Control switch of Shelly plus 1 over Bluetooth

[rept]

Shelly released the Shelly plus 1 based on the ESP32 which supports bluetooth. Currently they only offer the bluetooth for discovery. Are there any plans to enable the bluetooth also for controlling the switch: turning the switch on and off. What would the development effort be for such a feature?

I've been looking for an alternative to Shelly based on bluetooth (instead of Wifi) with the same price point.

[sfromis]

There is no "master plan" for things to be implemented. Lots of features arise from someone with the inclination, skill and will sitting down to do the coding, and submitting a PR. My guess is that adding a BLE client feature would not be a small effort, but it could depend on availability of some existing library suitable for having a Tasmota driver on top. There are also questions about how well it could work with existing Bluetooth-oriented apps. I find it hard to see Bluetooth as a goal in itself, unless able to fit into existing frameworks. Of course, if someone wants to develop mobile apps for the purpose, but .....

[barbudor]

@rept what would be the goal of Bluetooth control?

Bluetooth, unlike wifi, needs pairing between each device and each phone that needs to talk to it. When you would like to control your swich you would have to connect your phone to the switch. And that connection would just last while your phone is around. That doesn't sound more practical than having wifi AP on each device instead of every device connected to the same AP.

Some other groups have added Bluetooth support in their firmware only for the configuration phase. This has not been a chosen path for Tasmota so far.

Now if you are looking to use Bluetooth as a network like mesh. May be because you don't feel Wifi should be used for that for example. Then there are IMHO much better technology around for that like Zigbee which still can benefit of a Tasmota gateway.

Just my 2c. Happy to get your feedback.

[Twisted7ech]

If the bluetooth on the plus 1 is design to receive data from sensors, would it be possible to use signal strength of known devices to trigger the switch?

[sfromis]

As the usual payloads for BLE sensors includes RSSI, nothing stops you from creating an automation based on this. However, BLE sensors usually are not transmitting constantly, but at intervals to save battery, meaning that there's a high risk of rather slow reaction time. Also it is not very safe to use the signal strength as any kind of reliable indicator of distance.

[petterjohansson]

If you want to control a garage door outside wifi range it would be nice if you could use Bluetooth.

[barbudor]

I see many drawbacks for that:

• The Shelly 1 Plus being single-core is not the best target for control + wifi + bluetooth
  Workaround: Sonoff Dual R3 has a dual-core ESP32 and might be more suitable
• You need to find a source for bluetooth messages that will work.
  Question: Is there any mobile app that allows you to create dash board with buttons to send custom bluetooth messages ?
• Bluetooth messages without no kind of authentication process are likely to be sniffed and re-used
  Possible workaround : Have the app generate a rolling code / OTP that then need to be decoded/checked on Tasmota or back-end

As far as a mobile is involved, it is much more easier to build a secure infrastructure with a VPN or using cloud based (free) MQTT server as a relay for limited operations (not for your main MQTT broker)

[sfromis]

For the "outer range" issues, I'd generally prefer to extend the wifi range. In some cases, you can set up an existing Tasmota device with the range extender feature providing an extra low-speed hotspot.

[xaris33]

Could the Bluetooth possibly get used for room presence detection? It would be ideal if every room had a switch.

[barbudor]

More or less but as bluetooth can cross walls, devices can be detected by multiple ESP32
So you would need some processing on a backend, aggregating information such as reception level, to triangulate or filter the information

[schildbach]

I think this could be a useful feature. Many of us run a backend already, e.g. with MQTT or Node-Red.

Even just the mere presence of a device could be useful, e.g. for detecting guests on premise.

[christf]

I am looking for a way to do presence detection as well and it would seem like a waste to litter bluetooth devices across the place in addition to the bluetooth devices that are already built into the shellies.

[barbudor]

You can install tasmota32**-bluetooth on any esp32** (except solo1)