Work with ESP nodes

[kunalgrover05]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Support Room assistant with ESP nodes

Describe the solution you'd like
While having bluetooth linux systems around the house is possible, using ESP32 nodes might be much more economical both from an initial cost factor and cost of running them in the long term.

Support ESP nodes that can be used as secondary nodes always but they can use the same configuration as room assistant and work as long as one primary node is up. Potentially they can be based on ESP MQTT and keep publishing the information about RSSI for all the discovered nodes, and room-assistant focuses on the aggregation of that data across sources.

[kalmatthew]

I really like the idea of this, I'm mainly using Amg8833 chips and if I could get one of these and a battery acting as remote nodes it would make my setup much neater

[freman]

Given the ongoing chip shortage, I absolutely second this - raspberry*.* devices are about as rare as unicorn rocking horse poop around these parts but I can get my hands on esp32's with relative ease (In fact I have a small stockpile as I'm always finding uses for them)

Even if it wasn't a formal integration and just an api we can post {position, rssi, address) to

[kunalgrover05]

I actually got this to work so will document it for everyone's benefit, feel free to add it on Wikis.

Setup

• Running ESPHome on ESP nodes with BLE tracker integration: https://esphome.io/components/esp32_ble_tracker.html
• Running Room assistant with MQTT enabled. https://www.room-assistant.io/integrations/mqtt.html#message-format

Configuration

• Room assistant: We will create a sensor which listens to the BLE RSSI values reported by Room assistant in HA configuration.yaml.

sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "room-assistant/entity/<roomAssistantNodeId>/bluetooth-low-energy-presence-sensor/<trackerId>"
    name: "Bedroom tracker RSSI"
    value_template: "{{ value_json.entity.measuredValues.<roomAssistantNodeId>.rssi }}"
    unit_of_measurement: dB

• ESPHome: We get a sensor by declaring in espHome.yml

sensor:
  - platform: ble_rssi
    mac_address: AC:37:43:77:5F:4C
    name: "Hall tracker RSSI"

• We will now define a composite sensor which depends on the above sensors in HA configuration.yaml

template:
    sensor:
      - name: "Tracker location"
        state: > 
          {% set sensors = ['sensor.bedroom_tracker_rssi',  'sensor.hall_tracker_rssi'] %}
          {% set sensorsNames = ['Bedroom', 'Hall'] %}

          {% set data = namespace(new_list=[]) %}
          {% for sensor in sensors %}
             {% set data.new_list = data.new_list + [states(sensor)] %}
          {% endfor %}
    
          {% set min_rssi = min(data.new_list) %}
          {% set sensor_id = data.new_list.index(min_rssi) %}
          {{ sensorsNames[sensor_id] }}    

[ianustec]

I actually got this to work so will document it for everyone's benefit, feel free to add it on Wikis.

Setup

• Running ESPHome on ESP nodes with BLE tracker integration: https://esphome.io/components/esp32_ble_tracker.html
• Running Room assistant with MQTT enabled. https://www.room-assistant.io/integrations/mqtt.html#message-format

Configuration

• Room assistant: We will create a sensor which listens to the BLE RSSI values reported by Room assistant in HA configuration.yaml.

sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "room-assistant/entity/<roomAssistantNodeId>/bluetooth-low-energy-presence-sensor/<trackerId>"
    name: "Bedroom tracker RSSI"
    value_template: "{{ value_json.entity.measuredValues.<roomAssistantNodeId>.rssi }}"
    unit_of_measurement: dB

• ESPHome: We get a sensor by declaring in espHome.yml

sensor:
  - platform: ble_rssi
    mac_address: AC:37:43:77:5F:4C
    name: "Hall tracker RSSI"

• We will now define a composite sensor which depends on the above sensors in HA configuration.yaml

template:
    sensor:
      - name: "Tracker location"
        state: > 
          {% set sensors = ['sensor.bedroom_tracker_rssi',  'sensor.hall_tracker_rssi'] %}
          {% set sensorsNames = ['Bedroom', 'Hall'] %}

          {% set data = namespace(new_list=[]) %}
          {% for sensor in sensors %}
             {% set data.new_list = data.new_list + [states(sensor)] %}
          {% endfor %}
    
          {% set min_rssi = min(data.new_list) %}
          {% set sensor_id = data.new_list.index(min_rssi) %}
          {{ sensorsNames[sensor_id] }}    

Hi,
Thanks so much!

I have two esp32-cam that I would also like to use as a trackers.
I installed RA in HA but I don't understand the MQTT url format to enter.

Where do I find roomAssistantNodeId and trackerId?

Thanks!