The Ruuvi Gateway has one of the most confusing setups I've seen for quite some time. Or the actual setup is simple, just get it online and authenticate once. But after that I have no idea what to do. Their mobile app "Ruuvi Station" does not see the device and I have no idea what tags the gateway has found. We have a few around the house that I've been accessing via Home Assistant before.
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Why can't the mobile app show me the gateway and all the sensors/tags it has picked up? I don't care for their cloud and I will not be using it nor paying for it. I want to know what sensors it has been able to pick up prior to trying to add it to Home Assistant.
Why is all home automation software... not good?
@harald Basically because our sensors are so far away from the little NUC running Home Assistant that it often fails to read them.
And also because Bluetooth in Linux seems to (still) be rubbish and the NUC regularly has the BT stack die requiring a reboot.
An external BT dongle with a better antenna would solve the first problem but not the second.
@chakie I use shelly gen 3 devices, they are also Bluetooth proxies. You don't even need a Bluetooth device in the HA machine at all. The cheapest gen 3 devices can be had for around 10€ i think.
I use Shelly PM Mini Gen 3, they are around 16 € but are cheaper if buying a pack.
@chakie you don't need to run any significant power through a shelly, just use it as a BLE proxy. It is plenty stable enough for that. Also the myth of shellys catching fire is blown up. The ruuvi gateway might as well catch fire.
The shelly as BLE proxy is probably more stable than Bluetooth in a NUC.
Jan Ekholm
Harald Hannelius 