IBeacon in WEAR OS watches

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Android
#1

Hello,

Since a few months i am using the ibeacon sensor in my wear os (galaxy watch 4).
and i want to discuss with other users about this.
Remember that the ibeacon is the “BLE TRANSMITTER” sensor.

The ibeacon have a high battery consumption and it will be interesting to discuss the diferent parameters to optimice the battery. How do you config this?

Other interesting thing is that i cant setup the ibeacon in a galaxy watch 5. In a 4 it works fine, but in other phone (my wife phone), she have the watch 5 and i enabled the ble transmitter, it apears in the server as transmitting, but i can see the IBEACON:XXXXXXXXXX in mqtt explorer :frowning: (i use espresense as detectors)

Other interesting thing is to use a automation to stop the ble trasmitting and start again. I you want i can share how i do

#2

I obtain this information in the github of the home assistant companion app

if you have a galaxy watch 5 and you want to use the ibeacon with espresense you must setup the ibeacon launching notifications to the watch to configure the advertise mode as balanced and the transmitting power as high

Espresense can't workaround Galaxy Watch BT mac address randomization
#3

Thanks for your posts @DAVIZINHO ,
Would you kindly share the process to …setup the ibeacon launching notifications to the watch… ?

1 Like
#4

Thanks @DAVIZINHO
Yes please… How do you enable and disable. BLE is killing my battery life

#5

Hello.
In the documentation of the companion app you can find the parameters you can change in the watch with the Notifications services.

This is the code of a automation that power on and power off the ble transmiter of my wife watch when she is in home or out home

Screenshot_20230721_100705_Home Assistant
Screenshot_20230721_100705_Home Assistant1812×2176 259 KB

3 Likes
#6

Hi this is great piece of automation.
But how does HA know if your mobile phone is home or not home?
espresense knows if you’re in a given room or not, but what constitutes the state of home or not home for a mobile phone?

I thought this has to be something that checks the router if your phone is connected or not.

#7

The automation is turning the transmitter on and off based on the user being home. It’s not used here to determine the person state. They could be using the mobile app device tracker to see if they are home or any other device tracker entity

#8

I understand it’s the based on the user being home or not. I don’t understand how HA determines if the user is home or not.

#9

thats all based on what device trackers you have configured, the easiest is to use the mobile app which provides a device tracker with a location.

#10

Hello,
my automation only active o disable de ble transmitter in the watch, if the person is in home.
how can i determine is the person is in home?, easy: in the person i add some presense devices:

  • the watch
  • the phone (the home assistant app report the presense home or not home)
  • the router of my house, report if the phone is connected to the router
  • a ble keychain with the keys of the home.

If one of this devices is “in home”, then “davizinho is in home”, if all the devices are out of home then “davizinho is out of home”.

on the other hand the espresense. you are right, the espresense only report the room of the devices. But i create other automation for each device that report home or not home in a custom device. i can use this custom device to ad in a person entity and report the home or not home state.
If you want, i can share the automation for this

sorry for my poor english, is not my natural languaje :frowning:

1 Like
#11

Screenshot_20230815_235034_Home Assistant
Screenshot_20230815_235034_Home Assistant1080×2224 127 KB

You refer to what i have enabled?

#12

if you have issues with companion app location tracking please see this troubleshooting section that includes configuration and logs

1 Like
#13

I don’t think there are issues with the app. I just don’t know if the settings I enabled are sufficient for HA to track my device.

#14

assuming you followed the steps to the link above this post then I dont think you need to wonder about this question :wink: however if your enabled sensors still look like your last screenshot then you did not read the link.

if you still have issues after following the link above you should come back with the logs that are mentioned as part of the same troubleshooting step.

#15

I read the link above. I cleared app data and restarted the set up.
I allowed notifications and access to location.

I don’t see notify.mobile.app... but notification. I don’t know if it’s the same.

Screenshot_20230816_215843_Home Assistant
Screenshot_20230816_215843_Home Assistant1080×2224 123 KB

When trying to run the automation to determine if I’m home or not, I get

Screenshot_20230816_212523_Home Assistant
Screenshot_20230816_212523_Home Assistant1080×2340 171 KB 

alias: BLE switch for Gil's phone
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - person.gil
condition: []
action:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: person.gil
            state: home
        sequence:
          - service: notify.mobile_app_gil_galaxy_s23
            data:
              data: turn_on
      - conditions:
          - condition: not
            conditions:
              - condition: state
                entity_id: person.gil
                state: home
        sequence:
          - service: notify.mobile_app_gil_galaxy_s23
            data:
              data: turn_off
mode: single

So I don’t fully understand what went wrong.
I copied the same automation yaml and set up everything again.

#16

your notify service call is second in the list

This is not correct at all, make sure to follow the documentation. The error is telling you that the YAML is incorrect, that should be your clue that its time to check that the YAML formatting is whats expected.

#17

yes, I see… using the mobile app to configure it, I missed the notify.mobile.app... and only saw the word notification. Thanks for that!

I revised the YAML file. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so I deleted everything and did it again and now it’s ok. I found my mistake, thank you!

2 Likes
#18

HA still doesn’t trigger this automation. What am I missing here?
I went over all the settings and automation yaml again.

Could it be that the person.gil is not an entity that HA uses to determine if I’m home or not?

alias: BLE switch for Gil's phone
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - person.gil
condition: []
action:
  - choose:
      - conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: person.gil
            state: home
        sequence:
          - service: notify.mobile_app_gil_galaxy_s23
            data:
              message: command_ble_transmitter
              data:
                command: turn_on
      - conditions:
          - condition: not
            conditions:
              - condition: state
                entity_id: person.gil
                state: home
        sequence:
          - service: notify.mobile_app_gil_galaxy_s23
            data:
              message: command_ble_trasmitter
              data:
                command: turn_off
mode: single
#19

nobody can answer that but yourself, look and see how the entity is setup.

#20

its important to know if perso.gil its your entity.
Go to developers tools, then to “states” and in the filter for entitys put “person.gil” you must see your person and all the trackers that report state to this person.

the automation seems to looks ok. but the more important thing is locate your person entity