DIY BLE sensors w/ WiFi & LoRa MQTT gateway

electronichamsters · May 30, 2018, 1:28am

Hello,

I’m new to Home Assistant. I’m a long-time OpenHAB user and have a mix of OpenHAB, Node-RED, grafana/InfluxDB for home automation and dashboards. A lot of the stuff I play around with is a mix of wireless modules and sensors, and I thought this group might be interested in some low cost DIY BLE sensors I’ve built.

Over the years, it seems like the typical challenges of DIY wireless sensors are size, cost, battery life, and development tool complexity. I’m using these $5 Nordic BLE modules that are common on ebay and Aliexpress. And I made a set of ARM MBED code for sensors and BLE-MQTT Gateways that should be easy to extend. This project also has a BLE-LoRa bridge to extend the range of BLE sensors or make LoRa sensors.

Some of the example sensors I’ve made in this project:

Window Sensor – tells you how wide opened the windows are. Not just open/closed. Also, it’s not ugly.
Dog food level
Geolocation with $10 BLE-Wifi Gateways + $5 beacons. I have examples of tracking which area of the house my dog is hanging out in. This beacon can be purchased off-the-shelf and comes with a key-chain / dog-collar friendly case. Also not ugly and doesn’t look DIY.

https://www.instructables.com/id/LoRa-Tooth-Small-Wireless-Sensors/

Eric

Puneit_Thukral · February 2, 2019, 7:22pm

Thank you for such an insightful writeup. It motivates me to try your approach. I don’t want to use any commercial solutions and want to go the DIY way.

stolevegen · February 1, 2020, 11:02am

I just found this thread. I actually found your project at the instructables site and decided to give it a go.

I have made my first door/window sensor, and when SSH in to Raspi and subscribing to topic everything works well.

If I add the sensor as “sensor” in Home Assistant it will show “1” or “0” like expected. (but updates are a bit slow)

If I add the sensor as “binary_sensor” and “device_class: door” it shows as expected but never updates. It just sits at “closed”

Any suggestions?

 sensor:
   - platform: mqtt
     device_class: door
     name: "Entrance"
     state_topic: "/yyy/esp2/f8a34f9d94hf8/mag"

binary_sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    device_class: door
    name: "Entrance"
    state_topic: "/yyy/esp2/f8a34f9d94hf8/mag"

Puneit_Thukral · March 30, 2020, 3:33pm

I am also working on the same thing. I believe we need to change the value 0 and 1 to On and Off.
This we can do via nodered or automation. I see you are almost 40 days ahead of me on this project. Did you make it work?

stolevegen · March 31, 2020, 5:52am

Yes, the following configuration has worked for me. Door/window sensors work flawless now.

  - platform: mqtt
    name: “Backdoor"
    state_topic: "/+/+/a8df52sdfaff/mag"
    device_class: door
    payload_on: "1"
    payload_off: "0"

Regarding payload, just subscribe to topic and double check what it reports when open/closed.

So far the problems I have had is ;

A couple boards have reported payload of “2” (odd state) instead of “1”, but otherwise functions well.
Dog tracking beacon works fine for a while, several days, but then looses signal. A re-press of the button often helps it reconnect, but the button also floods the MQTT server with thousands of transmissions per minute.
Couldn’t get the temperature sensor working. Tried with several different sensors, all confirmed to work on my Wemos board. Maybe some libraries are outdated? It reports 32 degrees and 0% humidity, with no change.

Puneit_Thukral · March 31, 2020, 6:29am

This is much easier and simpler than what I did last night.

I first created two sensors in sensors.yaml
it was so simple and I over engineered it

- platform: mqtt

  state_topic: '/yyy/ble_gateway/c91bc21021f1/mag'

  name: bedroom_balcony_realtime

- platform: mqtt

  state_topic: '/yyy/ble_gateway/c91bc21021f1/mag/p'

  name: bedroom_balcony_perodic

Then I created input booleans

bedroom_balcony_door:

  name: bedroom balcony door

Then I created binary sensor

- platform: template

  sensors:

    bedroom_balcony_door:

      friendly_name: Bedroom Balcony Door

      device_class: door

      value_template: >-

        {% if is_state("input_boolean.bedroom_balcony_door", "on") %}

         true

        {% else %}

         false

        {% endif %}

And an automation to report state to the binary sensor

- alias: bedroom balcony door sensor periodic (closed)

  initial_state: true

  trigger:

    platform: numeric_state

    entity_id: sensor.bedroom_balcony_perodic

    above: 0

    

  condition: 

    - condition: state

      entity_id: input_boolean.bedroom_balcony_door

      state: 'on'

  action: 

    service: input_boolean.turn_off

    data:

      entity_id: input_boolean.bedroom_balcony_door

- alias: bedroom balcony door sensor realtime (closed)

  initial_state: true

  trigger:

    platform: numeric_state

    entity_id: sensor.bedroom_balcony_realtime

    above: 0

    

  condition: []

  action: 

    service: input_boolean.turn_off

    data:

      entity_id: input_boolean.bedroom_balcony_door

- alias: bedroom balcony door sensor periodic (open)

  initial_state: true

  trigger:

    platform: numeric_state

    entity_id: sensor.bedroom_balcony_perodic

    below: 1

    

  condition: 

  - condition: state

    entity_id: input_boolean.bedroom_balcony_door

    state: 'off'

  action: 

    service: input_boolean.turn_on

    data:

      entity_id: input_boolean.bedroom_balcony_door

- alias: bedroom balcony door sensor realtime (open)

  initial_state: true

  trigger:

    platform: numeric_state

    entity_id: sensor.bedroom_balcony_realtime

    below: 1

  condition: []

  action: 

    service: input_boolean.turn_on

    data:

      entity_id: input_boolean.bedroom_balcony_door