Electronics > Beginners
Presence / proximity detection, bluetooth?
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paulca:
I need a way to tell when a person is in a particular room.  I'm happy enough for that to be a probability or "strength" value for each room, for each person.

I can see lots of people using the ESP32 and BLE, but almost everyone of these articles reports issues as BLE is ... awkward and illusive at times.  I get the feeling that BLE is the new kid in town and everyone wants to play with it, but is it really anyway better or appropriate for this use case?

Power savings aside is there anything wrong with simply making a normal, non BLE connection to/from a phone as you might for Bluetooth audio and using the signal strength from the bluetooth radio as the proximity value?

Can anyone suggest other ways to do this?
tszaboo:
The search term is "BLE Beacon". Or iBeacon (apple stuff).  There are plenty of of Beacons, Gateways and products built on this. A gateway will just report the RSSI values and adresses to a server. The technology works quite OK.
paulca:

--- Quote from: NANDBlog on October 22, 2019, 12:15:43 pm ---The search term is "BLE Beacon". Or iBeacon (apple stuff).  There are plenty of of Beacons, Gateways and products built on this. A gateway will just report the RSSI values and adresses to a server. The technology works quite OK.

--- End quote ---

So this would mean running a BLE Beacon app on my phone.  How does that work with regards to aggressive Android power saving?  Do the beacons not randomize their mac addresses and stuff?  I already have issues with my phone and normal bluetooth in that it will connect to the car, but not do anything until I unlock it because Android keeps it asleep while it's locked.

RSSI?  Radio Signal Strength Indication?

The other approach I was going to take was have my phone paired to the ESP32s using normal bluetooth and when in range, it would connect and receive temperature readings, which while fairly pointless, it tells the ESP32 that a phone is connected to it, so it can report the signal strength of that particular phone.
tszaboo:

--- Quote from: paulca on October 22, 2019, 01:00:53 pm ---RSSI?  Radio Signal Strength Indication?

--- End quote ---
Correct.

--- Quote from: paulca on October 22, 2019, 01:00:53 pm ---So this would mean running a BLE Beacon app on my phone.  How does that work with regards to aggressive Android power saving? 

--- End quote ---
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.alea.beaconsimulator&hl=en
I guess something like this. I haven't tried the app. I dont think it requeries too much power, as these BLE beacons run for a year on a CR2032 battery.
paulca:
Thanks I'll give it a try.  Quick read suggests the MAC is irrelevant and you match on the UUID or URL sent by the beacon.  I like that they have a rolling code beacon which would make it less easy to track by someone else.  I think I'll have a play over the weekend.

It's for adding individual room temperature boost to a heating system I created.  Currently running the tracked rooms at 18C which is fine for a base temperature, but on cold nights it would be nice to either increase the temp in the room I'm using or even decrease the rooms I'm not to save on fuel/CO2.  Just seems a waste running the heating for 5-10 minutes an hour keeping the living room warm when I'm spending the whole night in the lab upstairs which is being heated by my body heat and PC heat output fairly well.
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