ESP32 Bluetooth proxy not showing in Esphome builder dashboard

svanhattum · May 21, 2025, 3:52pm

Hello,

Yet another Bluetooth proxy issue overhere
I already saw quiet a few topics of people having issues but I could not find anything that looks like mine, so here goes.

After watching some YT videos how to easily add a ESP32 bluetooth proxy to HA I thought to myself I give it a go.
I have used the esphome.io bluetooth project page and followed exactly to install the BT proxy on the ESP32 board which went fine and skipped the moment where you are able to add it to Home Assistant because according to many different Youtubers, HA should automatically detect it when you setup the WiFi correclty.

In my case HA does seem to partially detect it. As I can see the device showing up in the ESPHome Integration, but it is not showing up in the ESPHome builder add-on and I didn’t get a popup or notification to adopt it.

ESPHome Integration:

ESPHome builder add-on:

Anyone any ideas what I am missing ?
I have tried several times to re-install the BT proxy on the ESP32 but it doesn’t show the adopt notification.

WallyR · May 21, 2025, 4:29pm

Are your ESPHome device and HA on the same network and do HA only have one network interface configured?

svanhattum · May 21, 2025, 4:34pm

Actually no, they are on different vlans. HA has only one interface.
I am using pfsense but have allowed traffic from the IOT vlan towards HA on all ports and vice versa.

WallyR · May 21, 2025, 4:35pm

Discovery protocols are normally not routable, so you need to set up reflectors for these protocols.

aceindy · May 21, 2025, 4:54pm

Vlans are known to mess up mDNS.

If you just give it a static IP it should work fine…

(and the esphome addon doesn’t actually need to run for the module to work, it is only used to programm it, after that you can shut it down😉)

svanhattum · May 21, 2025, 9:10pm

Well I re-installed the Bluetooth proxy via the esphome.io project page and this time I connected the wi-fi to the same network where my HA is at and guess what…
It still doesn’t show me the adopt notification.
I get the exact same result, it show up in the esphome integration page but it doesn’t come with the adopt notification.
So I am not sure if the BT proxy is correctly installed and working or not.

svanhattum · May 23, 2025, 10:25am

Well this is silly of me.
It seemed that in the ESPHome device builder configuration the Home Assistant Dashboard integration was not enabled.

After enabling this there was a device discovered in the ESPHome builder dashboard. It did not say “adopt it” but it said “Take control”. I think they changed the text ?
Anyways, it is now available in the ESPHome builder dashboard so I can tweak and tune it to my likings