Combine BLE & presence / motion for more accurate room detection

[TheMagnificent7]

In brief (described in more detail at agittins/bermuda#627), I am trying to combine BLE & presence / motion sensors for more accurate room detection. The problem I am trying to solve is that of overlapping BLE coverage - Bermuda will simply pick the "closest" (in RSSI terms) BLE sensor as the room indicator, while this might not be the case - I might be in the adjacent room, but farther away from that room's BLE sensor (or my body being between the sensor and the phone).
I built a workaround myself, using NodeRed and a HA template (see also thread linked above, if interested), but it is quite computation-intensive (it basically executes every single time the BLE sensor state changes).

Following a suggestion from Bermuda's author, I installed and configured Magic Areas (both are fantastic tools, by the way), but I can't seem to be able to leverage this. My test setup is the following:

• two rooms one next to another (relatively), each having a combined BLE & mmwave presence sensor
• all sensors work fine and are configured in Home Assistant (incl. Bermuda) with their respective areas
• in Magic Areas, I would define two magic areas (say, Room1 and Room2) and enable BLE tracking in the Features section for each
• in Magic Areas, I would enable the other room's presence sensor in the Basic config of each room (so adding Room2 Presence for Room1, and the other way around)

Expected result: if my phone is in Room2 (being "seen" by both BLE proxies), but I am physically in Room1 (being "seen" by the Room1 Presence sensor), the "BLE area" entity in Bermuda (or some other entity in Magic Areas, but I didn't see any) would put my location in Room1.
Actual result: the BLE area in Bermuda stays Room2 (where the phone is, thus the room of the proxy with the best RSSI).

Am I doing something wrong in terms of configuration? Am I misunderstanding the way this is supposed to work?

Thanks!

[tbrasser]

I think that until Bermuda does real trilateration this is an unsolved problem. (unless adding more and more proxies).

Maybe BPS works for you (it's a bit of a trilateration PoC on top of Bermuda):

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/bps-the-indoor-precise-tracking-system/843429

With magic areas I only use the BLE feature in rooms that don't have this "adjacent" problem.

[jseidl]

Yeah that's an issue I face as well between my bedroom and home office, despite having calibrated Bermuda.

One thing that helps, but wont solve entirely is using the "Keep Only" sensors functionality under Settings > Presence Tracking Options

[TheMagnificent7]

This sort of works, but exactly the other way around than I expected it. Or maybe I am doing something wrong.
Test case:

• Phone in Room 2, Person in Room 1
• mmwave and BLE sensors in both Room 1 and Room 2
• for both Room 1 and Room 2, the respective mmwave sensor is set as "keep only"
• no "cross-mapping" of sensors (mmwave in Room 1 is a sensor for Room 1 only, mmwave for Room 2 is a sensor for Room 2 only)
  Expected outcome: MR reports occupancy and BLE presence in Room 1 (where the person is)
  Actual outcome with "keep only" (so as described in the scenario): MR reports occupancy and BLE presence in Room 2 (where the phone is)
  Actual outcome without "keep only" (default setup): MR reports occupancy in Room 1 (where the person is) and BLE presence in Room 2 (where the phone is)

[jseidl]

If indeed the mmwave is on "keep only" on both rooms, Magic Areas should report BLE occupancy on Room 2, but will not mark the room as occupied if it's not occupied already, unless any other presence sensor on the room that is not on "keep only" triggers.

BLE will have no effect on Room 1, as for its point of view, whatever its tracking is on Room 2.

Room 1's presence will be maintained only by the other presence sensors.

Does that clarify?

[TheMagnificent7]

It does - thanks a lot for the quick response. Basically, what I am looking for is not in Magic Areas either... I'll give BPS a try.