I flashed a esp32 dev board with the new Bluetooth proxy firmware and HA was able to discover it but i cannot get it or HA to discover my switchbot bot.
I’m already using 2022.9 and when watching the logs on the esp it just connects to my wifi and HA but does not look like it’s finding anything else.
Not sure what I’m doing wrong, as I’ve tried 2 different esp32 boards which has the esp32-WROOM chip.
The bluetooth proxy is working fine for passive broadcasts. Devices requiring an active connection do not work just yet, but this is planned. Switchbots most likely require an active connection to send commands. So if you have patience, just wait for active support.
For now your only option is to run switchbot drivers on the esp32 and use mqtt to add the support to HA. There are other topics how to achieve that.
It is well documented that at this stage the Bluetooth Proxy is passive only.
Active BT proxy takes a lot more work, but Jesse (who is working on the project) is confident he will have it in the next HA release. Nothing officially mentioned yet, but it won’t be far off.
In the meantime, you could look at USB over IP and using an additional Bluetooth adapter. USB/IP was included in the HA OS version 9.0 update, and has worked on Linux based systems running Core for a while.
Home Assistant supports multiple USB bluetooth devices being connected at the same time, so even a long USB extension cable may work for now if you can hide it well
I used this instead. Don’t know about you guys, but I’m having issues.
Have 2 EPS32 with this.
1 right next to a switchbot BOT ( 1 meter apart)
2nd one next to my 2 switchbot curtains that are calibrated together (2m apart)
And still have inconstency with the curtains and major lag (10-20 seconds).
I’m finding i need to kick the esp off my wifi and let it reconnect, after doing that it starts to respond better but still a delay. I believe in the next release the proxy will be able to work with 3 active devices, at the moment it can only operate one device at a time which cause a delay.
I’ve also updated it to esphome 10.2 so we’ll see if it responds better in time.
My airthings sensors continue to report back with no issues though.