Switchbot Bluetooth Water Leak detector

Everyone else:

  • The leak detector appeared on its own
  • I am facing some problems
0 voters

Cheers

Maybe Iā€™m a bit OT, but I would like to know if there is a way to detect the sensors by wifi network rather than bluetooth

Hi @mikark, these sensors use WiFi only to communicate status updates to SwitchBot Cloud. WiFi is off most of the time, so continuous monitoring (which is what you want with water leak detectors) would not work.

Other brands like elgato eve ca do that, bust cost much more and use mains power to support continuous WiFi.

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Thank you for your reply
Let me try to explain my situation.
I already have some wifi water leak sensors that works fine with tuya smart life, but they donā€™t work with home assistant therefore Iā€™m thinking to replace them.
Moreover, I have four switchbot indoor/outdoor thermo-hygrometer connected by a hub 2, but I had to move them from the place I decided because of the low bluetooth signal.
Since I should place the new water leak detectors in cramped places, Iā€™m afraid they might have bluetooth connection issues.
Iā€™m a little confused. Iā€™m not even sure if detectors can be connected to hub 2.
Maybe the only way to clear my thoughts is to buy a detector and tryā€¦

Understandable, Iā€™m afraid those low range Bluetooth devices are not for you. Perhaps some Zigbee products like the ones from IKEA are feasible?

Suddenly (as in, after multiple restarts, turning on and off passive scan in the BT configuration) they just showed up. Range was never the issue as I also have multiple Shelly plugs acting as BT proxies, so I have no clue what solved it in reality (passive scan was off).

Okay, really strange but great news! I just remembered, that I had to refresh the browser cache before some features from 2025.1 showed up. Perhaps that was part of the issue.

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Thanks a lot @luc-ass for your great work to add support to this device.

I also have Shelly plugs/relais acting as Bluetooth proxies, normally in passive mode, and managed to add the SwitchBot Leak Detector to HA by turning the closest proxy into active mode, and then switching it back to passive after inclusion in HA.

The problem is that after a few hours the SwitchBot goes offline in HA and the only way I found to bring it back online is to delete it from HA and repeat the inclusion process.

In your experience, does this device need to have an active BT proxy around all the time or can it work reliably in passive mode?

No, I have not had this problem, though my Bluetooth proxies are in active mode all the time. Have you downloaded the logs from your Proxies? Do you have other Switchbot devices, that act the same way?

Looks like you are not the only one: SwitchBot devices require active scans to be discovered Ā· Issue #284 Ā· sblibs/pySwitchbot Ā· GitHub

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This is my first SwitchBot device, but I have a number of other Bluetooth sensors (Shelly BLU) that work perfectly in passive mode, so Iā€™m inclined to leave BT proxies in passive mode, as itā€™s supposed to save some battery life in the long run.

Thanks for linking the ticket, I think itā€™s spot on - Iā€™ll keep an eye on it.

It could be worth changing the integration message that tells users that ā€œactive scans can be disabled once the device is configuredā€, as this is currently not the case (or at least not with the Water Leak Detector).

Agreed, that message should be different.

I have no in-depth experience with other SwitchBot devices. Perhaps you can file a bug-report on GitHub?

I have been testing the device for the last 36 hours with passive BT proxy and it stayed online, so I am not sure what happened in my first test run anymore. :sweat_smile: Given this update, I would say that the integration message is correct, i.e. ā€œactive scans can be disabled once the device is configuredā€, and everything seems to be working as expected.
Note to others who may read this thread: beware of the Bluetooth range of this device, as it seems to be quite limited.

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Hi @luc-ass, Iā€™m looking to buy the water sensor and integrate into HA too.

Can I check, you say the updates are in 2025.1 - is that 2025.1 of Home Assistant Core or of a particular integration? If the former, then I might just wait until some of the bugs of 2025.1 for HAC are resolved.

I bought a 3 pack and after setting them up in the Switchbot app, I was able to add all 3 to Home Assistant. Everything works like it should so Iā€™m very happy with the device and the integration.

And I know this is going to sound stupid but just remember these things are BT, not something more responsive like zigbee or z-wave. During my testing when I tapped the sensors with something wet, it almost never changed status in HA. It would if I kept pressing something wet on the sensors.

Just be aware that it could take 2-3 seconds for HA to change status. Which may be annoying when youā€™re just testing it. But it does work, just donā€™t expect it to be instant. Luckily I think most of us will be fine being 5 seconds late to stop a leaking pipe.

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They are in 2025.1 core, no additional integration needed. You need to have some kind of Bluetooth stick/bridge to make this work, but if you already have working bluetooth devices, this should work out of the box.

Which may be annoying when youā€™re just testing it.

You bet! :wink: It took me longer than I am proud of to figure out, that the alarm can be set to low with the Switchbot App.

I am not yet able to find my device. Silly question: I run HA on a Pi4, do i need an extra bt adapter for my ha device?

Edit: nevermind, shelly Bt was turned off, after turning it to active tge device was found.

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Somehow I got the notion that a Switchbot Hub was required for the leak sensor to work with HA. So I got myself one (a Mini) and have installed it, but still HA reports ā€œno devices or entitiesā€ for Switchbot Cloud.
Did I completely misunderstand it? How can I get the leak sensor to work with HA?
My HA is nowhere near in BT range of the sensor.

Hi @boblemus
If your Home Assistant Device is too far away, you will need to add a Bluetooth Proxy device in between. Shelly Plus Plug S is popular for that. I would highly recommend this way, as it seems really robust.
There is no way to integrate the Leak Sensor via SwitchBot Cloud. At least that is what I know. This mostly goes back to the way these devices communicate. BLE (which is used here) requires only very little power, thus working with batteries. The devices only connect to WiFi once per day or when a leak is detected. This means, that no integration via WiFi/Cloud is possible.
I am not sure about the situation with the Switchbot Hub, but if it communicates directly with the Leak Detector, is suspect it would also be via Bluetooth LE - so same range problems.