June 2024

I recently got a WP6003 Air Box (Aliexpress). The official product page seems to be offline but can be accessed through Archive.org.

It's quite straightforward to integrate in a Bluetooth Proxy and Home Assistant thanks to Omar's work.

The major problem I have with it, is that the Bluetooth (4.0) range is terrible. Neither my Mac Mini nor my Bluetooth Proxy could connect with it if I moved it from the office to the kitchen (had it on top of the fridge, so some metal there) that's roughly 10ish meters away.

In my Home Assistant quest and simplifying (not sure if that's actually happening) and getting more control (aka less reliant on the cloud and 3rd parties) I've been playing with Zigbee.

Zigbee is quite cool because it's a mesh network. As I used it before with my Philips Hue bulbs, I was eager to expand and play with Zigbee.

First thing first. Not all routers are equal. I've got these two smart power plugs as an example (Grey and Blue colour, v2 with HomeKit support) and they act weirdly. They don't seem to route sensors properly, and randomly turn off whatever is plugged in.

In my Home Assistant quest and simplifying (not sure if that's actually happening) and getting more control (aka less reliant on the cloud and 3rd parties) I've been playing with Zigbee.

Zigbee is quite cool because it's a mesh network. As I used it before with my Philips Hue bulbs, I was eager to expand and play with Zigbee.

I have several bulbs, including: Hue Iris, Hue Go, some random bulb, a reading spot, and Hue Play (3x).

I've finally started working with Home Assistant and while the learning curve has been steep, it's been fun.

I'm going to post some random notes (mostly for myself) on things I discovered, and I need to keep in mind.

For example, I have set up an ESP32-c3 Bluetooth Proxy for a Mi ble thermometer.

I've assigned the ESP device to an area: IT cabinet. However, the BLE sensors are scattered across the house (in different areas). Took me a while to figure it out, but you can assign entities to specific areas.