One other question while I’m at it, does the echo command not work anymore? I used to be able to send to monitor/scan/echo and observe a reply at monitor/ha-monitor/echo but that hasn’t been working for a while now…
If I send a blank message to monitor/scan/echo, I get an “ok” reply back at monitor/pi/echo (where pi is my mqtt publisher identity).
Is there a way to see what options a monitor node is running with? I have three, two of them were running with the same options, but I’ve had to reinstall one of those two, and now I can’t remember what options I used…
This works for me.
more /etc/systemd/system/monitor.service
Output:
bt-1~$ more /etc/systemd/system/monitor.service
[Unit]
Description=Monitor Service
After=network.target
[Service]
User=root
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/pi/monitor/monitor.sh -b &
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/monitor
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target network.target
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That’s exactly what I needed… thanks!
So I just got a Tile to try and I can’t get monitor to discover that one either. Just like the Nut. Something has to be up with my monitor service. It sees my Sony TV as a “generic beacon” all day every day but will not see the nut mini or the Tile. However, monitor does see something. They both occasionally show up like this:
0.2.015 06:08:42 pm [CMD-RAND] [passed filter] data: CB:34:D7:2A:8E:B2 pdu: ADV_IND rssi: -64 dBm flags: 0x06 man: unknown delay: 3
That’s the address of the Tile. But it never shows up with any information like the Sony TV does. And I tried this a couple of different ways. One right out of the box, and one after pairing the Tile with my phone. The result was the same both ways.
Anyone have any ideas??
I put my Tile MACs in known_beacon_addresses.
monitor/bt-1/john_tile {"id":"AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF","confidence":"100","name":"Undeterminable","manufacturer":"Tile, Inc.","type":"GENERIC_BEACON_PUBLIC","report_delay":"1","rssi":"-67","observed_interval":"-1","flags":"0x06","movement":"none","oem_data":"Tile, Inc.","hex_data":"none","resolvable":"PUBLIC","retained":"true","timestamp":"Tue Oct 01 2019 19:55:28 GMT-0500 (CDT)","version":"0.2.197"}
monitor/bt-1/john_tile/device_tracker home
Nope. Tried that too. Get nothing.
Others report not having to put anything in the known beacon addresses.
Yes, I’m pretty sure monitor saw my Tile’s before I added them to known_beacon_addresses. I added them to assign aliases.
Anyway, sorry I couldn’t be more help.
– John
I have since added the MAC of my Nut Mini to known beacon addresses so that I could add an alias, and it’s still working fine. It is NOT in known static addresses. I have a second Nut Mini on the way - I hope that one works as simply as the first. In our situation, one Pi running monitor with tags on our keys is the simplest way to run presence detection - no phones and no multiple Pis running Monitor needed. I actually set a filter to ignore the phones, and I added MACs for things that showed up that I"m not interested in to the address_blacklist file.
I wish I had some other ideas for you, but hopefully someone else might come up with something…
That is the same setup Im running. A single pi for the whole house. Previously only tracking phones. Works great for phones, and apparently for my TV. Unfortunately I don’t need to track my TVs presence.
I’m really curious to know how your new nut works. Please post with the results. I got mine about a week and a half ago so it’s a new one.
SUCCESS!!!
All this time it was the VERSION OF MONITOR I was using. I figured I would just try to re-install monitor as a last resort. So I renamed my old directory, then pulled the latest files from git and re-added my statics and mqtt preferences. As soon as I ran it I noticed the output looked different. Similar to what someone else posted here. Much more condensed. Now both the Tile and the Nut show up as [CMD-PUBL] and the nut’s status was reported to HA!
And like others have stated, I do not have anything in my known beacon addresses file. I scrolled back to my previous commands, pre-reinstall, and saw this:
starting monitor.sh (v. 0.2.015)…
Now when I run it I see this:
starting monitor.sh (v. 0.2.197)…
Thanks for all the help! TLDR: I should have checked the version first.
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Hooray! Really glad you figured it out 
It took me awhile to figure it out. To change the source type to bluetooth, rather than GPS, you can change your customize.yaml to include the following:
device_tracker.name
source_type: bluetooth
Or, alternatively, you can change the source type on the frontend by clicking Configuration>Customization then select the device tracker entity you want to change and add “bluetooth” (with quotes) under the source_type.
for anyone upgrading and it breaking see Installing mosquitto fails because service fails to start · Issue #1419 · eclipse/mosquitto · GitHub and run the below cmds
For anyone whose Raspberry Pi Zero with Monitor stopped working after an update, downgrade as @ledjee recommended:
sudo apt-get install mosquitto=1.6.4-0mosquitto1~stretch1
Additionally, I downgraded the libmosquitto1 and mosquitto-clients packages in that order as follows:
sudo apt-get install libmosquitto1=1.6.4-0mosquitto1~stretch1
sudo apt-get install mosquitto-clients=1.6.4-0mosquitto1~stretch1
Thanks for the assistance @simonk83 and @ledjee
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How would I know if multiple instances are running at once?
For anyone having issues with previously connected devices (using monitor.sh -c XX:XX:XX:XX:XX) always showing not previously connected, I submitted a PR with the fix but wanted to post it here so you can make the change yourself until it gets merged.
On line #161 of monitor.sh, change echo "quit" to echo "paired-devices" as shown below
previously_connected_devices=$(echo "quit" | bluetoothctl | grep -Eio "Device ([0-9A-F]{2}:){5}[0-9A-F]{2}" | sed 's/Device //gi')
previously_connected_devices=$(echo "paired-devices" | bluetoothctl | grep -Eio "Device ([0-9A-F]{2}:){5}[0-9A-F]{2}" | sed 's/Device //gi')
Relevant PR:
https://github.com/andrewjfreyer/monitor/pull/253
I decided I didn’t want to be depended on phones, so after reading positive things about the Nut trackers, I went for those.
I have to say they work great. I’ve put their MACs in the known_beacon_addresses file, removed them from the app, and now monitor sees them. I expect them to run for months after I have to replace the batteries.
I have a couple of questions though:
-
When I leave, it can easily take 2 minutes for monitor to get the confidence below 10%. The steps it takes every point where it isn’t detecting the Nut, are quite small. Just a couple percentages. Is there any way to get it to detect its state faster when I or my girlfriend leave?
-
I have 2 Raspberry Pi’s in my house running monitor. I’m using the
-xparameter so all MQTT messages are retained. I do this so that if I have to restart HA it automatically picks up the right home state. Is there any way to only retain the MQTT messages from my 2 Nuts (lol)? -
I’m running both monitor sessions (first and second floor) with just the
-x -bparameters.-xfor retained messages as mentioned earlier, and-bto scan (and report) beacon activity. Is this the ideal setup? I would prefer it to only scan for the 2 trackers I’ve setup inknown_beacon_addresses. It gives a lot of noise adding-b. Is that possible?
I am using only Nut beacons, and running with -x -b. It’s working really well for me. I also have an automation to restart Monitor when HA restarts so that I have accurate data about Monitor being online in my HA frontend.
To address your questions: You can change the amount of time it takes to decide that you are gone (confidence=0) in the behavior_preferences file by changing the default 240 seconds to something smaller:
#SECONDS UNTIL A BEACON IS CONSIDERED EXPIRED
PREF_BEACON_EXPIRATION=240
To filter out the MQTT noise, I do a couple of things:
I use a filter as follows to filter out our phones, in the same behavior_preferences file, like this
PREF_FAIL_FILTER_MANUFACTURER_ARRIVE="Apple|Samsung
I also watched Monitor running by using the -V (verbose) flag for a while, and added a bunch of MAC addresses for things I didn’t want to see/track to the address_blacklist file. That really cut down on the messages being sent. I pretty much just see the Nut beacons now.
Hope that helps!
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Very fast and complete answer. Thank you so much! I’m sure this answers all my questions. I’ll try it all later.
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