The Shelly 3EM Pro has bluetooth in passive and active mode. By activating it, HA also gets access to an “aio_ble_integration”.
Does that mean I can use it as bluetooth gateway or do I still need a bluetooth dongle?
If I get a dongle, does the Shelly 3EM Pro atleast act as some kind of extender?
Thanks!
According to the docs, the Shelly will behave as a bluetooth proxy. This means you won’t need a separate dongle.
The only confusing thing is that the bluetooth docs list the Shellies as not supporting active connections, but the Shelly docs say you can chose either active or passive mode.
The Shellies don’t support actions connections (so back and forth data). The active and passive modes refer to whether it just silently listens for broadcast data versus actively lets devices know it’s listening, asking them to broadcast their passive data. The nomenclature is definitely confusing…
@brooksben11 Can you explain this for a dummy like me? 
So the shellys can somehow connect with each other (basically to say “hello I am here”) but not send any actions/conditions/scripts to each other?
In the webinterface of the Shelly 3EM Pro I can add all kind of Shelly Blu devices. Kinda like the 3EM Pro would be the gateway. But I don’t have any Shelly Blu devices to test it out.
Even if that would work, I have no idea if HA would list the Shelly Blu devices when they are connected through the 3EM Pro.
In HA the 3EM Pro can be used to list nearby bluetooth devices but I can’t find anything to add those.
No need to use the Shelly interface, other than selecting the appropriate BT options to make it work as a BT gateway, etc. Once that’s setup, the Shelly will just forward what it sees to HA.
They don’t connect or talk to each other. All that’s happening is that when a BT device sends out some passive data (the temperature is x degrees, a button got pressed, etc.), the Shelly will pass this on to HA for the appropriate integration (if there is one) to handle.
Hmmm but I somehow have to connect with those bluetooth devices?
Going through the process:
3EM Pro enable Bluetooth
HA - Add Bluetooth device (3EM Pro)
HA - Set 3EM Pro to active mode
HA - Enable aio_ble_integration (whatever that is)
Now I can see a list of bluetooth devices but I can’t add them or do anything with them.
Basically it is just a bluetooth scanner but nothing else.
So I can’t “accept” any data like temperature from any bluetooth device because it is not yet integrated in HA?
And I don’t know how to add it to HA?
All I can see is an option in the webinterface of the 3EM Pro which states that I can add Shelly Blu devices to it.
I could also manually add a device based on its MAC there but no idea if that will actually work.
See them in the Shelly app or in HA?
If it has a native HA integration, it should be discovered automatically. If it requires a custom integration, then you have to install that first.
Also, I believe there’s an option on the Shelly to have it act as a ‘gateway’ which also has to be enabled for it to work. Admittedly, I mainly use ESPHome BT Proxies and only have a couple Shellys so I’ve only set them up a couple times and it’s been quite a while.
I can see Bluetooth devices in HA. Basically it scans the area for Bluetooth devices and outputs them in a list with name, Mac, signal strength,…
Hmm I have enabled Bluetooth on the Shelly Plus Smoke Detector (it is also connected via WiFi with HA) but I don’t think it connects/integrates at all via BT.
I should get some Shelly Blu sensors next week to further try around.
It would be very neat if I could use the 3EM Pro as Bluetooth gateway.
If anyone ever comes back to this: Shelly BLU devices can be added to HA via Shelly 3EM Pro as gateway/proxy.
I don’t have any other devices to test adding/integrating but for the Shelly BLU devices it was the same process as with a ESP32 Bluetooth Proxy.