Is there a suggested way to configure integrations using a bluetooth antenna (RTL8761B chipset) to receive BLE messages from a Inkbird outdoor temperature sensor (IBS-TH2)?
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 (with internal Cypress CYW43455 bluetooth adapter) that’s running HA and connected to it with a powered USB hub inbetween is a Zexmte Bluetooth Adapter with RTL8761B, which is listed as compatible in the docs Bluetooth - Home Assistant . These two adapters are not configured properly though, it seems:
The Inkbird sensor is positioned 5 meters away from the Raspberry Pi and its external antenna, with only a single window in line of sight inbetween.
The INKBIRD integration is picking up the sensor via a Atom M5 esp32 bluetooth proxy that is positioned far, far away. For this reason the signal strength is terrible, at -95dB. I would like the inkbird integration to use the bluetooth-adapter that is much, much closer to the device.
The Passive BLE Monitor integration started to register the device while I was asleep, but all 4 entities (temperature, humidity, battery, rssi) are shown as “Unknown”.
I’ve read a few forum posts so far, which is why this is my current setup. But something is still off:
Bluetooth integration: The internal Raspi adapter is enabled with the option “passive scanning” disabled. The external bluetooth adapter is disabled in the integration.
Passive BLE Monitor integration: configured to use the MAC address of the external bluetooth adapter, with the following options enabled: “auto restart on failure”, “use active scan”, “discover devices automatically”.
Also I’m unsure if I even need the “Passive BLE Monitor” integration, its docs sound like it has been replaced by custom integrations. But as the Inkbird-Integration doesn’t seem to use the bluetooth-antennas, something is off.
Thanks for your help!
(and in case this is of any use to someone:)
# hciconfig -a
hci1: Type: Primary Bus: UART
BD Address: D8:3A:DD:36:ED:01 ACL MTU: 1021:8 SCO MTU: 64:1
UP RUNNING
RX bytes:223986 acl:0 sco:0 events:8545 errors:0
TX bytes:17432 acl:0 sco:0 commands:1833 errors:0
Features: 0xbf 0xfe 0xcf 0xfe 0xdb 0xff 0x7b 0x87
Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3
Link policy: RSWITCH SNIFF
Link mode: PERIPHERAL ACCEPT
Name: 'homeassistant'
Class: 0x6c0000
Service Classes: Rendering, Capturing, Audio, Telephony
Device Class: Miscellaneous,
HCI Version: 5.0 (0x9) Revision: 0x172
LMP Version: 5.0 (0x9) Subversion: 0x6119
Manufacturer: Cypress Semiconductor (305)
hci0: Type: Primary Bus: USB
BD Address: 8C:88:0B:69:BE:F8 ACL MTU: 1021:6 SCO MTU: 255:12
UP RUNNING
RX bytes:1421479 acl:0 sco:0 events:26145 errors:0
TX bytes:38442 acl:0 sco:0 commands:853 errors:0
Features: 0xff 0xff 0xff 0xfe 0xdb 0xfd 0x7b 0x87
Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3
Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK
Link mode: PERIPHERAL ACCEPT
Name: 'homeassistant #1'
Class: 0x6c0000
Service Classes: Rendering, Capturing, Audio, Telephony
Device Class: Miscellaneous,
HCI Version: 5.1 (0xa) Revision: 0xdfc6
LMP Version: 5.1 (0xa) Subversion: 0xd922
Manufacturer: Realtek Semiconductor Corporation (93)
# dmesg | grep -i blue
[ 3.003258] systemd[1]: /usr/lib/systemd/system/haos-bt-cache.service:6: Ignoring unknown escape sequences: "find /var/lib/bluetooth/*/cache -mindepth 1 -type f -atime +7 -exec rm {} \;"
[ 3.654591] usb 1-1.2.1.4: Product: Bluetooth Radio
[ 4.863423] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.22
[ 4.863523] NET: Registered PF_BLUETOOTH protocol family
[ 4.863535] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized
[ 4.863555] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized
[ 4.863566] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized
[ 4.863591] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized
[ 4.908671] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: examining hci_ver=0a hci_rev=000b lmp_ver=0a lmp_subver=8761
[ 4.910640] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: rom_version status=0 version=1
[ 4.910677] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_fw.bin
[ 4.913076] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: loading rtl_bt/rtl8761bu_config.bin
[ 4.913448] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: cfg_sz 6, total sz 30210
[ 5.361662] Bluetooth: hci0: RTL: fw version 0xdfc6d922
[ 9.257151] Bluetooth: HCI UART driver ver 2.3
[ 9.257174] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol H4 registered
[ 9.257247] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol Three-wire (H5) registered
[ 9.257423] Bluetooth: HCI UART protocol Broadcom registered
[ 9.609303] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3
[ 9.609322] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast
[ 9.609337] Bluetooth: BNEP socket layer initialized
[ 9.614455] Bluetooth: MGMT ver 1.22
[ 9.614676] Bluetooth: MGMT ver 1.22
[ 38.069442] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 38.069477] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 38.069491] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11