Bluetooth Stack: Feature Request

[flatline69]

Hi Community!

I saw there's an archived forum for Feature Requests for FreeNAS/TrueNAS but I'm either blind or it doesn't exist for SCALE.

I'd like to make a feature request to add BlueZ to SCALE as I use it for my Home Assistant container.

Normally when I upgrade SCALE, I have to manually add the Debian BlueZ package (bluez_5.55-3.1_amd64.deb) via dpkg and my ASUS BT400 firmware (/usr/lib/firmware/bcrm) in order to add Bluetooth capabilities to SCALE as it's lost between upgrades. The latter is definitely a me-issue and I can live with it but it'd be nice if BlueZ was an optional package to install (or persist) between upgrades.

Thanks!

 

[danb35]

I'd like to make a feature request to add BlueZ to SCALE as I use it for my Home Assistant container.

Best place to make any feature request (for CORE or SCALE) is through the bug tracker--"Report a Bug" link at the top of the page.

 

[morganL]

Hi Community!

I saw there's an archived forum for Feature Requests for FreeNAS/TrueNAS but I'm either blind or it doesn't exist for SCALE.

I'd like to make a feature request to add BlueZ to SCALE as I use it for my Home Assistant container.

Normally when I upgrade SCALE, I have to manually add the Debian BlueZ package (bluez_5.55-3.1_amd64.deb) via dpkg and my ASUS BT400 firmware (/usr/lib/firmware/bcrm) in order to add Bluetooth capabilities to SCALE as it's lost between upgrades. The latter is definitely a me-issue and I can live with it but it'd be nice if BlueZ was an optional package to install (or persist) between upgrades.

Thanks!

I assume you could use an external BLE gateway or a VM as a workaround??

 

[flatline69]

I assume you could use an external BLE gateway or a VM as a workaround??

I also have an external BLE (running OpenMQTTGateway) serving other purposes for detecting and interacting with devices around me but it communicates through MQTT. This is a physical BT USB adapter plugged into my SCALE machine that I conduct Bluetooth scans for Home Assistant to detect specific devices for presence detection.

I'm OK with manually installing what I need with every update but I hoped that my use-case wouldn't the only reason to support Bluetooth.

 

[abishur]

I also have an external BLE (running OpenMQTTGateway) serving other purposes for detecting and interacting with devices around me but it communicates through MQTT. This is a physical BT USB adapter plugged into my SCALE machine that I conduct Bluetooth scans for Home Assistant to detect specific devices for presence detection.

I'm OK with manually installing what I need with every update but I hoped that my use-case wouldn't the only reason to support Bluetooth.

Did you end up opening a bug tracker for this? Bluetooth being included would be very useful for me as well. I've been using home assistant as an app and went to add a long range bluetooth dongle for one of my devices only to find no support for this. Thankfully you outlined a good work around in the first post (I just need to find the drivers now), but it would be very convenient for it to just be built into the system from the get go.

 

[morganL]

Did you end up opening a bug tracker for this? Bluetooth being included would be very useful for me as well. I've been using home assistant as an app and went to add a long range bluetooth dongle for one of my devices only to find no support for this. Thankfully you outlined a good work around in the first post (I just need to find the drivers now), but it would be very convenient for it to just be built into the system from the get go.

Its NAS-117533

 

[abishur]

Its NAS-117533

Thanks, I clicked on the link, but I don't have access to it, still good to know it's being looked at

 

[Ben Woods]

I’m in the same boat - I’d like this for Bluetooth support in home assistant, and I don’t have access to the above bug report.

 

[flatline69]

Forgot my login to view the ticket. I've since completely rebuilt my TrueNAS Scale to 23.10 and noticed that while I'm still able to install the current BlueZ package, the HCI kernel driver (btusb I think?) is no longer available in kernel 6.1.55 which means I need to find another way to accomplish this. Like others, I use a BT USB dongle to detect presence for Home Assistant that differs from my OpenMQTTGateway usage which I use for passive BLE scans for temperature/etc devices. Running a VM for one dongle doesn't make sense and my OpenMQTTGateway is specific in purpose (and I only have the one unit.) The reason for the dongle is it's paired to devices and allows me to connect to those devices and thus presence using this container which I run in host mode to access the dongle (I suppose I could use passthrough but this is how I chose to do it based on my abilities.)

I have some old "kodi" style boxes lying around, I may have to see if I can use them instead. edit: yeah, it can be done but it's a PITA and Armbian is my only real supported choice it seems.

Please, I can live with installing BlueZ manually but please add HCI back to the kernel (and because I'm greedy, I'll even take making BlueZ a default package too! :) seems there's a few of us utilizing this use-case.)

 

[flatline69]

Just, I guess, a final update. I also have a post about the above container on the Home Assistant forums. Turns out, Bluetooth Proxy devices (I chose the m5stack Atom Lite; I'll simply swap USB devices and flash/connect it) will solve my issue. I do hope Bluetooth support gets added, I can see a lot of interesting use-cases for it but this seems to be the standard solution (as alluded to above by @morganL) for my use-case and probably a few other folks and it'd be nice to have a fallback if that doesn't work (I've bought m5stack before, wasn't a good experience but I'll give it another try.)

They even make it easy for you to make the jump here and makes my container deprecated now.

 

[danb35]

ESP32 dev boards aren't exactly a dime a dozen, but they're still widely available and cheap--any any of them will run ESPHome and act as a Bluetooth proxy.

 

[morganL]

Volunteers who want to develop or test would be appreciated... we don't test bluetooth or HomeDirector in our labs.

 

[flatline69]

Volunteers who want to develop or test would be appreciated... we don't test bluetooth or HomeDirector in our labs.

My ESP32 won't be here for 16-20 days so I'm willing to test if the opportunity avails itself.

 

[flatline69]

@morganL how can I help test? I need a kernel with HCI and I already have BlueZ installed.

 

[morganL]

Join the discord community of developers and testers.

We really a need a developer first and then testers. Our engineering team is concerned about security risks of allowing Bluetooth. So we'd like someone who is familiar with bluetooth stack.
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Until those can be resolved, we do recommend a VM for HomeDirector.