Trouble using bluetooth to control wemo homekit outlets, bluetooth errors in HA logs

I’m not sure where best to post this, I considered ESPHome, or Matter/Thread, but it relates to basic HA bluetooth and maybe Homekit too…
I’m trying to connect some Wemo Homekit Thread outlets to my HA using bluetooth.
I was getting the well described errors related to running out of bluetooth connection slots, so I added an ESPhome ESP-WROOM-32 board to my setup. That works sometimes, but mostly doesn’t work with errors like this:

aiohomekit.controller.ble.client.PDUStatusError: C4:FB:8D:9D:CD:A2: PDU status was not success: Invalid request (6)

and things like this:

aiohomekit.exceptions.AccessoryNotFoundError: [F6:92:ED:80:26:A4] (id=B0:C7:68:C0:22:62): Could not find B0:C7:68:C0:22:62

I think I only have 3 bluetooth devices (two of these wemo plugs, and one airthings sensor). The ESP device is placed not very far from either plug (less than 15 feet).

Any suggestions as to what to do next? Is this a known bug or am I missing something? I’m happy to paste more details about the errors or details about my setup… thanks in advance!

Here is some basics:

  • Core 2024.4.4
  • Frontend 20240404.2
  • Esphome Firmware: 2024.12.0 (Dec 18 2024, 18:34:48)

My esp32 config yaml:

substitutions:
  name: esp32-bluetooth-proxy-216820
  friendly_name: esp32-bt-proxy

packages:
  esphome.bluetooth-proxy: github://esphome/bluetooth-proxies/esp32-generic/esp32-generic.yaml@main
esphome:
  name: ${name}
  name_add_mac_suffix: false
  friendly_name: ${friendly_name}
  platformio_options:
    board_build.flash_mode: qio
api:
  encryption:
    key: !secret api_encryption_key


wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password

One of my wemo plugs:
WSP100
by Belkin International Inc
Firmware: 2.0.1
Hardware: 5.0