[presence] Reliable, Multi-User, Distributed Bluetooth Occupancy/Presence Detection

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432

For some reason, with the implementation of the retain flag “-x”, the script is nulling the topic each time before publishing a new payload.

It’s this that is causing the issue in Node-Red when it sees the (NULL) 1 second before getting the payload.

	#CLEAR PREVIOUS RETAINED MESSAGE
	if [ "$PREF_SHOULD_RETAIN" == true ]; then 
		$mosquitto_pub_path -r -n -h "$mqtt_address" -p "$mqtt_port" -u "$mqtt_user" -P "$mqtt_password" -t "$mqtt_topicpath/$1"
		should_retain="-r "
		retain_flag="true"
		sleep 1
	fi 
	
	#POST TO MQTT

You can fix this for now by editing monitor>support>mqtt and commenting out lines #73 & #76

	#CLEAR PREVIOUS RETAINED MESSAGE

		# $mosquitto_pub_path -r -n -h "$mqtt_address" -p "$mqtt_port" -u "$mqtt_user" -P "$mqtt_password" -t "$mqtt_topicpath/$1"


		# sleep 1

@andrewjfreyer is there a reason to be clearing the topic each time before publishing the payload?

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433

It’s a stopgap right now to make sure that retained messages are cleared. Some of the brokers I’ve tested do not overwrite retained messages correctly.

Reminder that this is beta! :slight_smile:

434

Makes sense :+1:, just wanted to bring it to your attention in case it was an oversight. :slight_smile:

435

@andrewjfreyer Did you see this post on Reddit? We can possibly use Google Home across the house for bluetooth data.

1 Like
436

It’s perfectly fine, I just report it in case nobody noticed it before :smiley:

Cheers!

437

I had not seen that. Interesting. From my own testing with Bluetooth over the years, though, I can say that the OP is getting very far ahead of him/herself by suggesting meter accuracy and reliable room-level triangulation. Far to much environmental variability.

There’s a good reason that Apple’s iBeacon spec and Google’s Eddystone spec are granular with distance predictions only to “near” “far” “very far” and the like. Distance measurements from RSSI are not consistent or reliable.

Having this access to GH’s hardware is very interesting though.

438

Indeed…the point is being able to use GH, which many of us have and may not mind investing in, as hardware to obtain the bluetooth information.

1 Like
439

Hi, Can anyone post their “behaviour_preferences” for ‘presence’ as at the moment this is killing my network?

Cheers to everyone contributing to this & that of course includes you @andrewjfreyer
Looking forward to trying out the motion’ script & was wondering in its present state would it be worth while moving over now from presence or waiting?

TIA

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440

Probably worth experimenting now.

441

Cheers will do. What’s the best settings for motion to run (I’ve been reading various methods -t 1 -t 2 etc.)?

442

The command line options are different. I’d recommend default settings for now.

443

Awesome work @andrewjfreyer! I added encryption support to the monitor mqtt file and sent a pull request. Seems to work fine on my end.

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444

After a device was identified, a line with topic / payload is printed in the log. On each subsequent lines I have

Error: Invalid port given: 0

Use ‘mosquitto_pub --help’ to see usage.

Only arrive / depart mqtt messages are received by my broker. To me it looks like there is something preventing mosquitto_pub getting called correctly. In publish_cooperative_scan_message() the port argument is not given, but this does not seem to be the cause.

Any ideas ?

Lars

445

Ok, got it: I did not specify a port number in the mqtt_preferences file. This should be caught at script startup.

The arrive/depart messages do not make use of an explicit port argument which seems also to be an issue (in case you use a port different from 1883).

Lars

1 Like
446

Added error detection. Thanks for pointing that out.

447

Incorporated the feature, but without a merge. Wanted to maintain consistency through other parts of the (stupidly massive, now) script. Please let me know if this is suitable for your purpose. Note that the variable name in the mqtt preferences file is different from the pull request.

448

I found a but with the -u flag - should be fixed now. Thanks for pointing this out!

1 Like
449

Does this work on raspbian stretch? I was planning on using it on an existing install.

450

Not sure if this has been asked over the 442 posts, sorry if it was.
Would it be possible to use this with a OBD car adapter to detect if a car is home?

451

If the bluetooth adapter is on car and not acc power, then yes - so long as the garage/street is in range of your bluetooth sensor.