thus isn’t detected by the iBeacon tracker
If it helps anyone… I found (and am now using) the following plugin.
This plugin allows me to create automations based on the location of my beacons (bedroom, livingroom, garage, etc). the default iBeacon plugin doesn’t (seem to?) support that.
Added bonus is that this plugin also shows all the beacons it sees.
