Third generation (G3) and PRO series Shelly devices have can directly manage bluetooth devices that comply with the BTHome standard.
In practice, by associating a BTHome/Bluetooth device to a device connected to the LAN (wi-fi o ethernet), we will be able to see the information on the first device and the sensors associated with it as if they were part of the
device connected to the LAN, also allowing the creation of specific actions/webhooks.
The device hosting the BTHome information does not necessarily have to be the bluetooth gateway to which the BLU device is connected; there can also be multiple guest devices
for the same BTHome device, however I do not find a practical reason for this and I do not recommend such a configuration that could be a source of confusion.
However, if the device hosting the BTHome information coincides with the gateway, the connection between the two devices can be estabilished even when wi-fi is down.
For example, by connecting a Shelly BLU Button1 to a Shelly 1PM Gen3 it will be possible to control its relay using the button without scenes involving the cloud but with a simple webhook that
uses only the local network.
All Shelly BLU devices comply with the BTHome standard.
Configuration
To perform the association you need to enter the web interface of the host device (with Shelly Scanner you access the web interface by selecting the row corresponding to the device and pressing the
Web UI button on the toolbar).From here things may change slightly depending on the model of the host device and its firmware version, however the steps should be easily reconstructable.
From the web interface press the "Components" button on the left menu and then press the "+" button in the "Bluetooth (BTHome) devices" section; at this point, following the instructions, you can associate the BLU device. You still need to associate the "sensors" of the BLU device to the host device; to do this press the "gear" button which will be found in the box of the device just associated and, from here, add the sensors of interest (it is also possible to edit some values such as the names of the sensors); in case not all sensors are listed press the button to wake up the BLU device and, eventually, update the web page.
Shelly Scanner support
From version 1.2.0 Shelly Scanner is able to take into account the BLU devices associated with the BTHome protocol by generating a row for them in the main table.There are some specifics on the table:
- Status: when the device is online, the status is displayed with a specific blu icon
; the icon's tooltip provides information about the last connection between the BLU device and the host device. - IP: this is the IP of the host device; to the right of the value, in brackets, there is a number that corresponds to the number of devices hosting the same BTHome device; on the checklist, if this number is greater than one, the full list of IPs is dispayed. As I said before, a configuration including more than one host device seems to me of little practical use and a source of confusion.
the logs displayed are those of the hosting device since they include those of the bluetooth device;
the Web UI of the hosting device is shown in whose "Components" section there is the device to which the selected row refers.
Reload (contextual menu): the reload actually acts on the hosting device; all guest devices are then reloaded