BLE scanner

[nagyrobi]

Somehow I was not aware that ESP32 has BLE capability, thank you for pointing that out.

That gave me the idea that we could very simply implement a presence detection in these devices using a simple BLE scanner which would drop in the list of the detected BLE tags in the air to MQTT. For example having a plate in each room, additionally to the controls it offers, provides a great way to inform the automation system about persons being there or not.

I've created a new branch for this: https://github.com/nagyrobi/hasp-lvgl/tree/0.4.0-ble
Added a single file named ble.cpp which contains a simple BLE scanner (inspired from moononournation).

Can you please point me in the right direction on how to integrate this in the main loop and publish the data to MQTT?

I plan to make this user-configurable through user_config_override so only the ones who require it would have it.

[fvanroie]

You would need to implement a bleSetup() and bleLoop() function. The bleLoop() function cannot be blocking because it would freeze the GUI. The .ino example scans for 30 seconds, which would not be possible in combination with hasp-lvgl. You need to make that scan asynchronous.

BLE is very resource hungry. When we implement BLE it will probably be NimBLE based. This is a 3rd party BLE library that has a much smaller footprint then the Espressif one. NimBLE has an continuous scanning example. Instead of using a delay the loop would go in a bleEverySecond() or bleEvery5Seconds() function.

I haven't tried this myself. I think most phones implement an anti-tracking token, so I'm not sure if you can track an individual phone like this.

[dgomes]

Here's an idea: only scan when the panel is off (backlight off) my panel is off 99% of the time

[fvanroie]

If you can't instantly break-out of the 30-second scan interval, that still would be a very bad UX.

[dgomes]

Here's a different take: have the plate send beacons, used by the phone to detect where it is

[nagyrobi]

Good idea

[nagyrobi]

@fvanroie check this: https://github.com/jptrsn/ESP32-mqtt-room
Do you think it could be combined with openHASP?

[nagyrobi]

There's also https://github.com/HeimdallMidgard/ESP-32-BLE-Scanner
Wonder which one is more accurate or more easy to implement with openHASP.

Best part of both is that they feed straight into HA's mqtt_room component... no need for further CC development.

[fvanroie]

Probably a combination of both 😃

• ESP32-mqtt-room uses a separate task so it won't block the UI
• ESP-32-BLE-Scanner uses NimBLE library which is more compact and efficient

[nagyrobi]

Worth looking at https://esphome.io/components/binary_sensor/ble_presence.html too

[mjone4]

Probably in line with this is Bermuda which uses the ble with esphome… would be a great feature

https://github.com/agittins/bermuda

[fvanroie]

I have very little BLE knowledge, so this isn't something I can implement. If you have the time and knowledge you can try using the custom code hooks.

But I think it's easier to just setup serperate ESP devices for BLE scanners instead of trying to cramp everything into one device.