[HN Gopher] Localize your cat at home with BLE beacon, ESP32s, a...
___________________________________________________________________
Localize your cat at home with BLE beacon, ESP32s, and Machine
Learning
Author : lormayna
Score : 187 points
Date : 2021-02-04 09:39 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Part of me was expecting that "cat" was a technology term I
| didn't know
| adolph wrote:
| No, just the normal utility that first "appeared in Version 1
| AT&T UNIX." It uses Bing by default but you can specify a
| translation service in your cat.conf. Use like this:
|
| $ cat -L "en/us" /tmp/french-file.txt
| universa1 wrote:
| See also [1], a research collaboration that did this basically 12
| years ago... Iirc they also had a project where they tracked cats
| across a town... But most of their "experiments" were just
| tracking interactions between pupils and not so much the location
| tracking... Though I remember the original hardware (was open
| sourced) had this as well.
|
| [1] http://www.sociopatterns.org/
| PeterStuer wrote:
| At least over here all cats have an RFID implant injected after
| their first vet visit. I'd try to work with that instead of
| putting a BLE on the cat. Your localization target ("Cat is in
| kitchen" etc.) is coarse grained enough to make it work with
| RBP's.
| bo0tzz wrote:
| As far as I know, the usual range on those implants is no more
| than ~30 cm, so I expect you might need a pretty powerful
| transmitter to find them across a room.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That's less a hard number and more a limit of how much power
| you're directing at it (with limits due to the inefficiency
| of RF energy transmission mostly) and how sensitive your
| receiver is. The passport RFID tags have been read from over
| 200 feet away for example. (this number is from years ago
| too)
|
| https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---
| threats/resear...
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| You might be able to monitor chokepoints with a low RF
| pollution, like the small square opening at the main
| entrance/exit of the house.
|
| This way you can tell when your Cat has left the building
| without getting cancer.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I like this project a lot. It makes me wonder if I put one of
| those Apple AirTags on her for the HomePods to sense, if I can
| then say, "Hey, Siri, where is the cat?"
|
| It would be nice to get a response like, "She's in the litter
| box" so I know to use a different bathroom to wash my hands.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Confused: how do you train the model? Don't you need an
| independent source of 'cat location' data?
| snvzz wrote:
| Or you could just shake the cat food envelope.
| Razengan wrote:
| That's for cat summoning, not locating
| mmastrac wrote:
| In fairness, it will localize the cat to a 1m radius circle
| around your feet within 10 seconds.
| Razengan wrote:
| That's a cat relocator then, to be precise.
| rsmets wrote:
| With a few other other elements (i.e. weather) added to learning
| model I bet this would be super accurate! Pretty neat. I love
| finding use at home DIY use cases with commodity hardware, ESP32s
| ftw.
| ajb wrote:
| Interesting. I was hoping for someone to do this with LoRa, which
| would allow you to find your cat in a bigger area.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| PSA: Make sure to get collars for your cats that either detach
| under load or, perhaps best, have an elastic segment that lets
| them slip it off if it catches.
|
| A couple months ago my friend found his cat dead after her collar
| caught while jumping over the fence. Poor little baby beast. :/ I
| look at my fun-loving critter basking in the sun as I write this
| and it breaks my heart to imagine her suffering like my friend's
| poor cat did.
|
| Example of a collar with elastic segment:
| https://amazon.com/dp/B07P8V374M
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Once on my way from work I saw a cat jumping and catching its
| collar in the fence and choking. Fortunately I got there quick
| and released the poor thing.
| adfm wrote:
| We've gone through a lot of collars with our cat and he seems
| to tolerate the neoprene and velcro type the most. The brand
| I'm familiar with is Beastie Bands. They're more secure than I
| imagined and fit loosely without snagging or easily pulling
| off. Additionally, it seems to generate less matting, which is
| a plus.
| godelski wrote:
| PSA: Keep your cats inside. They will live longer, healthier,
| and so will the birds.
|
| And if they are indoor make sure they have areas to run around,
| be sure to play with them (they are a pet! They are your
| responsibility!), and watch their diet (often people let them
| get too fat and it takes awhile for cats to lose weight).
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| One of our dogs disappeared for two days. Then on my way home I
| got a frantic call from my wife that he had come home but his
| leg was in a bear trap.
|
| Turned out to be a coyote trap and there was a plastic link on
| the chain that attached it to the tree or whatever, that he had
| chewed through then limped home on three legs. If not for that
| link, he'd probably have died out there since the person who
| set it was clearly not checking it every 24 hours as required
| by law.
|
| Luckily he was big enough that the trap couldn't close tightly
| enough to damage his leg and he was running around fine by the
| next day.
| jmkb wrote:
| My cat will remove them within 20 minutes, never to be found.
| I've reluctantly settled on the non-safety collar after losing
| a half dozen. Although if I equipped one with RFID I could at
| least have a shot at locating his stash!
| godelski wrote:
| My cat used to do the same. But then I found out that she
| likes the color red (or orange). Once I switched to that
| collar it would only come off every few days and seemed more
| like an accident. She also likes the bell and when she first
| got it would proudly walk in a way that made a lot of noise.
|
| So idk if this helps, but maybe try different colors and
| configurations and find what your cat likes. Also tightness
| has a lot to do with it.
| danesparza wrote:
| What about a harness design?
| jmkb wrote:
| I think that would be even more likely to snag on
| something.
|
| edit -- but of course danging by something other than a
| neck might be preferable...
| avidiax wrote:
| Maybe replace the elastic section with a loop of fishing line
| that's rated at 1/4th the cat's weight (loop having 2x the
| rated strength). Too strong for the cat to remove, but will
| snap under their own weight.
|
| Or the cat might be OK with the breakaway collar now, due to
| "learned helplessness".
| monadic3 wrote:
| The term for this is "break-away collar" if that helps.
| dkersten wrote:
| I've also seen them referred to as "safety collars".
| birksherty wrote:
| What is the need for collar in animals? To enslave them without
| their wish, for our needs or their? Do they want them? May be
| change your location, if can't let them roam freely, not fit
| for having a pet. Don't make slaves.
| sgt wrote:
| Do they still sell rigid collars?
| onli wrote:
| Yes. And that's not all that bad if you use them to go for a
| walk with the cat, like with a dog on a leash (but then a
| harness is better). But it's a real problem if the cat is
| alone. The veterinarian looked so damn sad when talking about
| how important those breakaway collars are...
| godelski wrote:
| If you're walking them get a harness (same for a dog).
| Don't pull on the neck, pull on the body. This is not only
| better for them but you'll have more control.
| mft_ wrote:
| One of our cats removes hers within minutes. She purrs when you
| put it back on - I think she sees it as a game. :)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| From what I can tell at least 90% of cats see annoying humans
| as a game.
| tamaharbor wrote:
| A 'cat scan'?
| pacaro wrote:
| There used to be (~20years ago) a catscan website where people
| posted images of their cats as taken with flatbed scanners
| (when those were a thing). It wasn't uncontroversial.
|
| One of my favorites was a color scan taken in multiple passes
| with filters. The cat was not stationary through the whole
| process
| kaybe wrote:
| I managed to find some, hiding behind CAT scans and quantum
| cat/dog scanners (wtf):
|
| https://thecatscan.tumblr.com/
|
| http://www.cat-scan.com/cat-scan/ (put up your sunglasses..)
| mzkply wrote:
| I bet you Airtags will be put on every cat and dog since it's
| likely they'll be picked up by everyone's iPhones, not just the
| owner's.
| paulie_a wrote:
| Very cool and I know what I am building this weekend
| akiselev wrote:
| An off the shelf solution: https://www.tabcat.com/
|
| Works well for some outdoor critters
| sli wrote:
| This is interesting. I've been considering a similar project
| using computer vision, but I think I'd prefer to just set this up
| instead.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This beats my method of cat locating, which usually takes the
| form of increasingly urgent searching followed by noticing my
| target following me around wondering what I'm up to.
| kuu wrote:
| Very cool project! :D
| kimburgess wrote:
| If you make the bump to Bluetooth 5.1+ RTLS like this get even
| more interesting as you can measure not only signal strength, but
| angle of arrival too. Nordic Semiconductor have some beautiful
| development kits [1] for this if you want to play. Cisco also
| have quite a nice write-up [2] on other approaches to location
| resolution from WiFi and BLE.
|
| It's worth acknowledging that setups like this exist in most
| workplaces, shopping centres, stadiums and other public spaces in
| many developed countries. 'Free wifi' is not there for your
| benefit. There are useful experiences enabled by this which may
| make your life simpler in some contexts, but also worth being
| cognisant of how common this is. If the benefit provided to you
| does not balance the privacy loss, you may be interested in
| https://account.meraki.com/optout and https://optout.smart-
| places.org/ (you may need to pop a few addresses in here if you
| use private addresses on iOS).
|
| [1]: https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Low-power-short-range-
| wi...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/solutions/Enterprise/M...
| pjc50 wrote:
| If somebody manages to build a reasonable-precision (tens of cm?)
| indoor location system with decent user experience (ie reasonably
| easy to set up, reliable, cheap, and stable), they have a massive
| hit on their hands. Never mind the cat, never lose a key or a
| remote ever again. Or your pills. Hugely valuable for the
| elderly.
| MaheshC wrote:
| Are you aware of what a chipolo is?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| There's commercial products for locating cats outside; probably
| GPS and either a mobile chip to pass the data or LoRa. $75 or so,
| but I'm sure they come with subscription costs as well because
| monies.
|
| There's a cat in our neighbourhood with one of those, it's funny
| to walk out there in the middle of the night (we violate curfew
| and walk the dog close to midnight) and see a cat with a collar
| with some blinking lights staring at us from the bushes.
|
| Kinda wish one of our cats had one of those when he went missing,
| but it's likely he would've lost the collar at some point anyway
| (he looked like he squeezed himself through a tiny hole and
| couldn't get out again until he lost a ton of weight two+ weeks
| later when he came back)
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Have you actually seen a commercial LoRa small animal tracker?
| Most asset/animal trackers I've seen are a bit chunky to go on
| a cat collar so I'm working on one with a better form factor.
|
| But my cat really doesn't like collars, so the real utility
| seems to be in locating where he managed to remove it...
| Razengan wrote:
| > _we violate curfew_
|
| Why?
| djrogers wrote:
| Perhaps because COVID is not more prevalent at night? Or
| maybe GP feels that walking ones dog at 11:45pm is safer than
| walking it when more people are outside? Or perhaps they are
| sociopathic maniacs who look for nonsensical regulations they
| can violate with impunity.
|
| Who cares why, and what business is it of yours?
| kelnos wrote:
| Agreed, and that also raises the question of why the
| original poster chose to include the bit about breaking
| curfew in the first place. The comments stands up just fine
| without it, it's not important to the story they were
| telling, and all it's done is created an irrelevant,
| pointless subthread. And I am a part of the problem for
| contributing to it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Classic swallowing of bait haha. Surely you could have
| guessed why.
| flyingfences wrote:
| > Why?
|
| Why not? Curfews are ridiculous, authoritarian measures taken
| to curb "improper" activities not associated with walking a
| dog.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Alternative point of view: they are a mitigation for the
| fact that many people cannot be trusted to behave sensibly
| (in terms of protecting society at large from this
| pandemic) if large numbers of people are out and about at
| night, and it is not feasible to check each individual's
| activities to assess whether they're "improper".
| ptudan wrote:
| Without anymore context, I'll assume that he's referring to a
| logic lacking covid curfew in the US. Those might make sense
| for dense downtown districts with bars, but almost nowhere
| else
| astura wrote:
| I shake the treats to geolocate my cat.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Mostly OT, but this article made me ponder it:
|
| I know that people have done various forms of radar with wifi
| signals; I wonder if I could have a few sensors throughout the
| house and use ML to determine if various doors are open or
| closed.
| idlewords wrote:
| Remember that the more precisely you track your cat's location,
| the less you will know about its momentum (although since it's a
| cat, you can assume it is zero for most of the day).
| Whitespace wrote:
| I don't need Machine Learning to tell me that my cat is sleeping.
| 95% accuracy rate with zero training!
| hyperman1 wrote:
| They only disappear if you need to find them.
|
| Case in point: The vet. Our cat somehow knows from our
| behaviour that the visit is today, and disappears off the face
| off the earth. We had to cancel a visit because we spent more
| than two hours searching and were late.
|
| So new appointment a day or 2 later, and we watch every step of
| the beastie like hawks. She disappears behind a cabinet, does
| not come out, and can be found neither behind or inside. Huh?
| It turns out the back of the cabinet is open, and there is a
| really tiny space between drawer and back. If I open a drawer,
| she goes up/down a layer.
|
| I knew all the time she was less than 50cm from me, and it
| still took me 15 minutes to figure this out. I've been thinking
| about creating a tracker, but then , the cat healed enough to
| lower the frequency of vet visits.
| godelski wrote:
| The trick I've found is that when they go in a dumb hiding
| place act as if it is super hidden and amazing. If you really
| don't need them then just let them hide and pretend to search
| for them (never make eye contact but make sure you look like
| you've looked in the area). It will become their favorite
| hiding spot quickly and then you get to decide how to use it.
| m463 wrote:
| You could probably get the other 5% if you have a specific time
| you set out food.
|
| catnip might introduce jitter.
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Yes, but where? Mine rotates that spot on a weekly basis.
| dkersten wrote:
| Mine tend to stick to the same four or five spots. Those
| spots do change, but rather infrequently.
| k__ wrote:
| My changes their spots depending on temperature.
|
| From warm to cold:
|
| Hall floor
|
| Livingroom floor
|
| Hall box
|
| Livingroom box
|
| Livingroom couch
|
| Bedroom bed
|
| Bedroom bed under the sheets
| detaro wrote:
| so you only need a thermometer and machine learning to
| solve the task? ;)
| godelski wrote:
| I just need 1 heated blanket.
| adolph wrote:
| And it is always local. I18n the cat would be something to see.
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| oh come on, you had more then zero training on that model.
| simiones wrote:
| Will this solution work if my cat has become non-local by having
| it's state become entangled with some wave-packet?
| holman wrote:
| If you're using Home Assistant, Room Assistant is a lovely
| project to repurpose Raspberry Pis to handle BLE tracking as
| well:
|
| https://www.room-assistant.io
| skeletonjelly wrote:
| Side note: that is some really elegant documentation
| teddyh wrote:
| I don't want to localize my cat. I prefer subtitles.
| arethuza wrote:
| I actually have a MeowTalk cat translator app installed on my
| phone...
|
| Have never had a chance to try it as, of course, our cat
| refuses to say anything if a phone is pointed at him :-|
| w0mbat wrote:
| I localized my cat to Japanese and now he says "nyan" instead
| of "meow".
| cjdell wrote:
| An unfinished project on mine is to try to track my cat outside
| using an ESP32 LoRa module attached to his collar.
|
| The idea is to periodically send a list of WiFi SSIDs along with
| RSSI's so I can triangulate the cat's location using the signal
| strengths of each network. Similar to how the first iPhone would
| find your location without needing GPS.
| flak48 wrote:
| You might find Gene Bransfield's War Kitteh project
| enlightening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMNSvHswljM
| [deleted]
| ryanschneider wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've seen the word
| "localize" used to refer to spatial location and not
| cultural/linguistic locale. Totally makes sense but definitely
| threw me off when first reading the headline. :)
| Lvl999Noob wrote:
| I was thinking that it would localize cat (unix command)
| somehow.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| In Polish locating something is "lokalizowanie", I guess that's
| why the word "localize" was used.
| leetcrew wrote:
| not technically wrong, but "locate" would be more idiomatic
| here. I don't think english is the author's first language.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| It's a calque from Polish, where "to locate" is "lokalizowac"
| gota wrote:
| I think all Latin languages as well. From "locus" meaning
| place.
| mattkrause wrote:
| There also shades of different meanings.
|
| 'Locate' implies that you're predominately interested in the
| object being sought but 'localize' suggests you're more
| interested in the place where it is/was. I think localize can
| also be less-than-exact if it rules out some plausible
| locations, but it seems odd to partially 'locate' something.
|
| It's used a lot in neurology/neuroscience for the process of
| identifying where (e.g.) a tumor is or the brain structures
| on which a particular behavior or process depend.
| theschwa wrote:
| Localization is actually the common term, frequently used in
| robotics and autonomous vehicles. There's a really
| interesting field of research here [0].
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simultaneous_localization
| _and_...
| mhh__ wrote:
| It might be _a_ common term but I don 't think it's _the_
| common term here.
| theschwa wrote:
| I totally hear that. Especially if people are commenting
| that they were thrown off. I just wanted to make sure
| people knew to use this term if you're looking to learn
| more about the topic of this project. If anyone is
| looking to implement this or another method to do indoor
| mapping, you'll probably want to familiarize yourself
| with the research field of Simultaneous Localization and
| Mapping or SLAM.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I work at a robotics company, so we've had a perception
| team that manages robot localization since forever, and
| now that we're _also_ internationalizing our product,
| there 's a separate frontend team dealing with third-
| party localization firms to create the needed
| translations. :)
| singlow wrote:
| Yeah, _localize_ has always meant to adapt something to
| its location, when I've seen it used. _Locate_ means to
| determine the location.
|
| Edit to add: But I can see how in a specialized field,
| where methods for locating an object are frequently
| discussed, using localization over location would be
| useful for describing the process of finding something,
| since location is also a noun referring to the place
| itself.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Well and in the specific context of SLAM, the business of
| localizing is itself an adaptive and constructive
| process. "Locating" is what the user does when they
| simply tell the robot where it is on the map.
| _Localization_ is building a continuous graph of your
| immediate surroundings and past movement history and
| fitting that to what is known about the environment.
| w0mbat wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's actually wrong usage, and should be
| replaced with "Locate" in this context.
|
| "Localize" has various meanings, but in a physical location
| sense is to _restrict_ something to a particular area, e.g.
| "We successfully localized the fire to the Johnson farm so no
| other farms were damaged.".
|
| I can't see a definition that is equivalent to "locate" or
| "find".
| didymospl wrote:
| I don't know what's idiomatic here as English is not my
| first language, but according to my dictionary "localize"
| can also mean "to find the position of something"
|
| https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/localiz
| e
|
| Maybe it's British vs American English?
| w0mbat wrote:
| I looked at Merriam-Webster online, the snippet Google
| pulls from the OED and the Mac dictionary app which uses
| the New American Oxford.
|
| "Locate" would lead to less confusion among readers. It
| unanimously has the right definition, and is a simpler
| word.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| I think one of the reasons that one is not used because
| usages like "Simultaneous Location And Mapping" (instead
| of the "Simultaneous Localization And Mapping" that SLAM
| stands for) would read a bit strange... "location" is
| more commonly used to mean "the place" and not "the act
| of finding the place".
| mywittyname wrote:
| A better title would be either:
|
| Locate your cat at home using...
|
| Or
|
| Domestic Feline location using...
|
| Depending on the level of techno-mumbo-jumbo the author is
| looking for.
| wpearse wrote:
| Aircraft guidance systems have localizers, too.
|
| It's not wrong, and I would encourage the author to leave it as
| it is.
| danaliv wrote:
| ...which, funnily enough, don't tell you where you are. :)
| roel_v wrote:
| So I don't know much about ML; how much better would one expect
| ML (which I take in this context for 'deep neural network'?)
| approaches to be compared to a multinomial logistic regression,
| for applications like this? Is logistic regression old school
| and/or outdated now?
| martin_a wrote:
| I think ML is completely unnecessary here. In the end it's
| triangulation of a signal. No need for ML after all.
|
| Looks like a classic case of the famous Jurissac Park quote:
| "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they
| could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
| fock wrote:
| iirc BLE is not that exact and you'd also have to
| model/measure your sensor position. I think creating a
| primitive statistical model for looking up the location seems
| sensible but the ML aspect is definitely a little bit
| overrated, but I think this thing was never meant to
| clickbait (it's means to an end available for ~40years now).
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| The pattern emerging from RF reflection across rooms is not
| completely obvious.
|
| "ML" is just a very overstated word for: "I have a handful of
| example data and a library that does basic math things"
| djrogers wrote:
| > In the end it's triangulation of a signal. No need for ML
| after all.
|
| Triangulation works accurately in open space, however this
| use case is inside a home with signals being blocked,
| bouncing, or attenuated by walls, mirrors, appliances, etc.
| On top of that, the goal is to use as few BLE rx'ers as
| possible (meaning not one per room). Given those constraints,
| a trained ML model actually does make sense.
| srean wrote:
| There are no convincing reasons to consider logistic regression
| to be outside of ML. ML isnt just deep learning. To me its a
| collection of mathematical tools that help in designing
| predictors. This involves stats, optimization, algorithms,
| stochastic processes, information theory.
|
| The main difference between stats and ml is (i) community, (ii)
| stress on the details of compute and the focus on prediction
| accuracy rather than accurate recovery of parameters. A scheme
| that ensures good prediction even if the parameter is not
| recovered, for ML that's still a success.
| nix0n wrote:
| This is a cool project.
|
| But my first thought was: Input: "meow" Output: "miau"
| laurent92 wrote:
| I was looking at GPS localisers for walking dogs in the forest,
| but it's 10-200$ + ~$7 a month.
|
| So I'm wondering whether a timer that inflates a big red
| balloon after 4hrs wouldn't be the best choice.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| ...to safely fly the dog back home.
| elisaado wrote:
| why don't you use a drone?
| TrueGeek wrote:
| I've been using a GPS collar for a my escape artist dog for a
| few years. Do you have a link to your big red balloon
| Kickstarter page?
| [deleted]
| MisterTea wrote:
| Far simpler cat location method: Shake a box of dried cat food
| around and then pick the cat which is yours.
| mattanamg wrote:
| "What a lack of privacy" says the cat
| ljhsiung wrote:
| -- "now let me sit in my owner's pants as he sits on the
| toilet"
| reaperducer wrote:
| "Have you seen my butthole? Look at my butthole! Let me turn
| around so you can get a better view of my butthole!" -- Every
| cat ever.
| EGreg wrote:
| And proceeds to lick its genitals in front of you
| 1_2__4 wrote:
| So I have some experience with this. I decided to add BLE beacons
| to my vehicles and bicycles, and an RPI to listen for the pings
| and retransmit them over mqtt. The idea was I could setup some
| Home Assistant alerts for things like "multiple vehicles are
| absent at once" or "vehicle went from home to away at odd hour"
| where "odd hour" is something like 12AM-5AM, a time when I
| wouldn't expect me or my vehicles to be departing.
|
| The way I implemented it was to have each beacon transmit on I
| think 1s (might have been 5s to save power) intervals, and some
| python code on an RPI that listens for them, with a timeout for
| each. If the listener gets a ping it immediately forwards it to
| mqtt as a "home" ping, using the beacon id to set the topic. If
| it doesn't get a ping within the timeout then the rpi generates
| and sends an "away" mqtt message for that beacon. My expectation
| was to have it alert me within ~2-3 minutes of a vehicle going
| from "home" to "away". In practice:
|
| - BLE beacons aren't very popular really, most of them are made
| by small foreign companies who don't sell them in places like
| Amazon. The ones Amazon does sell are kind of crappy. Setting
| them up usually involves downloading a vaguely-sketchy app to
| your phone (I haven't figured out how to configure them from the
| rpi). They all seem kind of janky honestly.
|
| - Bluetooth and Wifi use the same (some) hardware on an rpi,
| meaning if you start rapidly scanning for BLE tokens your wifi
| performance will drop to the point of the rpi being unusable (ssh
| sessions timing out). I fixed this by buying a separate USB
| bluetooth dongle, although even that was a pain to get working in
| the pybluez module - in general bluetooth under linux along with
| the python bindings are finicky and crap out easily, it seems.
|
| - I have my dmesg and syslog spammed with "Bluetooth: hci0:
| advertising data len corrected" when using bluetooth scanning, I
| managed to find a couple bug references to it and other people
| complaining about it but no fixes over multiple system updates.
|
| - It's just... Not reliable. I don't know why. I've tried really
| hard to make it reliable, and maybe the problem is the RPI-as-
| bluetooth (maybe if I used a microcontroller as the receiver it
| would work better?), but I've tried all variations of scanning
| windows and such and dug down into the code for Bluez without
| figuring out either what I'm doing wrong or where the issue is.
| Beacons will supposedly not ping for minutes at a time despite
| being on a 5s interval no matter what I do, and this is for
| beacons maybe 6 feet from the receiver (although ones further
| away do timeout more).
|
| The last thing is what finally killed the project for me. I had
| it (still have it) all setup in HA with notifications and
| schedules and such, but I just turned off all the automation for
| it until I get a chance to tear it down. Failed experiment.
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(page generated 2021-02-04 23:00 UTC)