Bluetooth tracker intervals

Configuration
1

I need some help regarding the intervals for bluetooth tracker. This is my current configuration

- platform: bluetooth_tracker
  interval_seconds: 60
  consider_home: 180
  new_device_defaults:
    track_new_devices: false

My phone will show as home every minute (I mean every, no exception) and away 25-30s after that. So, it cycles from home to away every 30s. If I set interval_seconds to less than 30s than situation improves. Every now and then (sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes it could be more than a hour) it will show as away and second after that as home. It seems to me that there is some other interval unrelated to bluetooth scanning that I am unaware of and checks if devices was seen in some interval less then 30s and sets the device to away.

Why can’t I use interval_seconds with value greater than 30s?

2

I don’t know if I have a similar or different issue. My Bluetooth_LE trackers, seem to only update when HA restarts. Then they stay in the same state as they were at boot - either home or away. My yaml code is as follows:

device_tracker:
  - platform: bluetooth_le_tracker
    interval_seconds: 5
    consider_home: 20

I would like to keep interval_seconds & consider_home (relatively) low to get more accurate home/away readings.

Any thoughts?

3

I found the answer. Those two settings work only for the first device tracker platform on the list. All others will use the settings from the first one. It seems that there is no way to set this per platform.

Although this is mentioned in the documentation for device tracker, structure of data just doesn’t match what you would normally expect. If the key is under platform, you normally expect it to be applied to that specific platform only. It seems I’m not the only one that was confused by it.

1 Like
4

Bluetooth tracker, not Bluetooth_LE. I found a consider_home value of 20 seconds caused the system to constantly toggle between Home, Not Home. 30 seconds works. I tried changing the interval_seconds to a lower value than the default 12 seconds but it did not work at all.

For getting it started, detection worked instantly when the phone was put into pairing mode … just cancel the pairing once HA finds it. You just need the entry in known_devices.yaml. Or you can create the entry manually using the phone name and bluetooth MAC address from the phone Settings, About. Other phones may be different.