Unable to add ESP32 BT Proxy

Hello, I can’t get BT Proxy to work.

I install “Bluetooth Proxy” from the Ready-made projects website over USB. It IS the very WROOM32 model that this page recommends.

Installation goes fine, I’m offered connecting to Wifi, I do that and then the site offers “Install Bluetooth Proxy” again (why?):

That goes on indefinitely (“Preparing Installation”) and eventually fails (“Failed to initialise”).

If I insted click “Add to Home Assistant”, browser takes me to “Add ESPHome”, but that only leads to “Can’t connect to ESP. Please make sure your YAML file contains an ‘api:’ line.”

What YAML? Where? I DO have other ESPHome devices (Sonoff plugs, the Adorno Tag Reader and more) installed and working without issues, just not this.

If I skip the “Add to Home Assistant” step from the ESPHome Ready-made Projects website, in my ESPHome Dashboard in HA I see the ESP32 with a green “Adopt” button that just removes BT Proxy again (and never reconnects to Wifi)… It’s an endless loop. I don’t have any subnets, nothing like that.

The device does NOT appear as Discovered in the Integrations and Devices settings in HA.

Any tips? Thanks!

What am I doing wrong?

HAOS (2024.8.2) VM in Proxmox.

Just write your own YAML? BT Proxy is only a few lines and it seems like it’s not uncommon that folks have issues with the ‘ready-made’ projects.

Ok, I did it like this:

esphome:

  name: esp32-bluetooth-proxy
  friendly_name: Bluetooth Proxy
  min_version: 2024.6.0
  name_add_mac_suffix: true

esp32:
  board: esp32dev
  framework:
    type: esp-idf

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

api:
logger:

ota:
  - platform: esphome
    id: ota_esphome

esp32_ble_tracker:
  scan_parameters:
    # We currently use the defaults to ensure Bluetooth
    # can co-exist with WiFi In the future we may be able to
    # enable the built-in coexistence logic in ESP-IDF
    active: true

bluetooth_proxy:
  active: true

button:
  - platform: safe_mode
    id: button_safe_mode
    name: Safe Mode Boot

  - platform: factory_reset
    id: factory_reset_btn
    name: Factory reset

Wifi settings is copied from my working Tag reader and the rest is from the [btproxy github](firmware/bluetooth-proxy at main · esphome/firmware · GitHub

This installs, shows a succesfull log including working Wifi connection (with a good looking 192.168.0.225 IP), I close that window… and then I can’t ever conenct to it again. When I press “Logs” on the config, it tries to search for an obviously unconfigured IP:

WARNING Can't connect to ESPHome API for esp32-bluetooth-proxy.local: Error resolving IP address: [Errno -5] No address associated with hostname (APIConnectionError)

Doesn’t appear as Discovered in HA, only ESPHome shows that dreaded “Adopt” green button again (Adopt leads to “failed to import device”). It’s NOT being Ignored. I can’t make heads nor tails of this.

EDIT: I tried hardcoding the SSID and wifi password in plain text, no dice, same error

Here’s the log

This HAS to be a ESPHome or ESPHome addon bug (wouldn’t be the first). The firmware always installs and shows successful Wifi connection, but when I try to access the logs after that, it never connects and tries to connect to a “.local” address.

Looks like some sort of hardware issue. Going through the same process (Ready to use ESPHome) with a different ESP32 module results in working device.