Looking for help understanding room presence - can I use ESP32 and iOS devices?

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1

Hey y’all, I’m trying to wrap my head around how room presence works. From what I can tell, the HA official path is to use mqtt_room which in turn can use a few different ‘backends’.

I’m in the process of deploying several esphome nodes on ESP 32 boards.

Here’s my questions:

  1. How’s it work? Do you have to have a sensor in every room? And, if so, let’s say I’m sitting near more than one sensor - how’s it know which room I’m in?

  2. can it “triangulate”? Like can you have fewer sensors than rooms and somehow map the signals? This has been my dream, but I don’t see anything to suggest this is how it works or how to set it up.

  3. iOS - am I just SOL? Or can I use apple iPhones and watches? The internet seems mixed.

  4. can I use mqtt_room on the devices I deploy with esphome? I can’t find anything definitive. I supposed buying a dedicated ESP 32 device for each room isn’t prohibitively expensive but I’d prefer not to if I don’t have to (see also my question about triangulating with fewer sensors than rooms)

Sorry if this is all kinda basic. I’m really grateful for any thoughts or insights y’all have.

2

Bluetooth presence is capable of using the relative signal strength to determine which device you are closer to.

3

thanks! In my case, my living room and tv room are next to each other. If I put a sensor in the living room, can it know I’m in the TV room based on distance away?

4

You can calibrate some presence systems, like this one: