Configuration Home Assistant / Raspberry Pi 4 / Docker / SwitchBot

Configuration
1

Hello all,
I just installed my Home Assistance instance (Home Assistant Core 2022.5.4 / Home Assistant Supervisor 2022.05.2 / Kernel version 5.15.32-v8+ / Agent version 1.2.2) via Docker on a Raspian Lite OS x64 11 (Bullseye) on my Raspberry Pi 4 8Gb.

The latter is equipped with a ConBee II and works very well for the moment.

However, I wanted to connect my SwitchBot via Bluetooth to my Home assistant. Obviously I got an error when trying to install the SwitchBot 3rd party module in Home Assistant, it can’t find bluetooth.

So I went to my Raspbian in ssh and I installed the library to activate bluetooth:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
    sudo apt-get upgrade
    sudo rpi-update
    sudo restart

I also tested my bluetooth via:

    sudo bluetoothctl
    scan on

The bluetooth works perfectly but back in my Home Assistant Board, impossible to install the SwitchBot module, it still does not recognize the bluetooth…

Searching the web, I found people who sent their docker container as a Host at the risk of no longer accessing Home Assistant, others who use usb bluetooth dongles and it seems to work well but no one does not give models or installation procedures.

Could you help me or enlighten me on the subject?

2

Apparently on the raspberry pi 4b it is a Cypress CYW43455 compatible with Bluetooth 5 and BLE. Anyone have an idea on how to get it recognized in docker? since it is already recognized in raspbian 11…

3

Not an idea regarding the docker recognition, but if you have an esp32 laying around, OpenMQTTGateway supports now the switchbot s1 with auto discovery.

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12672732/166609880-e3bca59a-f9b1-4dfa-a435-20ab3fbf625d.gif(image larger than 3 MB)

You can control, see the state, mode, and battery.

https://docs.openmqttgateway.com/upload/web-install.html

1 Like
4

Hi 1technophile, can you please provide more details? I also straggle with the Bluetooth setup.

5

If you have an ESP32 you can follow these steps (take esp32dev-ble):
https://docs.openmqttgateway.com/upload/web-install.html

And for Home Assistant you just have to activate the auto discovery
https://docs.openmqttgateway.com/integrate/home_assistant.html#auto-discovery

And you should see your switchbot in the devices list (note that the password is not supported yet)
switchbot-s1234

1 Like
6

Cool, I’ll go over it. Thanks for the help.

7

@1technophile, thanks for the links. I will go over these at some point when I have some free time.

8

I went over this and it didn’t work for me. It seems that it is actually important to use some specific ESP32. Not all of the are the same. See for example this:

I bought one more ESP32, hopefully the correct version now.