Hi,
I got a Home Assistant Yellow (HAY) and recently implemented a custom integration for a BLE device that requires a connection (not pairing). I found that it can only reliably connect to one device and if I were to try to connect to a 2nd identical (different MAC address) device it is not reliable. It makes many attempts and only connects after awhile.
I recently read that the built-in bluetooth of the Pi is not very reliable. I first want to confirm that my integration is using the built-in bluetooth of the Pi. Not knowing how to exactly to this, I went to Integrations/Bluetooth:
and found the MAC address of the adapter (?):
It turns out the MAC address is linked to Raspberry Pi, so is it safe to say that it’s the Bluetooth adapter my integration is using? I also opened up a terminal in HA’s GUI and used command “bluetoothctl show” and it showed the same MAC address.
The reason I ask is because according to the documentation for HAY, there is also a Silicon Labs MGM210P Mighty Gecko Module which also support Bluetooth it seems (according to the link).
I just want to be sure because I did some tests in bluetoothctl and was able to replicate the connection issues (in that it struggled to connect to a 2nd device).
Assuming my integration is using the built-in Pi for bluetooth, my next question is how to get a better connection.
Is it possible to use the Silicon Labs MGM210P Mighty Gecko Module?
I also heard about USB adapters.
I also heard about ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy that seems to offer the best connection, but it seems to only support up to 3 connections, right? Preferably I want to connect to 5 devices.
If you have knowledge/experience in this area, please advise on my question on built-in Pi bluetooth and the 3 other options. Much appreciated
Thanks