Ibeacon android app home assistant detection

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Android
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Hello everyone.

I am using a Chipolo one as the tags to integrate to my home automation. After some time my bluetooth bridge detected it and the entity was created.

I would like to use that beacon to trace on the map the last position where it was placed, obviously using the android app.

I have not yet been able to understand if the android app detects the ibeacon (obviously I have activated the setting).

How can I check if my phone has detected the beacon? Is it possible to save the position on the map?

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I’m looking to achieve a similar thing – track the Chipolo using HA as well as the Chipolo app.

I bought four Chipolo One tags but these don’t show up at all on my HA (Docker install on a Raspberry Pi 4 with the onboard Bluetooth).

The Bluetooth and iBeacon integrations seem to be working ok, it picks up a lot of BLE devices that have randomised mac address as well as one iBeacon (apparently my Bravia TV alternates between bluetooth broadcast and iBeacon)

How far have you got with this?
What settings have you used?

Thanks

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Those Chipolo things are key trackers, not beacons. Similar but different. That is probably the issue.

For sure, your HA should be able to scan for beacons using the iBeacon Tracker integration; my HA hardware is the same as yours and works fine with beacons…plus I am an idiot about most HA stuff!

Maybe try setting up a virtual beacon with your phone (to test it out without having to purchase an actual beacon). I believe that the HA phone app has the ability to broadcast a virtual beacon. Once you have that set up, it will take some time for the HA to recognize the phone as a “single beacon” (due to the phone’s rotating random MAC ID numbers), but eventually it should work; there are lots of posts here about this issue.)

Once you have got that working, you can then be confident that the problem is caused by the Chipolos not being beacons.

I know the tech for key finders is exactly the same as beacons, but they are broadcasting different proprietary formats (not iBeacon) that only their own tracker app recognizes. In other words, they want to sell their Chipolos, not let you use generic beacons with their free app. Lol!

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I’ll admit I jumped into this without doing my research and kind of expected it to just work.…

I was reading that last year Home Assistant introduced an improved bluetooth_le_tracker and without looking into the details I assumed it will detect any Bluetooth LE beacons/devices and track them.
Well, it does, but I now have a couple of thousands entries in known_devices.yaml since all these BLE devices constantly change mac address as you suggested. Nothing useful can be done with this as far as I can tell.

The iBeacon integration page recommends the Chipolo as compatible, but I see now that is specificallly the Chipolo ONE Spot which is iOS compatible only. I bought the Chipolo ONE (not Spot) thinking it has a wider compatibility. My mistake.

I guess my only solution now is to buy some true iBeacon devices that are listed as compatible.
Unfortunately Blue Charm website is US targeted and shipping to UK costs more than the beacons themselves.
Any recommendations where I can buy them in EU/UK?

Will these iBeacons be compatible with Android for tracking their last known location should I misplace my keys, for example? Any good Android apps for that?

Thanks

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Hi cipnt:

First off, I had a staff member check our website for UK shipping. It seemed like it was not working properly, so they made some adjustments, and now it is working OK. UK postal codes are a bit difficult for us Americans to understand, but I just entered a test order using London EC1V 2NX, and it seemed to work ok. If you change your mind and decide to order from us, let me know if you have any issues checking out.

The current requirement is still a minimum of 3 beacons per international order, but if that is causing you concern, let me know, and I can have them turn off that requirement for a day.

The shipping charge to the UK is still a bit high, but if you guys hadn’t decided to declare independence from the USA, you would be paying USA domestic postal rates like Puerto Rico. :wink:

Re other sellers in the UK: The only one I have heard of is called beaconzone. Super smart guy runs it. You can google their website. But I think they may have stopped selling retail and only focus on big business projects now. Double check though to be sure, as my info may be out of date.

Now, back to your project: As I understand, you want to use the HA to track a beacon, and then trigger automations based on the beacon being in range or out of range. That is workable, and I have already setup test projects like that here on my HA using the iBeacon Tracker integration as the engine. I have posted about this here: Anyone else experience issues with iBeacons? - #5 by BlueCharmBeacons

If you want to do what this thread’s OP wanted to do, I can’t say for sure. His idea of having a map show the location of the beacon inside his house would be possible, but only with multiple BLE scanners located in each room. In other words, he could achieve “room presence”. But I am not sure how he would display that on a map.

Re keyfinder vs beacon: Keep in mind that these are two different functions. A key finder will broadcast a signal that an app on your phone will monitor. Once the apps notices that the signal is no longer appearing, it will send you an alert: “the signal from the keys is now missing so they have gotten too far away from your phone!”.

You can use either…

1: the Chipolo app on an iPhone or Android and the Chipolo ONE “beacon”

OR

2: the Apple Find My app on an iPhone and the Chipolo ONE SPOT “beacon”

OK, that’s keyfinding; enjoy!

The second issue is that it sounds like you also want the HA to use this same Chipolo “beacon’s” range as a trigger for automations. Can that be done??? That’s the big question!

Why am I putting “beacon” in quotes above? Because I am not sure if the Chipolo is actually broadcasting a legit iBeacon protocol beacon signal. If it is, then no problem. But I doubt that it is. I think it is probably broadcasting some modified protocol that only it’s own app or the Apply Find My app can recognize.

Back to your earlier post: You said that the HA is not recognizing/seeing your ONE. So that makes me think that the Chipolo ONE is not broadcasting the iBeacon protocol that the iBeacon Tracker integration wants to see. It is probably broadcasting BLE “funky proprietary” non-beacon protocol which will include a MAC address, so some other HA integrations might be able to “see” the Chipolo ONE and trigger automations. But that’s outside of my experience to date, so I can only speculate.

The Chipolo ONE SPOT might be broadcasting the iBeacon protocol that the HA iBeacon Tracker integration is looking for, but you would need to test that or ask around this forum. Someone must have tried it and confirmed it (I hope), otherwise it should not be on the iBeacon Tracker compatible product list. But there may have been some misunderstanding that led to it being put there by mistake. The integration builders have no way of confirming this stuff on their own, aside from going out and buying a bunch of sample beacons themselves, which is not practical.

[I need to apply for a tech support job with Chipolo! :grin:)

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To anyone coming across this thread: in my testing on the a RPi4 using the onboard BT, the Chipolo One Spot does not work with the iBeacon integration :disappointed:

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Take a read of this comment on GitHub, it looks promising as it’s only 3 weeks old.

Once you’ve paired the Chipolo One with the App you then need to remove it. After this the Chipolo will no longer be in power save mode and be accessible from Home Assistant using the Bluetooth LE Tracker integration.