I’ve previously had good success from the bluetooth device_tracker, however, recently I’ve found that all of my devices (both iOS and Android) are cyclically showing up as home for only a short duration and not_home most of the time while they are actually at home. Previously, I have found the bluetooth device_tracker very reliable.
Here is a typical example:
Has anyone else noticed this in recent HA versions?
I should add, I recently migrated my HA build from an RPi3 to an Intel NUC. I’ve found the bluetooth in the NUC reliable (I’m also successfully using the Xiaomi Mi Flora plant sensor; I had previously used it successfully with flicd). But it is possible the issue started when I migrated, and I’ve only just noticed.
I recently migrated from Rpi3B+ HASS Supervised (HASS.IO) to a NUC, Proxmox HASS Supervised VM and after making the internal Bluetooth available I have found that the connection is not reliable.
Is the BT on the NUC just not as reliable or powerful enough or what? Should I wait for an update or just abandon the internal BT altogether? Until I could get the BT working I just used HASS on my Pi for BT connectivity and made those devices available to my NUC via HASS Remote which was okay but not ideal.
Another option I thought of was BT-MQTT-gateway on the Pi and in the future setup one or two ESP32’s with ESPHome.
Have you found out more about your BT problems? Seems like we have the same issues.
I haven’t had any luck - the NUC just doesn’t seem to handle bluetooth tracking as well as the Pi did. I think it has plenty of range - it can “see” bluetooth devices right across the house, but it seems to lose them quickly. Maybe there’s some kind of aggressive power saving going on that means the devices disappear quickly.
The BT-MQTT-gateway project is an interesting idea. Like you, I still have my Pi, so maybe I should try that.
I should add: I’ve recently set up my first ESP32 with ESPhome. I’m using it as a gateway for Xiaomi plant sensors which are outside and too far from my NUC. It is awesome for that. But I tried also using it for BT device tracking, and it was hopeless - it only saw devices very occasionally, and mostly showed them as not_home.
Did anyone find a solution for this?
I got the same problem.
Migrated from RPi to NUC and now the bluetooth tracker is not working well.
iPhone 1
iPhone 2
When I’m scanning in terminal it doesn’t even show the iPhone MAC address.
It shows so many other devices but not the 2 iPhones we need for device tracking.
Same situation here with Intel NUC 7i3bnh. Even tried with an external usb Bluetooth adapter with an usb hub. The adapter is recognized and it’s working ok about 2-3 days then all my tracked devices get a ‘not_home’ value and no change at all. Did anyone found a way to make Bluetooth tracker reliable?
