BLE Support

[Dave21w]

Will there be any plans to start integrating support for BLE devices ?

Dave

[heggink]

Hi Dave,

BLE can easily be integrated from a python plugin. The challenge is that many products use their own protocol which needs to be reversed engineered. I built something for my ble based shades motors but eventually replaced it with zigbee as the library tgat someone developed was just too instable.

What devices are you looking to get support for?

H

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[Dave21w]

Hi Heggink,

Initially I was looking for direct support for these :-

https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005001583361057.html

At present though I'm using an ESP32 with the Tasmota BLE add on to get the info into Domoticz so thats working OK but a direct connection would be better, I've now invested in the Switchbot Curtain motor modules, I do have their hub as well, not setup yet it's a weekend job but would love to not be relying on the some chinese cloud server to open and close my lounge curtains.

Dave

[heggink]

I suspect these devices will integrate with the Xiaomi hub like their Bluetooth flood sensors will. I mistakenly ordered those (instead of the zigbee version) but never managed to find a workable python library to interface with them and just threw them in the bin (nobody wanted them).

For temperature I also just used their zigbee devices but they have no display. They work really well tho.

The net: for ble devices, finding a reversed engineered library is a major challenge. There is no standard by any means AFAIK. Easier to go with zigbee/zwave and a domoticz plugin for flexibility.

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[Dave21w]

Its a shame you binned them, they do work fine with the ESP32 but you have to update their firmware first, there's a whole tutorial on youtube for it, some guy spent about a year hacking them, you just need an android based phone and you can upload new unlocked firmware easily !

I already have a fair amount of zigbee stuff however the only motorised curtian option I could find that suited what we have was the switchbot curtain option - if it was down to me I would just replace the rail and curtians etc however the wife is adamant we are keeping the curtains which are grommet type (ring in the top of the material) on a pole.

All of my house lights can be controlled via Domoticz and obviously some are on light level / timer control so in the darker months the house looks occupied when we are out however if the curtains aren't shut it's a little pointless !

Edit
Just found this from a while back
viewtopic.php?t=21904

[heggink]

For the curtains, haven you looked at slide? They work really well for my regular curtains with the local api plugin (and a bunch of changes I made) but they may not fit your needs...

Wrt the esp modules, I have a bunch of them but have been cutting down on them in order to reduce overall complexity. I had too many moving parts leading to too many things negatively impacting WAF. The esps are now only used where no other technology exists. Rest is mostly zwavejs2mqtt or zigbee2mqtt based.

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[Dave21w]

Slide looks like a better option but currently they don't support "Rod" type curtains but i'll keep looking for when they do.

Less modules is always better, as you say less to go wrong.