In general, it also seems to be an issue just listing the discovered devices. The whole list may be purged after some time, just showing “No advertisements”. A click on Discover Devices will again populate the list for some time.
I am also struggling with the BLE on Homey (EcoControl app), timeouts and errors.
Sent a message to Homey support with a diagnostic report and this is the respond I got from them:
From what I can see in the diagnostics report, the BLE seems to be working correctly on Homey.
The best way to solve your issue is to contact the developer of the app (Taelek: info@taelek.fi) and tell them about the issue you are experiencing. They can tell you more specific why your devices loose the connection frequently and how to solve this issue.
While the developer of EcoControl are saying its problem with the Homey BLE issue. And now I am stuck with five BLE thermostat at home that does not work with Homey
I would say it is most likely to be a problem with the Homey BLE as homey4d does not have a good track record.
I can run the same apps on my homey3d and they work fine but fail most of the time on my homey4d.
Also, the Homey Developer Tools would be unreliable on my homey4d.
Note: having said that, I have just check again and with the latest firmware (8.0.8) things do look better, so maybe it has been fixed.
Tested the latest firmware (8.0.8) and still have the same issue I don’t think it ever will be fixed, since they have been avoiding the git issue ticket lately.
The ESP32 only has one 2.4Ghz RF module which are used both for WiFi and BLE, and getting them to work concurrently is quite a challenge (and depending on the type of ESP32 used, downright difficult to get right).
Homey Pro has (AFAIK) a TI WiLink8 WiFi/BLE module, which is a completely different beast. Earlier models had a Broadcom WiFi/BLE module, but I have no idea when it was changed to the TI part.
Why your homey4d has BLE issues is anyone’s guess, but they could still be hardware-related (bad antenna design, more susceptibility for interference, etc).
I must be lucky as I use an ESP32 for a BLE hub to talk to Homey over WiFi and it works very well. Homey is notified of changes from the BLE devices within a second or two of the device operating. The ESP32 is listening for broadcasts from BLE devices and if it is a device registered by Homey the date is pushed out.
Yeah, most of the challenging parts are hidden nowadays, especially if you use platforms like Arduino or ESPhome I also use an ESP32 as a BLE proxy for Home Assistant (using ESPhome), which works great.
But Homey Bridge poses some additional challenges, like having other radios (Zigbee/Z-Wave/RF/IR) that have to be managed and also a (what I assume is a permanent) connection to Homey Cloud. To me it seems the Bridge is mildly underpowered.