Oddly, I’ve renabled the ble monitor and everything is still working. Might be a race condition at start up. I will still try the additional dongle and report back.
Does anyone know if the new integration supports tracking of ble devices, perhaps using known_devices.yaml? I can’t find anything in the docs, but I’m certain I read it somewhere.
Bluetooth LE tracker integration is adjusted to the new Bluetooth integration, at least that is what I was told. Note the LE in the name, the Bluetooth tracker (without LE) is not
I asked one of the devs and the new integrations are currently using active scan, so that is the reason you have to set BLE monitor to active scan as well. This could change in the future, as bleak has been adjusted a couple of days ago to allow passive scanning. But this has not been implemented in HA yet.
Just a question to be sure.
I have 2 Air Monitors Lite (Xiaiomi Qingping) but not recognized by the new Bluetooth integration yet.
Will these sensors automatically discoverd after new releases of the Home Assistant Core?
The qinping air monitor lite can send in Xiaomi BLE fornat (when connected to Mi Home) or in Qingping BLE format (when not connected to MiHome). Yours is propbably using Qingping format, if it isnt recognized now. Qingping format will be supported in 2022.9.
Having enabled active scanning for a few days I noticed a huge increase in database size.
The culprits are the sensors created by the new Bluetooth integration, which produce many more data points than the old ones. Anybody know if there is a setting somewhere to limit the acquisition rate of the new integration?
I don’t think this is related to enabling active scan. The new BLE integrations record every change, while BLE monitor was only updating once per “period” (1 minute). You might want to open in an issue on Github to have a discussion with the devs about this.
Maybe I’m missing something. I have two Xiaomi BLE temperature/humidity sensors. When I enabled the new bluetooth in HA 2022.8, they both appeared - great.
But they don’t have any sensor entities other than signal strength (which has no data).
A few times I got a red ‘fix me’ alert that said I needed to add the pairing key - I followed the instructions but it was always rejected.
Then I tried flashing new firmware to the BLE devices. This gave them new default names - again both detected but no sensors.
I have moved to the new BT integration together with Xiaomi BLE, but thinking of moving back. Currently the new integration stops working almost daily and I have to reboot to get back up again.
Also the batteries of my plant sensors are draining much quicker now I have to use active scanning. I used to be able to go at least 5 months on a battery, now they seem to have drained in a couple of weeks.
Curious how you and others are experiencing this and if this is regarded as a big problem for them as well.
Yes I read that as well. Curious to see if that helps. Also testing to see if disabling powersaving features for the BT adapter helps. But I guess that won’t fix the battery drain issue.
I read in an earlier post by you that battery usage would be slightly increased when using active scanning, but for me it seems battery usage has increased almost tenfold. Does this make any sense?
I too am going through batteries at an alarming rate since moving to the new integration. I’m also worried about the extra workload out on my SSDs as the sensors are being updated much more frequently.
I hear there are plans to support passive scanning soon. I’m holding out for that, otherwise I’ll likely move back to this integration too.
Not sure that it is as intended. We discussed that if passive scanning becomes available in bluez, it might be added to the core integrations as well. But it isn’t available yet, so give it some time to see where it ends.
