Local Bluetooth presence/device tracking for Apple Watch, iPhone and iPad with security relevant unlocked property

Third party integrations
23

@syngin

You can set
BLE: false
as you don’t have a local Bluetooth adapter for Theengs Gateway.

Also specifically
GENERAL_PRESENCE: false
which is only for controllers which do not support auto-discovery, and therefor actually prevents the discovery in HA.

You might also want to add your own devices’ MAC addresses to the white-list, so as not to receive, and more importantly not to auto-discover, your neighbours’ devices.

You might also copy your identities and uninstall and rei9nstall the Theengs Gateway Add-on. This will give you all the default settings working nicely in HA. Then you can just turn off BLE, enter your identities and the MAC addresses into the white-list. Not other settings should or need to be changed, as you seem to have done previously with GENERAL_PRESENCE.

24

Thank you so much for your help but it’s still not working. MQTT explorer shows the apple devices and in the addon logs I can’t see them, also not in HA. It’s so weird. I will search for another way instead of with TheengsGateway.

25

@syngin

And in MQTT Explorer you cannot see any discovery entries under the homeassistant > device_tracker topic?

26

@DigiH

Maybe I am confused or this is confusing :slight_smile:
I already completely removed everything related to TheengsGateway, also the ESP firmware. Then I searched for other way and came up with Private BLE Device - Home Assistant. Set up my iPhone and Watch with the already known IRK key and it got me completely different MAC addresses from Private BLE like that which I got from the iPhone and Watch settings initially to retrieve the IRK key. Both are appearing in Private BLE. Additionally I installed GitHub - agittins/bermuda: Bermuda Bluetooth/BLE Triangulation / Trilateration for HomeAssistant to give it a try.

27

Whichever solution you can get working for yourself is your best solution :slight_smile:

I would have expected the Identity Bluetooth MAC addresses to be identical though, if they were looked up from the devices’ settings.

28

Me also, maybe both devices did appear but under a new MAC address like with Private BLE and it was working but I was focused so hard on the MACs from the settings menu and did not recognize some new ones? Who knows. :slight_smile:

Anyway, thanks for your patience and great support!

29

You mentioned that you were looking at creating a trigger from incoming calls on an iphone, I see in your post from January 2024. I’m just wondering if this has been developed?

30

it got to the stage of being able to register when there is a call happening on the iPhone, be it through an outside call or a call initiated on the iPhone. This did work nicely for me to be discernible for incoming calls together with the unlock property, which unfortunately didn’t register correctly for everyone.

Also with the latest iOS and macOS version and the iPhone Mirroring functionality the BLE broadcasts seem to have changed quite a bit, and I haven’t properly look into that yet.

31

can i install this on an esp32 based chip?

32

Currently only with OpenMQTTGateway as a proxy, but you’d still require the Theengs Gateway Add-on installed on your HA instance for the random MAC address resolving.

For an ESP32 only solution you’ll have to look into other possibilities, like ESPresense.