[APP][Pro] Beacon - Detect your presence with BLE beacons

Hi Peter and everybody else here in this topic,
first of all, I would like to wish you all a happy and especially healthy new year. Let’s hope, that in the end it will be a much more peaceful year as the last one. :pray:

@Peter_Kawa Thanks of course for your quick reply. If you would know: for sure I reached out for this certain issue to Athom, and reported this already in February 2023. I shared this by the way under a another, quite general BLE issue: Bluetooth not working - #8 by AlbertGaertner There, you’ll also find a pretty confindent answer from Athom support.
I’m wondering myself as well many times, why Athom isn’t able to solve such very disappointing issue, due to Homey’s core functionallity. What I mean is, that it’s not only a Beacon related, but more common BLE failure. As already mentioned, my Smartphone always recognize my Beacon (without being connected to it, of course; otherwise Homey wouldn’t be able to discover it :man_shrugging:), doesn’t matter at which time or in which condition.

Thanks as well for your advice with a timer for eliminating false positives. I’m sorry, but this is not helpful, as long as Homey doesn’t recognize the Beacon after being in a reachable radius again. Especially laying right next to Homey… :face_with_raised_eyebrow: :worried:
I don’t give up in expecting a according firmware update in the next time.

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Thanks for your reply as well.
I bought my HP 2019 in April 2020 especially due to its versatile and universal functionallity, to avoid installing several gateways, hubs etc. for interacting different sensors, actors and more.
This is why I’m now quite irritated, not only but also because of the BLE function failure.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with the Gigaset beacons. First, I was thinking about buying them, but then I discovered the musegear finder as mentioned above, which makes a newer impression to me.
In the end, I’m sure, it has nothing to do with the beacons itselves at all anyway.

Hello,
I’m currently using the Shelly buttons. (see above)
It is then possible to use multiple Shelly Plus devices as BLE gateways.
(not yet completely bug-free)
I have activated three Shelly BLE Gateways.
I also use the small button on the button to open my front door.
Unfortunately, the Shelly button only sends a sign of life every 8 seconds.
(the gigaset day every second)
Sometimes that can be tight.
But at the moment it’s working very well.

Just got two Tile Pro beacons and wanted to ask how can they be detected and in which category BLE or iBeacon? I tried several ways and they don’t seem to get detected in the app

Tile 2020 and up can’t be used (they cannot / will not communicate with 3rd party apps).
Tile 2019 and older should work though.

I use Feasycom beacons, but € 2,- Ali beacons also work fine.

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Maybe the list can be updated as it is unclear. I thought that only older models were not working :confused:

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EyEQOKv

This one works perfect

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Hello,
After a firmware update, the Shelly Button now sends its presence every few milliseconds.
I use the button of the button at the same time to open my front door.
For this purpose, a Shelly Plus 1 relay 12V is installed near the door.
But I still make my presence via my BLE gateway.
With the gateway and ShellyButton I am recognized about 12m in front of the door.
The Shelly Plus 1 scan interval is too long.
(maybe this will be fixed again)

:raising_hand_man:

What about the reliability and the sustainability of Homey? I knew, that it’ll have a prospering perspective, it’s just a high-promising product - doesn’t matter if Homey Pro 2019 or 2023. :smiley:
Just to let you know about the efforts and maintenance in the background, here’s the reply of Athoms support to my once more request regarding the BLE issue and instability respectively: :sunglasses:

Let’s try to stay confident and to be patient. :+1:

Thanks for this comment on an alternative way to detect one’s presence with Homey.
Just to understand you right:
to which refers the firmware update: to the Shelly Button itself (released by Shelly) or Homey Pro (2019/2023)? Because one day before your comment (on 8th of February) there was released the latest firmware update for Homey.

hello,
I mean the update of the Shelly buttons.
The buttons now send a sign of life every ~ 160ms.

Thank you for your immediate reply and the clearance. :+1:

Could this app have a card for reporting a single beacon as present? Like, the same function that happens whenever a Bluetooth ping is received from that beacon?

I have a Raspberry Pi in my garage, and I’d like to report a beacon as present when the RPi sees them as well. I have a simple Bash script that can see them, and I can easily trigger something in Homey through the API.

I tried updating the presence by doing

Homey.devices.setCapabilityValue({deviceId: ‘f4f83122-af8b-406f-8dd5-584d04d11a31’, capabilityId: ‘detect’, value: true });

…but that just gives me “Missing Capability Listener: detect”
How can I mark this device as present, so my flows run and such, when I see the device elsewhere?

(yes, I could trigger the flows directly, but this would be much cleaner in my opinion, as if I change what’s called or add a delay or whatever, the Homey is responsible for everything except the detection part. also, the way it is currently, some devices show up and leave all the time, as they’re sitting juuuust at the end of their range)

I guess it’s not allowed to actually set the value of a beacon, you’d want to get the value.
But why, als long if it’s state is not undetected, it’s state is detected? Thats how most things work with Homey.

But maybe I get you wrong.
You can consider to send a local webhook from the rpi to Homey;
and update the yes/no field of an advanced virtual device with that

Yes, I could set up a virtual device for each of the trackers.

The point is that there are places on my property, like the garage, where the Homey can not see the tracker properly. They go in and out of range while just sitting still in the garage.

I’m tracking vehicles, among other things, and while they’re on my property I want them to be detected.
The Raspberry Pi can see them, since it’s in the garage.

The idea is just to have a way to update the presence of a Beacon from an external source, either via a Flow card or just an API call, so they will be properly detected in the garage, as well as outside of it. Outside of the garage already works, as the signal is strong enough there.

The Pi could send an update every time it sees a tracker, making the timeouts and everything tracker flow related work as normal, so the tracker is present until the Pi stops sending updates.

I could use other devices, but I like the tracker app, and don’t really want one Beacon and one Virtual device for each tracker.

Anyone? There has to be others who’d like to be able to detect a beacon a bit further away from their Homey?

Have you considered to run Home assistant on that Raspberry and integrate them back to Homey ? That could be the easiest and fastest solution for you right now I do believe.

@Sharkys That seems like kind of overkill for just detecting beacons. I have a small script I wrote to do this. All I’m looking for is a way to send the bluetooth pings to the Beacon app on the Homey, to reset the timers with each call and keep the beacon in the “present” state.

It could be an advanced flow card, relying on a REST call to the Pi, it could be a HomeyScript command, or any other method, really. Setting a timer on a capability through the Homey API would be fine.

All I need is a way to report the beacon as present when it’s outside the direct range of the Homey, but still within the property.

Do everyone who use this app somehow have excellent coverage with the Homey alone?

Here’s a el cheapo ESP32 solution to extend the Ble range, by Adrian Rockall.
According to the description, it should be able to discover beacons as well.
Else just drop Adrian a note!

.

I think that’s not possible. It’s either in range, or it’s out of range.
So ‘extending’ the Ble signal, which covers the property, is the way to go imho.

My ESP32 code is just targeted at Switchbot devices.