Bluetooth devices drop after HA restart — stuck in a reboot loop

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1

Hey everyone,
My HA has quite a few devices connected (Zigbee, ESPHome, Bluetooth), so it already takes a while to boot. Recently I added a new Bluetooth presence sensor and ran into this:

*The new sensor doesn’t come online on its own — it just stays unavailable.

  • I restart all of HA to force it online, but then the Bluetooth devices that were already up drop instead.
  • So I reboot again — old ones come back, the new one gets flaky, and I end up rebooting seven or eight times before things settle temporarily.
  • Restarting the Bluetooth gateway (I run an ESPHome BLE proxy) did nothing.
  • Restarting the integration didn’t help either.

To be fair, this sensor worked fine when I first added it — it’s not dead, it just goes unavailable every so often, which is what sends me into the reboot loop each time.

With this many devices, every HA restart is slow and painful, so this loop is really wearing me down.

Would love your take:

  1. Why would adding one new Bluetooth device knock the existing ones offline? Coverage/connection limit on the proxy, or something in HA’s Bluetooth discovery?
  2. How do you get a new Bluetooth device to stay online without destabilizing the ones already there? Any “must-do before adding” step (pause discovery, pair, then resume)?
  3. After a HA restart, Bluetooth entities recover slowly / drop — is there a lighter-weight recovery than a full reboot?
2

How many bluetooth devices do you have connected to the proxy? There’s limits on active connections. You probably need some more proxies.

3

huh, that would explain it — if the proxy’s already near its limit, adding the new sensor knocks the rest off. honestly i have no clue how many are on it right now. where do you even check that, the ble proxy page or somewhere in dev tools? i’ll go count and come back with the number.

4

+Bluetooth/Zigbee/WIFI devices shares the same frequency, so they all “disturb” each-other, causing “weak” signals

5

Try checking the proxy’s device page in Settings, Devices & Services, Bluetooth, your proxy, Download diagnostics. It might show active connection slots. As far as I know, ESP32 proxies usually only support 3 active connections each.

6

I didn’t find anything related to active connection count in the diagnostic info file. Could you tell me how to search for it in the file?

7

Settings —> Bluetooth —> Adapters. It should say X/3 connections under the proxy.

8

OK, I can see it now—it shows 3/4 . Does the “4” after the slash represent its upper limit? Is there any way to increase that limit? Also, is there a way to clear the already-connected devices and keep only the ones I want?

9

The easiest would probably be to order some more esp32s and install them around in the area. They are quite cheap on aliexpress for example.

10

OK, I’ll try that