What is iBeacon? | Home Assistant iBeacon integration

[@albertvandenbosch6799]

After installing Ibeacon I get all the neighboring beacons and visiting guests in my list. I can now track when the neighbour gets home and get back to my own place 😁

[@KPeyanski]

If your neighbour is an attractive blonde/brunette from the opposite sex then you definitely should install some cameras as well, so your stalker setup to be complete... Just joking here :)

[@mathesonstep]

Awesome, just came from your KZbin short, I can't think of a use for this yet but if that battery life is to be believed that is incredible

[@KPeyanski]

Great to hear and welcome :) Battery life indeed is incredible...

[@CosminRotaru]

It would be nice if we could use Bluetooth on our phones (with HA companion app) to track distance to beacons. This way the beacons could be stationary (some have glue pads for this very reason) and it would be possible to track the phone location in the house (at least the room, if you have a beacon in every room). We could then have automations based on phones locations in the house.

[@canberksenolsun]

such thing already exists my friend. google "room assistant" and thank me later

[@z3rolabz]

Any idea why no beacons at all will show up in my home assistant? Does anything need to be done in the config YAML?

[@hanh2161]

3:19 a bit off topic but what is that integration where you can control your standing desk?

[@Viralplace]

Can it be used like estimote beacon? If I would like to develop my custom application is possibile? For example if I buy 4pcs of your iBeacon and put these in each corner of a room, can I have more precision to know the position of the cat?

[@BigFarm_ah365]

I'm just setting up Home Assistant for the first time and among the items detected during initial setup is one iBeacon, but I don't know who, what, when, where. I do have a Tile, that I have had for many years, but not used in a very long time, but besides that, I cannot think of what it could be. I might have an Easter Egg hunt coming up.

[@BigFarm_ah365]

It was my Govee thermo/hygro. No hunt needed.

[@jlipsit]

I have a bunch of RadBeacons that are made to be fixed. They do not have a button to make them discoverable. when I plug them in they are not detected. Should they be? Any help would be appreciated.

[@Lontk.]

what is your maximum distance on feasycom?

[@JoeyMendoza1]

I truly wish I had a use case for this. Beyond tracking when I’m home I don’t know. Still thank for the video.

[@KPeyanski]

Yes, the whole situation is kind of: There is a solution we just have to find a problem for it!

[@formatBCE]

I actually use BLE beacons (though Tile, not iBeacon) for Home/Away state, but if i would eager to carry one with me all the time, i could roughly estimate current room (having several scanners in different rooms)

[@JoeyMendoza1]

I found a solution for one finally. I have a sports car I take out in the summer and when I get home I want the garage to auto open. I can create an automation. I will build an automation that will say if the Becon is offline then open garage. So if I am in my other car it will not auto open because the becon is online. Sure I could press a button on my garage door opener but you know us....we cannot do anything regular. @@KPeyanski

[@jefferygrantham5582]

It's not unlikely that the multiple presses on the beacon's physical button caused it to go into pairing mode more than once. However, thinking logically, the second device should be the one updating since it was added last and would have likely overwritten the pairing of the first device.

[@lifth13]

I ordered a cheaper one (holyiot) from aliexpress to attach it to the garbagecan and track if its out on the sidewalk for pickup or not (in combination with the google calendar integration which provides the info when it should be out). It was discovered just fine, but the distance didn't update reliably. After that i decided to make a bluetooth proxy with an ESP32 and now it seems to be working, allthough the distance of the proxy to the garbagecan is pretty much the same as from my Intel NUC (HA Host) to the can. Seems like the internal Bluetooth has some difficulties. Next step is to utilize the built-in vibration sensor of the holyiot to get the information, that the can was emptied. But i think the distance to its pickup location on the sidewalk will be to far away for that. We'll see.

[@KPeyanski]

thanks for sharing your experience :) Is holyiot working good with Home Assistant?

[@lifth13]

@@KPeyanski As far as the iBeacon is concerned - it integrated without any problems (mine has an NRF52810, which is stated under home assistants "known working devices"), the process looked exactly like what you've shown with the feasycom. Except that i hadn't your strange duplicated device. Apart from being an iBeacon holyiot's device has also an built-in accelerometer as well as some other sensors that i can see via bluetooth in their android-app (which you might need once to set up the device - i had to log into the device and change a setting from eddystone to ibeacon) - for those i haven't found any way to integrate them into home assistant so far. Right now i'm using it just as a beacon and if at some day i somehow get these sensors to work with HA and if the bluetooth range is covering our sidewalk - two big "if"s - then the accelerometer might be a bonus to detect the shaking when the carbage-can is actually emptied. But i think i have to rely on somebody smarter than me to come up with an HA-Integration for those sensors.

[@brandonfertig]

@@lifth13how is it working today?

[@lifth13]

@@brandonfertigShort answer: it got replaced. Longer one: It was a bit unreliable and i did not find a way to make use of the accelerometer. At one point it died completely. I don't know if if got damaged by frost or if was just en empty battery, but i didn't bother much anymore at that point. I had another trashcan equipped with an aqara vibration sensor (as a side-by-side test you could say) which did (almost) the same job much better and i implemented that one to all my garbade-cans.

[@brandonfertig]

@@lifth13 are those completely different use cases, though? the tracking of location versus the detection of vibration? I ask because I’m very interested in setting up Bluetooth and presence in various rooms, so I’m researching the various options and experiences.

[@mcdobson]

If you use the feasycom app it will show your device is advertising two beacons, I deleted the one showing 400m

[@KPeyanski]

Ohhh, many thanks. That is a nice workaround to remove that not very useful second device that actually doesn't work under HA. But wait a minute is it working in the Feasycom app?

[@mcdobson]

I think the 400m beacon is operating at a lower power, which is why HA thinks it’s further away (but I might be wrong)

[@verluc]

Is it possible to configure an iPhone to behave like an iBeacon? Thanks

[@KPeyanski]

I think that latest iPhones (above model X) have such chips inside as they can be used to track AirTags which are basically combination of iBeacon + some software

[@verluc]

@@KPeyanski ok, thanks!

[@derrickshultz6800]

I had tried using the Bluecharm beacons with a couple ESP32 D1 minis as receivers prior to HA adding support. Was very underwhelmed. Very unreliable. My original plan was room presence but quickly devolved to simple home presence. I couldn’t even get that to work reliably with one on my keychain. To be useful you really need receivers all throughout your house reporting back and then a coordinator deciding which is best.

[@KPeyanski]

Did you try the Home Assistant support now? It seems that it is not so useless.

[@lynskri]

Is that a standing desk integration @3:18?

[@KPeyanski]

Yes it is :) You can find more info here - kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKDOip2ag9d9nMU

[@timredd]

Hmmm, I'll check it out with the cat. Ideally needs longer range and mapping location if possible.

[@KPeyanski]

I want to see that with the cat as well :)

[@SimonLYW]

You may enjoy ESPresense as an alternative.

[@galdakaMusic]

I'm waiting Invoxia GPS integration

[@KPeyanski]

Sorry, but what is that?

[@ochjoo77]

I have the exact same setup with raspberrypi 4 and have to say that so far its total garbage.. sometimes it doesnt update for a whole day and it never catches me leaving for lunch etc. not sure if a new bluetooth radio or the esp32 proxies would improve this, but as it is, i find it entirely useless.

[@KPeyanski]

sorry to hear, that but opposite to that mine is actually working decent for now...

[@ochjoo77]

@@KPeyanski no worries, I wonder if it works because you're using Bluetooth proxies or did it work reliably with just the raspberry pi Bluetooth?

[@ochjoo77]

@@KPeyanski i managed to get a bluetooth proxy to run and it fixed my beacon unreliability :)

[@jordaynerjr]

​@@ochjoo77I what do you do having a problem with mine

[@Paullik83]

Doesn't work ..... if you go two rooms away. (more then 5m became unavailable) ☹

[@KPeyanski]

It all depends of the wall types. How thick they are and how many iron inside!

[@Sellected1]

it loses connection from time to time, seems to me it is not reliable

[@KPeyanski]

Do you have the same iBeacon model? I didn't notice such thing till now!