ESPresense and motion UUID on BlueCharm sensors

Third party integrations
1

Has anyone found a way to see motion on a BlueCharm beacon (like the BC08) that can send an alternate UUID when they sense motion? ESPresense seems to be smart enough to know that it’s the same beacon because the MAC stays the same. I’d like to be able to see when the UUID changes but that information doesn’t appear to ever be published to MQTT.

Is there some configuration I can do in ESPresense to make it report both UUIDs despite belonging to the same MAC address?

2

Hi @ih8gates

Our Theengs Gateway HA Add-On publishes the BC08’s motion/acceleration data as well as its temperature and battery voltage, but only in its native KSensor format, i. e. not with the iBeacon format with its uuid.

Alternatively the iBeacon decoder of Theengs Gateway also publishes the uuid.

Might be interesting for you to try out.

For individual room presence the same decoders are included in the ESP32 compatible OpenMQTTGateway.

3

Thanks. I’m trying to move away from Raspberry Pi’s as clients in favor of something easier to maintain (ESP32s). I’ll take a look at OpenMQTTGateway, tho.

4

The easiest installation is the web upload of the esp32dev-ble binary for your case

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5

This post details how to detect motion with a BC04p but it should apply to BC08 also:

6

Thanks. Specifically looking for a way to make ESPresense work since I’m using it elsewhere for simple presence detection. Trying to simplify.

7

Hi Scott,

I know I already answered your question by email, but I just thought I would post it here for others to consider:

Our BCG04 Gateway can scan for all beacons (not only our brand) and other things broadcasting MACs and data, then transfer that data via MQTT to Home Assistant. More to your question, our gateway can also handle the slightly modified UUID results when one of our motion-triggered beacons is triggered.

Here’s a project example using our new gateway and one of our beacons with motion trigger. It reminds you to take out the trash cans on trash night (if you forgot to), plus it senses the can’s (beacon) movement in the morning to indicate that the trash truck has emptied the can:

By the way, we also have a new “button beacon” that will send slightly different UUIDs depending on how the button is clicked. So you could have four different automations triggered by different clicks on this single button beacon (single, double, triple click, and/or long press). Our gateway is also well-suited to handle this button beacon with its changing UUIDs.

Thomas

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