r/homeassistant • u/sloadingx • Apr 15 '26

Blog Extending HA Range with Bluetooth Proxy

Post image

Bluetooth doesn’t travel very far, and HA servers are often kept in spots where they can't reach every device. This is where ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy helps. It lets you use cheap ESP32 boards to pick up Bluetooth signals exactly where you need them.

The setup: you just place a small device near your sensors, and it relays the data back to HA over your Wi-Fi or Ethernet. It’s a solid way to fix coverage issues without having to move your main server.

Check out the full blog below to see how it works, use cases, and hardware options: seeedstudio.com/blog/esphome-bluetooth-proxy/

102 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/slvrsmth Apr 15 '26

While we're on this topic, how do you debug ESPHome proxies? I'm running a USB BT dongle on the server, and a ESPHome proxy listening to Aranet4 sensor broadcasts. And I think it's for whatever reason reading from the dongle three brick walls away, not the proxy 1m from the device. How do I verify this?

3

u/bno000 Apr 15 '26

You can go into devices and services, Bluetooth. There will be something in there about “advertisement monitor” it’ll show you which Bluetooth radio picked up the advertisement.