BTLE device tracker not working. How to debug?

Configuration
1

I’m using the BT LE device tracker and it doesn’t seem to be working. Exactly one time it detected my phone and added it to known_devices.yaml, but only once, and it didn’t detect anything else. (As a note, I set up asuswrt wifi tracking from the router and it worked immediately and without issue.) I’m thinking it might be an issue of docker not being able to reach out to my Ubuntu-box’s bluetooth service or something. How can I debug this? I don’t even know what to look for.

Added detail: I bought this adapter and tried it with the non-LE BT component and it didn’t work. When I initially tried it with the BTLE component, that’s when it finally created the known_devices.yaml and added my phone. I can’t check right now, but at the time, I had the rootless setup verified working on my server. Whether or not it was accessible by HA is the real question that I don’t know how to test.

Update: Thanks to pnbruckner I was able to debug and found out that I was using bad config code. So my asuswrt followed this format:

device_tracker:
  - platform: asuswrt
    consider_home: 180
    new_device_defaults:
      track_new_devices: false

That “new_device_defaults:” ? Yeah, that doesn’t work for BTLE. I changed it to this and now it works again:

device_tracker:
  - platform: bluetooth_le_tracker
    consider_home: 180
    track_new_devices: false
2

i have the same problem…

3

Glad to know I’m not the only one.

4

That code can generate quite a bit of debug output. Try:

logger:
  default: info
  logs:
    homeassistant.components.bluetooth_le_tracker: debug

Then restart, run it for a while, then check home-assistant.log. Look for lines that contain:

[homeassistant.components.bluetooth_le_tracker.device_tracker]
5

Oooh sounds useful. I’ll try that when I get home and see where it gets me. I’ll remember to mark it as the solution if that’s what does it.

6

Yes that would be really nice …
thank you in advance

7

That was very helpful! I had some logs that I was able to google that directed me to other people having the same logs show up.

2 Likes
8

Updated OP. I had copied config code that works for asuswrt that doesn’t work for BTLE. Oops.