Noob question, using ESPHome BLE component without ESP board, i.e. using the RPI's native bluetooth?

ESPHome
1

Hi guys,

Real noob question, but I want to monitor and control my JK BMS (a battery control device) in Home Assistant. This component is available:

I have previously used ESP32’s to monitor Xiaomi BLE plant devices and it works great, but in those instances it was necessary because I had the sensors spread out away from the RPIs blue tooth range. But in this case the Pi is inches away from my JK BMS.

I am a noob to start with and haven’t set up anything in HA in a while, but I am drawing a blank here. I have a Esp32 board laying around and can set that up, but can’t I use the PIs native Bluetooth in this case instead? I wouldn’t have to worry about getting the MQTT to work etc.

2

Check this out:

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3

Thanks, have used that for Xiaomi’s products, can it be used for general stuff too?

4

I would read the 2022.7 release notes, bluetooth got harder in python 3.10. Go with the esp.

Edit: false alarm, see below.

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5

Not for this custom component, it is not affected by the upgrade to python 3.10

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6

That is good news. I see it does not depend on bluepy or pybluez.

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7

Could be that I am too much of a noob to pull this off, but could you just nudge me in the right direction. What should I try to do to read the data from the JK BMS?

8

I know this is an old thread but I was trying to do the same as others here. If a solution hasn’t been found yet, Try batmon. It uses the bluetooth in the BMS and can be installed as an add-on or standalone on a separate raspberry pi which is how I did it since my batteries are out of bluetooth range from my home assistant server.