Howto re-add removed bluetooth devices via ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy?

[bluehat]

I have several Xiaomi Mijia Devices deployed. Originally using a MQTT Bridge via ESPHome. Now I’m trying to migrate to ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy, but it drives me crazy:

My general idea was to remove the devices, deploy the ESPhome device and then add/redetect them. But this does not seem to work. After I removed any Entity/Bluetooth Device it is no longer rediscovered.

I already wandered through several file locations to scan for leftovers and eventually also deleted the bluetooth.remote_scanners file as well. But no success.

Anybody a hint what’s missing so that the Bluetooth devices and their entities are reappearing in HASS again? I’m feeling quite dumb and frustrated, because the logic behind this behaviour is not obvious to me.

Thanks for your feedback!

[bluehat]

#1 Removing the deletion state
I think the referenced post below provides some improvement. Basically it says:

1. remove device record/definition from .storage/core.device_registry
2. also remove “deleted” entry from the same file.

Still missing some devices (esp. those over Bluetooth Proxy), but already a few reappeared.

How to restore deleted device?

I found the way! Simply deleting the deleted device record in .storage/core.device_registry doesn’t work - HA will not start even that “Check configuration Yaml” will tell you that “Configuration will not prevent HA from starting”. You need to edit .storage/core.device_registry, find your device in deleted_devices and change device’s Mac address and identifiers to something else.

#2: Integration configured to not re-add entities
Another pitfall: I had discovery disabled ble_monitor in Configuration parameters | Passive BLE Monitor integration

#3: Enabling bluetooth support for Docker-hosted Homeassistant
Not sure if necessary, but eventually I also added direct native Bluetooth support in my Docker container: Bluetooth - Home Assistant

#4: ESPHome Proxy does NOT work with ble_monitor
Final realization I had: ble_monitor does not receive bluetooth packages relayed through bluetooth proxy as described here: Extend range with ESPHome | Passive BLE Monitor integration

The reason some of the Mijia sensors out of reach appeared though was, because I had enabled the BTHome v1 protocol of the PVVX firmware in constrast to the ATC / PVVX Custom protocols. The BTHome v1 protocol is supported natively by Home Assistant Bluetooth Setup and hence also detected remotely.