Show unconnected but nearby bluetooth devices

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. No, just something that would be nice

Describe the solution you’d like It would be great to see a list of unconnected but nearby bluetooth devices. Is that possible? Right now you can see devices that are listed in “paired devices” even if they are unplugged or far away/unconnectable. The only other attributes show devices you are fully connected to. I want to be able to sense that I am within range of a specific BT device. Kind of the opposite of the beacon functionality. It is not possible to put an internet connected ESP device for room assistant where I’m trying to accomplish this so I need the phone to “know” about the devices it can see. I don’t need it to update nearly as frequently as a beacon would either. A “nearby_devices” attribute on the bluetooth_connection sensor would be a great feature!

Describe alternatives you’ve considered, if any I’ve tried to rig up an alternate solution in Tasker and calling the [python_script.set_state](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-to-manually-set-state-value-of-sensor/43975/2) service via the HA Tasker plugin, but manually pushing sensor updates causes other issues and I’d prefer if HA handled it with it’s state machine.

Additional context I am sure that just like Tasker’s “BT Near” state, there is some delay in between scans, and that is perfectly fine. But I have to think that this information is available to throw into the bluetooth_connection sensor.

Thanks!

[fortepc]

I posted to the forums with a request that’s tangentially related to this (as well as #900) , but was redirected to this repo, so I’m posting this comment in both, I hope that’s acceptable

I’d like to have the Home Assistant companion app able to track bluetooth devices, specifically bluetooth beacons (like a beacon from an ESPHome for example), but ideally the flexibility to scan for and track any bluetooth or BLE devices and pipe that info into Home Assistant would be super helpful. So ideally if it sees my bluetooth headphones.

I’d expect to have to manually register a BT device to the app, rather than just automatically track every device it sees, and I’d like it to support both stationary beacons and mobile beacons, by that I mean…

I’d like to be able to tell the HA app the BT device is stationary so that I can define a zone associated with that beacon and updating my phone’s zone location when I’m within range of it.

I’d also to tell it a beacon is a mobile beacon, like for example a beacon in my backpack or on my bicycle, or in my wallet, or on my keys. I’d like to associate a beacon with a tracked device and anytime my phone sees that beacon it updated the location of that device to match my phone’s known location.

I know HA doesn’t currently have a great infrastructure for device tracking, Ideally they add a “Devices” or “Tracked Devices” section that is basically a clone of the “Person” tracking section. For now though I’d expect this feature just to use the devices defined in the known_devices.yaml, preferably with the ability to easily add new devices from the app so users don’t have to pre-setup their known_devices.yaml before they can use this feature.

[cooperised]

Now that #900 has been closed, this is top of my wish list. I have a few newer Hue bulbs that are always on and provide bluetooth connections for setup, so these would make perfect “beacons” if I could scan for nearby non-beacon bluetooth devices.

I realise this is not a helpful contribution, but it acts to bump the issue 😃