Room Presence Detection with ESPHome and Home Assistant | Bermuda Integration

[@AshleyGittins]

Hi Fixt! Great tutorial, I really like the way you walked through all the key points and pointed out where ESPresence and Bermuda might fit different needs. Great stuff! Hope you don't mind if I include a link to your video on the "Guides and HowTos" wiki page on the project, I think lots of people might find it really helpful.

[@fixtse.]

Hi, for sure! I'm glad to help. Thank you for all the effort that you are putting into creating estimated distances out of pure signal levels 🤯, you are crazy, I love it.

[@Don86NL]

Excellent tuturial. I really appreciate this. I use espresence, but being able to use Bluetooth proxy (in my shelly devices) is great

[@bratbabyblue]

Hey, pinoy (Philippines) home assistant enthusiast here! I’ve been watching your videos on a religious manner in the last 2months and i gotta say, Salamat! You have made my home automation life easier! Im about done setting up ESPresense. Ill test this one too, then compare. Thanks again! 😇👍

[@_Bogdan_]

Great video thank you. Do you add the devices with private Ble and IRK or do you add it some other way? Tried with ESPprecence to but only get the IRK number.

[@PeterScargill]

In the video you said Mi 7 and 8 have BT tracking disabled - Mi 8 oes sem o have it turned off - until recently my Mi 7 could be tracked no problem... stopped now, no idea why - after a reset.

[@AndrewGlasgow2020]

I think Bermuda BLE is a good solution for me because I want to share ESPHome functionality, Bluetooth proxies, and BLE tracking on a single ESPHome device per room (area), and do not want to have to install MQTT. ESPresence requires both a dedicated device and MQTT. Installing the integration was easy and I picked up a bunch of bluetooth devices on my ESPHome Bluetooth proxies. The problem, as you say at 1:24 is identifying the devices. You refer, confusingly, to your ESPresence video, which does not seem to address the issue (only how to select a device in MQTT). Could you expand on this in a new separate video?

[@fixtse.]

Hi there! Of course, could you provide more details? Which devices are you trying to track? In my ESPresense video, you can find instructions for activating Bluetooth LE tracking with the Home Assistant Companion App at 4:21, and for enabling the Visibility option for the MiBand at 5:05. Also, I'm curious-why are you hesitant to install MQTT? Is it because it adds more to maintain, or is it just that you won't need it apart from ESPresense?

[@pooyatorabi2066]

I have enabled the BLE Sensor on my andorid, but how do I get the IP? you refer to your other video , however that one is assuming you have ESPPresence! can you please explain more?

[@fixtse.]

Hey, of course! Someone else brought up something similar, but I didn’t quite catch what was missing. Now I see, you’re looking for the UUID value, if you go to the 4:54 on my espresense video, you'll see that it is available at the end of that screen, go there on your phone, and look for it inside the settings of the home assistant app. Then follow the process I show you at 5:00 on this video to add it in Bermuda. My bad for missing that part 🤦‍♂️, sorry.

[@goodcitizen4587]

Really cool!

[@meckenki]

How does this compare to ESPresence?

[@fixtse.]

There is a section on the video where I talk about it.

[@AndrewGlasgow2020]

ESPresence requires both a dedicated ESP device and an MQTT broker.

[@settlece]

How cool has your chair got a commode in it? 0:03 Thank you for the video, very helpful.

[@fixtse.]

😅 yes, the backpain is real

[@oliverwemyss5527]

I was looking for a video on this last night after the Reddit post… thanks!

[@wapphigh5250]

Espressence vs Bermuda. Which will wear out my SSD first? Or is this not a problem? Thanks

[@fixtse.]

Not really a problem, I would try both, see what works best for your current setup and decide based on that.

[@alondinbar6193]

Great tutorial! You earn another subscriber Is esp32-c3 can be good as bluetooth presence for it?

[@fixtse.]

Yes, but you need a special configuration, since the C3 only has one core, and the 2.4 Ghz antenna is shared between the Wifi and Bluetooth Components, it is possible that the sensor will timeout if the bluetooth scan takes too long. Check the instructions in the documentation: github.com/agittins/bermuda/wiki/ESPHome-Configurations#esp32-c3-modules

[@alondinbar6193]

@@fixtse. so better to have another one? Becyi have it already on appoloAutomarion msr2. What do you recommend? To separate and have dedicated another esp32 for bluetooth?

[@fixtse.]

In your case, I would go with separated devices, Bluetooth tracking is a really expensive task, and you don't want to overload your esp32 board with too many processes.

[@martinsVcm]

I was able to get it working, but when placing the esp32_ble_tracker config at configuration.yaml it says: "Integration error: esp32_ble_tracker - Integration 'esp32_ble_tracker' not found." . Am I doing something wrong?

[@fixtse.]

not sure, but the code should work. Check the indentation

[@ThomasBrasser1]

you're editing the wrong file (home-assistant configuration.yaml) this is esphome device config, not home-assistant config.

[@martinsVcm]

@@ThomasBrasser1 I may have messed up then, I don't have the add-on installed, just the integration. I assume the add-on is mandatory to have this sort of configuration. Will the add-on automatically find my devices, or will I need to re-add them again?

[@ThomasBrasser1]

@@martinsVcm we're mixing concepts here. What you need: - esphome dashboard (addon or can also run on other host) - create esp device config yaml (easiest via esphome dashboard) - flashed device will be autodiscovered on your network by home-assistant (esphome integration) - bermuda (custom) integration will be able to use the esphome bluetooth proxy device, but bermuda and esphome are seperate things. Bermuda works with any bluetooth proxy integrated with home assistant not just esphome based ones (like shelly etc)

[@davidbeiler]

you blink a lot