[Custom integration] Bluetooth Mesh (Häfele Connect Mesh) — lighting with no gateway

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I maintain this integration alone and unpaid, so everything is tracked in one place: report a bug or ask a question.

New versions no longer need announcing here: HACS offers you the update, release notes included. Otherwise, the RSS feed https://github.com/dasimon135/ha-bluetooth-mesh/releases.atom, or Watch → Releases on the repository.

This thread stays open for user-to-user help. The README is the reference and stays current — this post does not.

Home Assistant has no native Bluetooth SIG Mesh support, which strands whole families of “app-only” mesh lights — including Häfele Connect Mesh (Loox) and other ThingOS-based luminaires. The usual options are a discontinued vendor gateway, or an experimental BlueZ bluetooth-meshd setup that won’t run on Home Assistant OS.

So I built a small pure-Python Bluetooth Mesh stack plus a HACS custom integration that drives these lamps directly — using the ESPHome Bluetooth proxies you probably already have (or a local adapter). No extra hardware, no meshd, works on HA OS in a VM with no local radio.

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Repo: GitHub - dasimon135/ha-bluetooth-mesh: Control Bluetooth SIG Mesh lighting (Häfele Connect Mesh / ThingOS) from Home Assistant — pure-Python mesh stack + HACS integration, via your ESPHome Bluetooth proxies. No vendor gateway. · GitHub

How it works

The vendor app exports its network as a .connect file (NetKey, AppKey, node addresses). The integration imports it, connects a proxy to the same network, and sends standard, app-keyed SIG mesh messages (Generic OnOff, Light Lightness, Light CTL). One GATT connection to any one powered lamp reaches the whole mesh — the network relays the rest.

It’s validated end-to-end on real hardware: a Häfele tunable-white lamp controlled from HA through an ESPHome proxy, with a kept-alive connection that makes commands feel instant.

What works today

  • On/off, brightness, and colour temperature (tunable white), one HA light per node.
  • State is read from the lamp, not assumed. A mesh proxy forwards nothing inbound until the client configures its address filter; the integration configures it, so on/off, brightness and colour temperature are read back when the mesh becomes reachable and after every reconnection — including changes you made from the vendor app while Home Assistant was away. A light whose state has not been read yet reports unknown rather than guessing off.
  • The lamp is asked once for the Kelvin range it actually tracks, so the slider offers that lamp’s real extremes instead of a conventional 2700–6500 guess.
  • Instant response (the proxy connection is kept alive; configurable timeout if you also want to keep using the vendor app — a mesh node has a single proxy slot).

Honest limitations

  • No RGB / full-colour yet: my hardware is tunable-white only, so I left colour unimplemented rather than ship it untested. If you have a colour mesh lamp and want to help validate, please shout — it’s a clean addition.
  • Provisioning still happens in the vendor app. The integration joins an existing network from its .connect export; adding a brand-new lamp to the mesh from Home Assistant is not there yet.

Install

HACS → custom repository (category Integration) → install → restart → add the integration and paste your .connect export. Details and screenshots in the README.

Feedback, testers, and issues welcome — especially anyone with ThingOS-based lights that aren’t Häfele, or colour hardware. :folded_hands: