Although I have added dozens of sensors to my farm measuring temperatures, water levels, light, weather and much more, I have done it all with Wi-Fi, Zigbee and cabling. Until now. I have been wondering about Bluetooth connections for a while, mainly because I was sent some SwitchBot devices by Oz Smart Things. I couldn’t get my head around how it would work with Home Assistant and the Raspberry Pi 4 I use. I thought I would have to somehow install more hardware, until I realised that the RP4 comes with Bluetooth out of the box, and Home Assistant just knows about it. I realised this when the integration showed up automatically a couple of months back.
Because I couldn’t get my head around it, I thought I would document how to do it all, from installing a Bluetooth extension cable for better coverage to using the SwitchBot temperature sensor. It is all in the video below. It is super easy. Enjoy.