I’m just getting going integrating some iBeacon sensors into my system. I have two bluetooth proxies and the bluetooth on the server, and as the documentation says, estimated distance for a beacon is reported from the bluetooth source with the best RSSI.
This is fine for basic presence but it would be great if it was possible to see the estimated distance reading from all of the available bluetooth sources at any given time. The key reason for this is it would seem like it could enable some very powerful triangulation capabilities for locating devices in a fixed space. If I know a beacon is x feet from bluetooth proxy a, y feet from bluetooth proxy b and and z feet from bluetooth z, and those sources are stationary, then its just some triangulation math to figure out where the beacon is. But as far as I can tell, that data is not available from the integration right now.
Unrelated to your request, sorry, but was wondering what is your setup comprised of?
I’ve experimented with the iBeacon integration and a variety of devices without luck.
Devices listed in the compatibility list (eg Chipolo) did not work for me
Thanks
Well caveat this with “I’m new to all this”, I am trying out a couple of different things:
I have a 2500sq ft house with 2 floors and a basement. My HA server is in the basement and has bluetooth, and I’ve I have two Olimex ESP32-POE-ISO boards configured as ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies, one on the main floor and one upstairs.
The first thing I’m trying is to be able to determine if my trash bins have been taken to the curb or not. So I’ve attached a a BlueCharm iBeacon to each bin, in hopes of being able to use the estimate distance settings + source as indicators to where the bins are. This is where my request comes in, as the reported distance is relevant only to the proxy with the strongest signal – it would be more reliable (I think) to be able to do actual triangulation with multiple sources for this scenario.
The second thing I’m going to try is to place a few iBeacons in rooms around the house and then use our phones to help identify what room a person is in (as described in the Companion App location docs). I haven’t tried this yet, but these scenario does not depend on this feature request since the iBeacon work is done by the Companion App on the phone, not the server. If there was a scenario where the phone acted as a beacon and not a source (which seems like it is possible with ESPresence, but not with BTProxy+iBeacon), then triangulation would again be very useful.
There is no critical path here, just all part of the fun of seeing what is possible with my home automation adventures.