Espresense: Cannot find Android Phone or Pixel Watch iBeacons

I just got an ESP32 flashed with Espresence and i turned on the BLE Transmitter in the manage sensors section of my android phone HA app as well as on my Pixel Watch HA app.

On my Espresense device i cannot seem to find them! How am i supposed to identify them among all these devices? I thought they’d show up as iBeacons but they aren’t

I set the max distance to 0.5 meters and put them right next to the ESP32 with no other device within a full meter and nothing is showing up.

I actually managed to get my phone iBeacon to show up. But it isn’t transmitting very frequently. It’s on 1Hz transmission interval (Low Power) and Medium Transmission Power and still the ibeacon only shows an update once every 5-10 seconds… I see my other devices updating much more frequently (such as apple pencil, macbook, iPad). Why does the HA App BLE transmitter not seem to transmit very well?

Still have not gotten the Pixel Watch iBeacon to show up. It seems that the pixel watch app (WearOS) does not let you configure the transmission interval or power. It only lets you enable or disable BLE Transmitter

If the WearOS BLE Transmitter doesn’t allow me to configure interval/power/RSSI@1m how do i configure it?

After toggling the transmitter on my watch on/off a bunch its starting to see it.

But there is no option to adjust transmitter interval, power, or RSSI@1m for the WearOS app. So i cannot tune or calibrate the watch…

Ive opened this issue to request the ability to set these parameters from the watch since it seems like thats the only place i can do it.

You can configure the sensor settings on the watch using the notification command sent to the watch directly

Also use the beacon monitor sensor to actually determine if the transmitter stops transmitting using another device. Unless you see a log message saying the transmitter stopped it actually is still transmitting

how do i sent a notification command to the watch directly? i see command_ble_transmitter but i don’t know where to shoot it off from

edit: ahh looks like i need to make an automation and call the notify service…

how do i set the rssi@1m with notification? It doesnt list an option for that.

Not currently possible, there is already an existing feature request on GitHub

How do you get your telephone to send beacon. I try everything now, but nothing happen when i look i mqtt explorer.

same thing. the documentation doesn’t explain how it works and what should be done.
did you solve it by any chance?

For anyone still trying to figure this out, you send these messages as automations. For example, here’s how I have it set up so that when my phone and/or watch leaves my house, it turns off BLE transmitting, and when they enter my house, it turns BLE transmitting to “balanced.” Just set it up moments ago, but it seems to be working!

alias: BLE Toggle
description: Toggle BLE transmitter power for devices based on zone
trigger:
  - platform: device
    device_id: FIRST_DEVICE_ID
    domain: device_tracker
    entity_id: FIRST_ENTITY_ID
    type: enters
    zone: zone.home
  - platform: device
    device_id: FIRST_DEVICE_ID
    domain: device_tracker
    entity_id: FIRST_ENTITY_ID
    type: leaves
    zone: zone.home
  - platform: device
    device_id: SECOND_DEVICE_ID
    domain: device_tracker
    entity_id: SECOND_ENTITY_ID
    type: enters
    zone: zone.home
  - platform: device
    device_id: SECOND_DEVICE_ID
    domain: device_tracker
    entity_id: SECOND_ENTITY_ID
    type: leaves
    zone: zone.home
action:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id: enters
        sequence:
          - device_id: FIRST_DEVICE_ID
            domain: mobile_app
            type: notify
            message: command_ble_transmitter
            data:
              command: ble_set_transmit_power
              ble_transmit: ble_advertise_balanced
          - device_id: SECOND_DEVICE_ID
            domain: mobile_app
            type: notify
            message: command_ble_transmitter
            data:
              command: ble_set_transmit_power
              ble_transmit: ble_advertise_balanced
      - conditions:
          - condition: trigger
            id: leaves
        sequence:
          - device_id: FIRST_DEVICE_ID
            domain: mobile_app
            type: notify
            message: command_ble_transmitter
            data:
              command: turn_off
          - device_id: SECOND_DEVICE_ID
            domain: mobile_app
            type: notify
            message: command_ble_transmitter
            data:
              command: turn_off
mode: single