I am new to ESPHome, seems like a great idea if I could get it to work so it makes sense to me.
I have installed ESPHome as a bluetooth extender (I think). On its (ESPHome Builder) dashboard it finds a presence sensor and a M5stack-atom-lite-fa0280 (which I think is the ESPhome usb device).
I also have Bluetooth Integration with six devices including the Bluetooth Proxy fa0280.
I also have BTHome with a Shelly blue tooth button.
I also have Switchbot bluetooth with three curtains and the hub.
I also have Yale Access Bluetooth with a yale lock.
I thought the ESPHome would extend the Bluetooth range.
It sees no other Bluetooth devices and when you try to add a device on the ESPHome dashboard, it wants the host (ie the ip address) but Bluetooth devices do not have ip addresses.
Can someone point me to what is going wrong or a paper or you tube video that I can watch to try and sort out the problem.
The ESPHome came with Bluetooth installed (I think).
If you bought a ESP32 based device with bluetooth proxy pre-installed, you need to add that device to Home assistant. If the device isn’t discovered automatically you will need to manually add it to the integration and will require the IP address of the proxy.
By ESPHome do you mean the ESP32? How do you know it was pre-installed? You can simply install the firmware using the ESPHome add-on.
Maybe i did install the ESPHome with Blue tooth, It comes under the ESPHome which from reading the material only adds ESPHome devices.
So having the Presense Senor which is ESPHome as well make sense.
So I do not add blue tooth devices into the ESPHome integration.
So how do i know if this ESPHome has increased my blue tooth range?
Should all my bluetooth devices be under a single bluetooth integration?
I don’t understand this ESPHome and how to tell if its actually working. Can you recommend any way I can check or some simple guide to read?
five minutes later
It is saying it is “detect away”. So this means it might be out of range of the blue tooth devices it’s trying to connect too.
How do what bluetooth devices it is trying to connect too (eg Yale lock)?
Five minutes later
Its back “home” now. But I just found this on the ESPHome Integration >> Blue tooth proxy screen. When you click on the Connected devices it says under controls Thiu device has no entities.
So how do I add entities to this device? Is that what I am suppose to do or are they discovered? Or do I disconnect them from eg Yale Bluetooth, Switchbot blue tooth?
Now I am trying to use this as a blue tooth extender. The ESP Home hardly touches any device. Is there a way to redirect the Yale bluetooth lock to it so it starts to unlock a bit earlier as I walk up to the door?
For a device like that, make sure you have your BT Proxy YAML setup for an active connection and keep in mind there’s a hard limit of 3 active connections (back and forth communication vs passively listening for data) at a time.
