Hardware for Bluetooth detection

Hardware
1

Hi there,

I am pretty new at homeassistant but I would say on a pretty quick learning curve.

My current goal is to get presence detection for our cars in the garage.
So I would like to acomplish that by sticking a bluetooth low energy (ble) beacon to the car.
Now my server is in the basement so that the internal bluetooth will not have enough range for the garage.

So what hardware can I use as a “sensor” for bluetooth? I have read somewhere that I could use a rapsperry pi, but I would think that this is overkill for my task.

Are there any devices that can do wat I need?

Thank you in advance.

Acid

2

I’m using monitor (on a couple of Pi Zero W units), along with a Chipolo Classic Bluetooth Key Finder, and some automations for exactly this.

I have a sensor on the garage door, so I only count the car as away if:

  1. Both monitor instances see the car as away
  2. The garage door closed in the last 10 minutes
1 Like
3

Bluetooth may go for 10 m, in an open area. But when it comes to the realty it just go within a room.
The wifi can go farther as much as triple distance. So I won’t take that as good option.
For the car presence, I’d prefer to set a ultrasonic sensor which might sense if an object is close to it, such as your car. Then it’s just a matter to interface that sensor to the HA network.

4

You could use also an esp32 as a ble to wifi gateway. If you have wifi in your garage it should be ok.

5

+1 for monitor. If necessary, put a Pi Zero in the garage so it’s not too far from your cars.