This is a beautiful little device specially used to collect BLE Bluetooth device information. Using it, you can collect various BLE devices that can be supported by the Passive BLE Monitor Integration plug-in, such as Xiaomi Thermo-Hygrometer 2, Xiaomi Weight Scale, etc. For the device list, please refer to page.
At present, more and more Xiaomi devices are beginning to adopt the Bluetooth protocol, including the Bluetooth MESH protocol. For full localization support, this poses some challenges, as it is difficult to directly access them from Bluetooth regardless of distance. Because obviously, a direct bluetooth adapter would be the ideal solution, but due to the limitations of the Homeassistant head unit, we had to give up doing so.
Homeassistant’s support for Bluetooth devices is relatively limited, one is relatively close, and the other is that the gateway made by ESP32 has relatively small memory and connected devices are relatively small. It is also because the ESP32 with a network port is a bit inappropriate as a gateway, and it is still a distance limit. It seems very difficult to find a more perfect gateway, which is far less convenient and powerful than Zigbee gateway.
ble_monitor is a very good homeassitant plug-in, through which you can passively accept many ble devices, such access is not limited by three devices (because it Not directly connecting them, just reading the broadcast packet data of supported devices.), and we found that using this plugin with ESP32 works very well.
This is the esphome yaml source code written to esp32:
esphome:
name: screek-ble-monitor-1a
friendly_name: BLE Monitor Gateway 1A
name_add_mac_suffix: True
project:
name: Screek.BLE Monitor Gateway
version: 1A
external_components:
- source: github://myhomeiot/esphome-components
logger:
esp32:
variant: ESP32
board: esp32dev
framework:
type: arduino
version: 2.0.7
platform_version: 6.0.1
api:
reboot_timeout: 1h
# web_server:
# port: 80
ota:
password: "YOUR_OTA_PASSWORD"
wifi:
ap:
ssid: "SCREEK-BLE-MONITOR"
captive_portal:
improv_serial:
esp32_ble_tracker:
sensor:
- platform: uptime
name: Uptime
id: sys_uptime
update_interval: 10s
- platform: wifi_signal
name: RSSI
id: wifi_rssi
update_interval: 10s
entity_category: "diagnostic"
- platform: template
id: esp_memory
icon: mdi:memory
name: ESP Free Memory
lambda: return heap_caps_get_free_size(MALLOC_CAP_INTERNAL) / 1024;
unit_of_measurement: 'kB'
state_class: measurement
entity_category: "diagnostic"
ble_gateway:
id: blegateway
on_ble_advertise:
then:
homeassistant.event:
event: esphome.on_ble_advertise
data:
packet: !lambda return packet;
# gateway_id: ${device_id}
binary_sensor:
- platform: homeassistant
id: ble_gateway_discovery
entity_id: binary_sensor.ble_gateway
attribute: discovery
on_state:
then:
lambda: id(blegateway).set_discovery(x);
- platform: status
name: Online
id: ink_ha_connected
text_sensor:
- platform: homeassistant
id: ble_gateway_devices
entity_id: binary_sensor.ble_gateway
attribute: devices
on_value:
then:
lambda: id(blegateway).set_devices(x);
switch:
- platform: template
id: switch_ble_gateway_discovery
name: BLE Gateway Discovery
icon: mdi:bluetooth-connect
lambda: return id(blegateway).get_discovery();
turn_on_action: [lambda: id(blegateway).set_discovery(true);]
turn_off_action: [lambda: id(blegateway).set_discovery(false);]
disabled_by_default: true
entity_category: config
button:
- platform: restart
# disabled_by_default: True
icon: mdi:power-cycle
name: "ESP Reboot"
- platform: factory_reset
disabled_by_default: True
name: Factory Reset
id: factory_reset_all
Then next, you need to add related settings in HA, you need a service for parsing data:
automation:
- alias: ESPHome BLE Advertise
mode: queued
trigger:
- platform: event
event_type: esphome.on_ble_advertise
action:
- service: ble_monitor.parse_data
data:
packet: "{{ trigger.event.data.packet }}"
Then add some functions to communicate between ble monitor and BLE Gateway:
input_boolean:
settings_ble_gateway:
name: BLE Gateway
icon: mdi:bluetooth
settings_ble_gateway_discovery:
name: BLE Gateway Discovery
icon: mdi:bluetooth-connect
input_text:
settings_ble_gateway_add_device:
name: BLE Gateway Add Device
icon: mdi:bluetooth-connect
initial: ''
template:
- binary_sensor:
- name: BLE Gateway
icon: mdi:bluetooth
state: "{{ is_state('input_boolean.settings_ble_gateway', 'on') }}"
attributes:
discovery: "{{ is_state('input_boolean.settings_ble_gateway_discovery', 'on') }}"
devices: >-
{% set devices = namespace(items = []) %}
{% for s in states | selectattr('entity_id', 'search', '^(device_tracker|sensor).ble_') | map(attribute='entity_id') %}
{% set devices.items = devices.items + [device_id(s)] %}
{% endfor %}
{% set ns = namespace(items = []) %}
{% for s in devices.items | unique %}
{% set ns.items = ns.items + [(device_attr(s, 'identifiers') | first)[1]] %}
{% endfor %}
{{ ns.items | unique | sort | join('') | replace(':', '') ~ (states('input_text.settings_ble_gateway_add_device') | replace(':', '') | trim) if is_state('binary_sensor.ble_gateway', 'on') }}
From now on, you can control this BLE gateway in HA, and cooperate with the Ble Monitor plug-in to automatically discover surrounding BLE devices.
The above is a bluetooth passive receiver made by us, it can receive the surrounding bluetooth signal quite stably. Let HA get direct data from bluetooth sensor.
We also made some additional kits to share with you, so that everyone can feel the convenience of Bluetooth.
