Bluetooth beacons for proximity detection

[MagTer]

I found a project called espresense that can register BLE beacons and their distance from the ESP-unit.
It would be nice to have this kind of feature on my existing ESPEasy installations.

It might already be possible, just that I haven't found it. Any thoughts on this? Others that might find it useful?

Link: espresense.com

[TD-er]

I was planning to include a new feature which uses WiFi to determine the distance to other nodes (or access points which support this feature).
This isn't really useful for moving targets unless you have some ESP mounted in a car or something like that.
But it is useful for any mesh layout.

Right now there is no support (yet) for Bluetooth in ESPEasy.
But as soon as I will add Bluetooth, I will keep this in mind.

There are also those relative new radar modules which are quite accurate in detecting distance to a "moving bag of water" (read: humans).
This also doesn't require someone to wear a Bluetooth tag.
Maybe those can be used for what you have in mind?

[Oetsch]

Great request and I would also be happy about it.

Also uses BT beacons as presence detection (Just ON/Off) to be sure that somebody is present.
Detection via smartphone inside the wifi isn´t accurate/fast/secure enough. Detection via radar does not differenciate between family and unauthorized.

So because a beacon at the keychain which is in 99,9% positioned at the same place at our house is a good solution for me. I used esphome where also individual bt beacons IDs can be checked, the signal strength from beacon can also be transfered and the bt scanning cycles can be tuned/modified but the integration inside IObroker is a nightmare. In case of support by ESPeasy I would migrate today!

But I guess that's a lot of work with all this features and full new technology wish isn´t implemented yet in ESPeasy.

[MagTer]

The radar modules look interesting, but then the bags of water will not have name tags, right?
Haven't yet understood what the gain is compared to very inexpensive PIR sensors?

[TD-er]

PIR sensors react to a sudden change in IR intensity.
So imagine a cloudy day where you suddenly have a brightly lit room.
Also the sensitivity is a bit tricky to set as a child at 5 meters may show the same IR radiation as a cat at 2 meter.

When you sit still, watching TV for example the PIR sensor may not show any change and thus conclude you're no longer there.
It is nearly impossible to sit perfectly still to generate a false positive on those new 24 GHz radar sensors.

These radar sensors are also not perfect as some tend to be sensitive in all directions and it also may work through walls.
But they are really nice to play with

[MagTer]

Is anything interesting happening in this area, TD-er?

[TD-er]

The 24 GHz sensors are now supported.
See: https://espeasy.readthedocs.io/en/lates ... #p159-page

[MagTer]

That one does not support pinpointing individual BLE tags, like Airtags etc?
Or, did I misunderstand the wiki page?

[Ath]

That one does not support pinpointing individual BLE tags, like Airtags etc?

ESPEasy doesn't have support for BLE at this time, and there's no ETA for if or when that will be available.

[Rob73]

I looked into bluetooth presence detection a few years ago. It seemed just the basic code for bluetooth stuff gobbled up all available flash and there was basically no room for code for anything else. I am assuming that is a big hurdle on these devices.


Rob

[wrbrower]

I know it isn't ESP Easy, but ESPresense offers amazing BLE tracking. I have beacons in my cars and we track iPhone presense at home.