BTHome and Home Assistant Setup

This video shows you how to set up Home Assistant with BTHome on a Raspberry Pi.

You'll need

• A Raspberry Pi 3B or later (not a 'Pico')
• A Micro SD card (32gb or more) and a way to write to it
• A Power Supply for the Raspberry Pi
• Ethernet Connection for the Raspberry Pi (using WiFi will reduce your BLE range)

Install Home Assitant

Follow the steps at https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/raspberrypi

But in short:

• Put the SD card in your PC
• Install the Raspberry Pi Imager from https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
• Choose your Pi version, then Other specific-purpose OS > Home assistants and home automation > Home Assistant
• Flash the SD card

Once that's done, put the card in your Pi, connect to ethernet and power, and wait a few minutes!

You can now follow https://www.home-assistant.io/getting-started/onboarding/ to set it up by going to http://homeassistant.local:8123/ in your browser - although it's pretty straightforward as you can see from the video!

Make/buy a BTHome device

There are a bunch of supported devices listed on https://bthome.io/, but for Espruino devices:

• Pre-made Bangle.js apps are available which will make your Bangle.js watch appear in BTHome
• Pre-made Puck.js apps are available which will make your Puck.js appear in BTHome
• You can write your own apps using the BTHome library

BTHome

Once Home Assistant is running, it will automatically pick up BTHome devices that are advertising within range.

You can see these by going to Settings -> Devices & Services -> BTHome : http://homeassistant.local:8123/config/integrations/integration/bthome

• If you previously set up a device it'll be in Integration entries
• If you haven't yet added a device, you should see it under a Discovered heading. Click Configure and choose where in your house it is and you're good.
• If you previously set up a device and then deleted it, you need to click Add Entry and Setup another instance of BTHome

Once you have a device, click on the link under it that says 1 Device - here you can see the Logbook, current sensor values, and can even set up Automations.