I’m looking to have about 5-6 plant sensors reporting to HA that will be Bluetooth so I need to extend the Bluetooth radio to that area of the house - is all that I need one of these?
https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/esphome-au-plug (obviously, I’m in Australia)
I read that there is a challenge around > 3 Bluetooth devices?
Your first challenge is that you require Bluetooth, which is missing from the ESP8285 on this device.
You will need an ESP32, preferably one with sufficient RAM to avoid any issues.
Is your plan to use this smart plug as a double-duty Bluetooth proxy? I don’t think it’ll work. The link to the config suggests these are ESP8266 devices, not ESP32. So, no Bluetooth radio. And probably only a bare minimum of RAM. I’m using Sonoff S31 devices (in the US) that look like they’d be similar to this. Definitely no Bluetooth on the Sonoffs.
For Bluetooth proxy, I’ve got an ESP32 Devkit board flashed with ESPHome and plugged into an old mobile phone charger. You’ll probably want some sort of case. If you don’t want to mess with 3D printing one, there are some ATOM ESP32 boards from M5Stack that will do the trick.
Yes, the plan is to run proxies. Ah, I see! So this might be a better bet for something that is neat and unobtrusive?
The problem with smart plugs in general is that they often use the lowest spec (i.e cheapest) chip that will do the job. The ESP32-C3 in these is the bottom end of the ESP32 family.
If you are just starting out with ESPHome, get something like this: https://au.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Espressif-Systems/ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N8R8
It has plenty of features plus 8Mb of PSRAM and even if you find that the proxies don’t work out you can use it for lots of other projects…
You could try your luck with something like this.
I just found this on AliExpress:
AU$6.89 | ESP32 Development Board USB Dongle Bluetooth Gateway MicroPython ESPHome
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mKCjQ7z
Plug it in to something like this.
I have around 15 MiFloras spread over 3 floors, I use 5 of these: ATOM Lite ESP32 IoT Development Kit | m5stack-store
Ah yeah good call, they are a good option for something that comes with a decent enclosure, with option to readily add sensors etc…
thank you - I ordered a couple to get me started plus a couple of miflora devices.
I can confirm the miflora devices work very well. I think they are also sold as HHCC sensors. You have to be careful when you buy them from AliExpress to get the Bluetooth version; there are others that look the same but don’t have anything.
