Hi all,
Wanting to post a quick introduction and tutorial for our new Theengs Gateway feature of quickly and locally getting the presence status for Apple Watch, iPhone and iPad devices over Bluetooth, with an addition security relevant unlocked property, I found the following issues when using the homeassistant convention discovery from the Theengs Gateway created discovery entries, when adding them to Model.
• Small issue for binary_sensor, which seems to be the only class which does not honour the name, only filling in a generic value, whereas other discovered sensor entries of the same device do have the correct entries. Nothing major, as it can always be entered manually, but annoying nevertheless, as other sensor types are parsed correctly. E. g. for an Inkbird TH1
• More seriously though, any device_tracker only seems to be possible to have as a compete model equipment with no separate channel, without me finding any way of having an item with it’s value_template definded Home/Away state. So the two issues appear combined with the local Bluetooth Apple Watch, iPhone and iPad recognition.
While personally I do all my definitions purely textually, and creating a Home/Away item with a Home status while regular MQTT messages come in, plus an expire timer for the Away state, and using the unlocked property for additional security sensitive rules like opening gates, garage doors or turning off the alarm system when coming home is all fine.
But trying to write a introduction/tutorial with the above issues - all with the current latest stable 4.1.1, for others who might be in interested in this with their Apple devices, does not quite work.
Is it my complete inexperience with HA convention auto-discovery in openHAB, or are these issues known with device_tracker and binary_sensor discoveries?
The actual MQTT messages to monitor after a possible correct discovery or manual definitions look like
{"id": “AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF”, "rssi": -64, "brand": "Apple", "model": "Apple iPhone/iPad", "model_id": "APPLEDEVICE", "type": "TRACK", "unlocked": false}
{"id": “FF:EE:DD:CC:BB:AA”, "rssi": -63, "brand": "Apple", "model": "Apple Watch", "model_id": "APPLEWATCH", "type": "BODY", "unlocked": true}
Thanks