Hello, sorry if this is not the right place for my question.
Before asking my question, let me explain my current issue. I’m using HA and the computer bluetooth to detect bluetooth badges and manage the cameras and alarms. But, with the configuration of my apartment I have a big long corridor with solid walls between my bluetooth detector and my front door. So when I come home it’s not too surprising that the bluetooth badges don’t get detected and the alarm goes off.
Now, I’m looking for something like a bluetooth repeater, or bluetooth proxy. I’ve been looking for some time but I have still not found something that seems to do only bluetooth detection to HA integration. The product would need to be independent and be able to be plug in directly to power socket. Discretion would be a plus but at this point I don’t really care if it works, and of course the price.
I did stumble on the “screek passive ble gateway” while searching but it doesn’t seem to be available anymore.
Would someone happen to have an advice on what to buy?
Yes, likely less work. HA detects a ton of BLE devices already through ESPHome proxies, and they just magically appear as native entities. Flash ESP device, connect to WiFi, add device to HA. Presto, problem solved.
Of course, if OP already has MQTT, then sure, use it. But that is not the case. He is using the computer BT adapter. He is the perfect use case for the ESPHome Bluetooth proxy. No need to set up MQTT in addition to the repeater → fewer moving parts → ergo more reliability. Also less maintenance work.
Personally, I have 935 entities at home, still no need for MQTT. I do have many BT repeaters, and all of my devices — which appear in that Theengs compat list — are 100% supported and working natively in HA, without need for MQTT.
Less work than an already flashed device with a firmware configured and fine tuned for the hardware it relies on?
Note that the OP is looking for something that plug directly to a power socket:
It depends on the parts quality.
Do you use proxies for presence detection as the OP wants to do?
Do you use a tablet or an old phone in your setup? Something like an old Fire tablet or old phone will do. And if that would be near your front door, it would be a nifty little BT scanner (the companion app offers such a setting). Not much work to do beside setting up the companion app.
@1technophile Thank you for the answers. I should have added that I’m in Europe so I will search to see if there is an equivalent for the theengs plug.
@fleskefjes I will have to take a look, seem interresting.
@paddy0174 saddly I don’t have an old working hardware like that, it would have been perfect.
Just to add precision on my current setup, I’m using the “bluetooth LE tracker” on HA with nutale badges for the presence detection.
Will do some more digging on the proxies.
Thanks for the help, will post again if I’m stuck again or when I have a working conf.
Hi, about screek’s passive bluetooth receiver. We canceled this product because it was too complicated to install and configure and just a lot of people couldn’t seem to figure it out.
But we kept it just as a simple bluetooth proxy and you can still use it to flash your favorite firmware.
But it’s just a Bluetooth agent by default.
M5Stack is a great choice and the price is right.
Anyway, our version is just another form factor build.
It’s so small, I never realized that from the pictures I thought they would be twice as big as this.
A lot of M5Stack’s products are beautifully designed, and it seems to be a Shenzhen, China based company as well.
But they’re selling very little in China, and they’re just too expensive for us here.
But the workmanship on the cases and boards looks great.
The extra buck or two is often worth it for the great workmanship and finish. Of all Espressif-based devices I own, the M5Stack products were by far the easiest to set up and then place in their final destinations. I like them so much, I’m coding and contributing ESPHome support for their peripherals.
I just received the Atom lite, and finished configuring it. It took me something like 2-3h to configure it, the time to read the documentation and understand how to do it.
I configured the ble-proxy on the M5 and linked the esphome. It seems to be working but I don’t know how to check if everything is really working as intended.
You might want to post some code, so we can actually see, what you’re doing. Or you describe it way more detailed. What code is running on the Atom, did you discover and integrate it into ESPHome, if so, what do the compile logs say and so on.
Sorry, but for now the only info we have from you, is you have an Atom, you somehow configured it and you want to check what’s going on. That’s unfortunately not enough to lend you a helping hand.
When you say “integrated” you mean the ESPHome Add-on, not the HA-ESPHome-integration, right? You would usually go there from the sidebar in HA > ESPHome and have the dashboard in front of you. There you should see all your ESPHome configured devices (note: this is only the firmware side of things, not the integration in HA).
Press the edit button and post the code you find there (for this device) and post it here. You might want to redact some personal informations (if present) like passwords and so. This should be the same as where you added the code you posted above.
If you post that YAML code, we can see, what your device is actually configured to do, and check for errors and so.
But from what you’re writing, it seems ok. Post that code, and we can see, if any errors come up!
But aren’t you using a Atom lite without ethernet? Just asking because the configuration you used is optimized for ethernet connected esphome nodes as described quite prominently in the documentation
Note:
For WiFi-based proxies, changing the interval or window from their default values may result in an unstable WiFi connection. Using the default values for interval and window will usually resolve any instability.
I know, I asked before, but I’m not reading what you’re reading from the documentation.
You shouldn’t need to set the values, but as long as you set it like the default values (interval: 1100ms; window: 1100ms) it doesn’t matter. Only if you change them, then there might arise problems. But setting these values like the defaults won’t do any harm.
I know, I know, this makes setting them superfluous, but it doesn’t do any harm either. Or am I totally wrong here? (<= genuine question )
That’s unfortunately not enough to lend you a helping hand.
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