ESPHome BLE Proxy

A Bluetooth proxy that filters advertisements on the device, before they cross your network. Flash one from this page, or generate the config yourself — the defaults are the ones running on a ~70-node fleet. Repo & docs →

1 · Pick your board

2 · Two things that have to be decided now

Both are baked in at compile time, so they can't be changed from Home Assistant afterwards — everything else (RSSI threshold, scan profile) is a dial you can turn later.

Block Apple noise?

Should Home Assistant be able to connect to BLE devices through it?

3 · Plug it in over USB and flash

Your browser can't talk to serial ports. Use Chrome or Edge on a desktop — Safari and Firefox don't implement Web Serial, and neither does any browser on iOS. This page has to be served over HTTPS to access the serial port.

Hold BOOT while plugging in if the board isn't offered in the port list — some need it to enter download mode. Picking the wrong port is harmless; nothing is written until you confirm.

4 · Give it your Wi-Fi

When the flash finishes the installer offers to connect the device to Wi-Fi and asks for your network and password. That is Improv — the credentials go straight down the USB cable you already have plugged in. Nothing is typed into this page and nothing leaves your machine.

Then open Settings → Devices & Services in Home Assistant. The proxy appears as a discovered ESPHome device; adopt it and Home Assistant starts using it as a Bluetooth adapter straight away. Nothing else to configure.

Blocking Apple and still seeing your phones

Your phones advertise the same Apple data as everyone else's. What sets them apart is their IRK, a key that resolves their rotating address. A proxy that knows your IRKs lets your phones through the Apple block and drops everyone else's.

This firmware gets its IRKs from Home Assistant, not from the build. Put them in one template sensor, with a name next to each, and every proxy loads them. Replacing a phone is one edited line, with no reflash. Set it up →

One caution: prebuilt firmware talks to Home Assistant unencrypted, and an IRK identifies a person's phone. On a network you trust that's fine. Otherwise, first adopt the device into an ESPHome dashboard and give it an encryption key.

What you get

    1 · Output

    2 · Hardware
    3 · Identity

    Last 6 hex digits of the board's MAC, and the Home Assistant area it lives in. Don't know the MAC? Put anything — flash, read the real one off the dashboard, fix it, re-flash over the air.

    4 · Filtering
    5 · Scanning