Hello, Could someone advise me as to which version of Node Red that supports BLE that I should run on a raspberry pi. Thanks Peter

Well, it works, partially. What I mean is that it is capable but for some unknown reasons, I am not the only one recognizing this, it seems recognized BT devices are suddenly & randomly reported as away and then found again, at least when used in the above referred project. No such problems when using an external dongle. Besides the BT range is better when using some BT dongles

I see. I haven't had any application for BT yet, but I'm about to start on a project which needs it, so it's interesting to hear what issues others have encountered.

I use the BT with the Monitor project to announce to Node-RED when I leave/come back to our house. Our home alarm system is integrated with Node-RED to enable video recording from our cameras when it is armed. So in my case I just block the video recording for a few minutes when I approach the house, gives me time enough to disarm our home alarm system, thus preventing receiving a lot of pictures of myself via Telegram to my iPhone (since I'm a trusted person approaching our house) :wink: Many other use-cases are of course at hand once you have the information available in Node-RED PS If I don't take the opportunity to disarm, the video recording will of course be enabled again once the the time out has ended

That is nearly the same use case that I'm going to implement, using Bluetooth LE as presence detection. What are you using as BLE beacon? Your phone or one of these battery-powered dongles for your key ring?

I’ve done it the other way round. I have a usb ibeacon plugged in, in the house and then use Owntracks on my phone to detect when my phone is in range. Owntracks then sends a message via MQTT

In the beginning I used beacons (long range usb powered) and Owntracks. That was not good enough since it required me to have Owntracks installed on my iPhone, and IOS was deciding when the app should have access to the network, made things unreliable. So now I just use ASUS BT dongles, they have a range of 10-15 meters. Once my phone is detected, the information is forwarded to NR. This has worked very well. No app required on the phone, just BT has to be enabled.

I'd rather have something not tied to the phone. My basic idea was some transmitter beacon on the key ring. Then use an ESP32 (or Raspi) as Bluetooth scanner near the entrance hall, where the keys are usually located when I'm at home. These would push their data via MQTT to Node-RED for further processing.

I guess that would work as well, I think Monitor can detect beacons as well but I did not try that

Using the phone as beacon would not work very well for me, as I often disable Bluetooth, when I don't need it. To work reliably, I would need to keep it always activated. The second thing is, sometimes I leave my phone at home... an unusual thing for most people nowadays, but it happens. :grin: Your key ring is something you always carry around, as soon as you leave your home. But I have yet to find a suitable BLE beacon with reasonable battery life. Most will only work up to a year (some only months) before you need to change the battery.

The use of Owntracks,,,,well,,,I think it depends if you have an iPhone or an android type. It might work better with android but IOS is not giving apps full freedom to use the network when they want, at least if you run the app in a "low power mode". That is anyway the reason why I abandoned it for my setup I did purchase my beacons from here: https://www.beaconzone.co.uk/allbeacons

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BLE Support on a raspberry pi

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krambriw 29 September 2019 12:40 22

I thought it would be better to make a separate topic here

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BLE Support on a raspberry pi

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