I’m wondering if you have active scanning enabled, but that should already be required for the sensor to be picked up in the first place. Maybe something to double check though.
@DigiH I have active scanning enabled. I installed Theengs Gateways but not sure where the reports are housed or how to pull that information. The documents with the add-on are lacking some clear instructions.
I downloaded the Inkbird app and connected to the device from my phone. I change the reporting interval from 2 minutes to 10 minutes and it seems to have improved things a bit. I have now been able to maintain nearly 24 hours of temp reporting (most I saw earlier was maybe 8-12 hours).
I’ve got some ESP32 (only have ESP8266 in the house) scheduled to be delivered sometime this week. Going to try the Bluetooth Proxy to see if that changes anything with a more frequent update.
I wasn’t able to upload two images so here is my current pool temp showing the changes after I made updates every 10 mins vs every 2 mins.
Theengs Gateway (Add-On) reports the values (and the auto-discovery) via MQTT, and can also be monitored separately with an external app like MQTT Explorer. Apologies, I somehow always assume everyone is already using MQTT for something or other 
The documentation for the separate Theengs Gateway, on which the Add-On is based upon, is more detailed.
@DigiH
Great! thank you for that information. I have MQTT broker running so once I was told where to look I could easily find the data. Here is one of the recent received data log. Looks like signal strengh if strong. I have a large number of these showing up and all are between -56 / -64
Great, here is some more info about the Add-On settings, where the link is currently broken in the above mentioned documentation.
The messages should show up as frequently as defined by TIME_BETWEEN
It’ll be inserting to see now how the Gateway messages behave once you experience another outage on your integration.
I’m away from the house so I can’t reset the device… BUT looks like I was getting regular updates till around 8:44:59. Updates were about ever second or so, I have now lost updates from the device and it seems I the temp probe stopped sending messages. It’s been about two hours since I’ve received a message from the device.
I suspect these devices are only designed to report data for a certain period of time then they hit a deep sleep mode. Maybe it stays this way (stops reporting data at all) if it hasn’t communicated with the app. Not sure if this is possible?
I set up to start listening for TIME_BETWEEN but I don’t think I’ll have any data till I’m able to work on resetting the sensor again when I’m home.
I’m wondering if this might be a more recent firmware related issue/feature, as from previous users of the P01B with Theengs Gateway and/or OpenMQTTGateway I’ve never heard this to happen.
The only possible solution I could think of, would be so send regular BLE connection commands to read some GATT characteristic, which could possibly keep the device awake, similar to a connection with the app.
care to see some even stranger stuff? The device started reporting again… BUT no data reports in MQTT logs! I can’t post both images on one chat so I’ll reply with the MQTT log.
Totally agree, even stranger now!
Are you using the same Bluetooth adapter for both implementations?
Yes, the computer is running Debian and doesn’t have Bluetooth on motherboard. Only Bluetooth adapter on the computer is a stick: Sena UD100-G03
I might go the way of @jameson_uk and move to RF or custom MQTT homebuilt device.
I was just wondering, as it’s very strange that the Gateway MQTT messages didn’t have the updated values, as Gateway only published to MQTT if and when it actually receives a BLE broadcast, so somehow these should mean that it did receive broadcasts with the older temp values, for some very strange reason.
I’ve been reading on Passive BLE. Seems like some others have had similar issues with the Inkbird device.
The active scanning on Passive BLE seems to solve some of the issues on Inkbird devices.
Is there a way to do an active scan or pink through the HA Bluetooth integration? I haven’t found a way.
Not sure if anyone else has these same feelings but it seems very hard to diagnose issues with Bluetooth integration as there are so many different parts that can have issues. maybe I’m just more comfortable with Zigbee and Z-wave.
Usually Inkbird Bluetooth thermometers, pool or otherwise, don’t respond with broadcasts with decodable data unless scanned actively. Passive scanning would not receive the manufacturerdata required for the decoding.
So both the HA Bluetooth integration and Theengs Gateway need to scan the Inkbirds actively, otherwise no data would be received at all.
As to if, how and why these active scans might sometimes possibly fail, causing passive only scanning resulting in the temperature chart drop outs, or if it might actually be device/firmware related, is hard to say.
If you have a PC or laptop with integrated Bluetooth or a spare ESP32 you could always install Theengs Gateway on PC or laptop or OpenMQTTGateway on the ESP32 and monitor them for a longer period. If they, with their different Bluetooth adapter, also fail it would definitely look like an issue with the P01B, if they work continuously then some further investigation with the HA integration would be in order. That’s how I’d try to start isolating the issue.
sounds like a weekend job… I can do any or all of those things. Might start with the Theengs Gateway on a laptop and move it around the house to see the results.
thank you for your help and advice on this.
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If you also set up a separate MQTT broker on the laptop, just to isolate everything, and monitor it with MQTT Expolorer you can select the temperature and have it graph in MQTT Explorer.
Personally, I use an ESP32 with OpenMQTTGateway and pick up the MQTT in HA, and my two Inkbird TH1s have been steadily reporting their temperature and humidity for ages. While not P01B, they do use exactly the same decoding for the temperature.
So it might actually be something with the P01B, but a test like that will give you certainty.
All the best with it.
I have just setup a RPi4 with the HomeAssistant OS and an Inkbird Bluetooth Pool Thermometer (IBS-P01B). I have multiple HA-installs for other purposes too, meaning I know it quite well already.
I came across this thread when googling this exact issue. These are the observations I have made so far:
- The temp is updated all the time for a while, but after the temperature stabilizes, HA stops receiving new reading.
- If I restart HA, it receivs new readings for a short period (suggesting it’s not really in a deep non-responsive state), before it stops again.
- If I heat up or cool down the thermometer, making the temp change drastically, it also starts sending updates to HA for a short while before stopping again.
For now I use the built-in BT adapter, I have considered getting an external one, but that does noe appear to be the issue here?
So, did any of you get any closer to a more stable monitoring, or understand why it stops reporting?
Edit: I just setup the app on my phone to change the reporting interval and I noticed that the thermometer saves data back in time and reports on it once you open the app, if it was possible to capture this data by HA, this issue wouldn’t be as much of a pain?
Did anybody find a solution to this? I seem to be having the same problem that you guys are describing.
I experienced the same problem. I stumbled across something called OpenMQTTGateway. I installed it on a spare ESP32 board I had around and configured an mqtt sensor to pull the Temperature and Battery % in Yaml. This appears to be working after a day or so but I will be testing this for a few days to be sure. Not sure I want separate ESP32 boards with different software installed to do what should be possible with ESPHome. I will try to post an update in a few days after testing.
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