My HA install is on a RPI that has to have bluetooth disabled because it has a ZWave (and Insteon) USB adapters. I’d like to get started with ESPHome and have some extra RPIs around if needed - can I setup some sort of bridge device to connect to the “ESP”/bluetooth world and utilize the HA integration?
ESPHome devices connect to home assistant via Wifi, not Bluetooth.
So yes you can have an ESP device that (for example) implements a Bluetooth tracker but it still reports this info to Home Assistant via wifi, no bridge device needed.
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What’s easy/cheap then (or RPI based since I have those handy) that I can implement that will let me communicate between HA and bluetooth (only) devices then? For instance I already have a bluetooth (only) battery-charge monitor that I’d like to link in to HA.
Which version of the Pi do you have?
ESPHome only works with the Raspberry Pi Pico W.
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Ahhh I have RPI3Bs and a 0W I think.
Nice! Do I just buy a 3d printed case and power it via a USB? Does it need any accessories/antennas/etc to simply act as my go-between between?
Guessing I should buy a couple since I’ll want one in range of my various bluetooth-only items/sensors and they’re spread around the house; some could be 40+ feet apart and my walls and roxul insulation between floors does a number on wireless signals).
Any small case will do. Something like these maybe, doesn’t need to be 3D printed.
Yep, a small USB power supply (ie: old phone charger) will do. They don’t need much power.
I have about 8 ESP’s acting as Bluetooth Proxies throughout my house. More than I need but that came about due to the ease of enabling Bluetooth on my Sonoff NS Panels.
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Could you just run a second HA instance on one of the RPis? I keep reading about HA Remote but I haven’t personally tried it. It would be overkill for just passing along BT data, but if it’s lying around anyway…
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Yeah Tom…, The Pi3 Could but Def stay away from the zero. Someone else on the community site tried to load a 2024.8.x build on one a week or so ago and after 24 hours the SD was still churning. (there’s just not enough meat there to run - as an aside I wouldn’t run a LARGE install on a Pi3 anymore due to memory constraints - seems newer builds are fatter)
That said - Unless those are bunkers the esp32 is (not great) wifi but still unless op has got a Faraday cage embedded in concrete walls you’ll probably make that distance. I’d try before adding the additional pi and Then if it doesn’t work I’d tackle reliable wifi (I’d totally go that route… Wifi coverage) instead of another pi complicating my HA setup.
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Didn’t know I had the option of a 2nd HA instance. Are they manageable under the single UI or do you have to manage each completely separately? I ask because my HA instance is so unstable (I’m guessing it’s related to the ZWave/USB stuff) that it freezes up every few minutes and even MQTT won’t stay running on it. Was going to work on that next - but offloading some of the integrations/plugins to another PI might be my easiest solution - as long as I can manage everything in one console (I have 125+ insteon devices and 20+ zwave devices around the house that are my most critical components to manage and I need automations that can use both Insteon and ZWave devices/sensors).
I am going to go the ESP32 route for the bluetooth connectivity though; I’ll order a couple and cheap cases. Thanks for the guidance!
Not exactly. Think management of management m it’s complicated and not something you want to do if you calln avoid it. Instead, fix the boxes stability issue or you’ll have two HA instances lashed together that aren’t as stable as either one.
Tldr remote ha? Yes it’s available but it’s not the right way to solve that.
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If you are looking for something to do with the pi3s, just set up an mqtt broker and you can connect all sorts of things to your pi’s with this client:
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