Homey Pro, Home Bridge as satellite, Switchbot bluetooth thermometer

Questions & Help
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1

Hi, I have Homey Pro 2023. I have several Switchbot thermometers, which work via bluetooth. But some of them are not reachable by Homey Pro. If I install a Homey Bridge as satellite, could I connect the non-reachable thermometers to the bridge and will the main unit (Homey Pro) then see them and be able to work with them as if it connected to them itself? Further, does Homey Bridge work via ethernet? Thanks!

2

The bridge as a Sat has no Bluetooth functionality (yet)

It doesn’t have an ethernet connector, and an external one, something like the one for the Pro 2023, will not work.

3

Thanks … it would be great if it worked this way :frowning: Maybe in the future, or with some another / new bridge?

Do you know … is there any solution to this situation? Something like “bluetooth repeater”?

4

Send your requests to support I’d say :wink:
Maybe a bit to techy, I know of ESP32 based Bluetooth to MQTT converters. Then Homey receives the BT signals as MQTT messages (via Wifi). You can put several throughout the house.
For example:

5

If you are technically minded, I have code in my GitHub repo that runs on an ESP32 and integrates directly with the Homey Switchbot app. I use these all the time as they are faster than Homey’s BLE implementation. You can have multiple units spead around the house to reach far away places provided there is WiFi access.

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6

@Adrian_Rockall, isn’t it possible to use a SwitchBot Hub, e.g. the Mini because of the price, as BT extender?

7

Not strictly a BLE extender, but it is possible to use a mini hub and switch to the Homey app cloud driver.

8

“Extender” was definitive the wrong word, but like the Homey Bridge it’s a stand-alone BT transmitter/receiver.

9

Correct. The only down side is the user would have to replace all the BLE devices in Homey with Hub devices. With the ESP32 option that would work without any changes.
The Mini hub is certainly the least technical solution though.

10

That looks nice. Sorry for maybe a stupid question, but this requires wifi, correct? Could there be some modification that would work via ethernet?

11

Correct

No, unfortunately the ESP32 boards don’t have an Ethernet port.

12

And is there some similar HW with ethernet on which you SW could run?

13

There are ESP32 boards with Ethernet (search for “WT32-ETH01”) but you would obviously need to modify the software to use it instead of WiFi.

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