BK72xx Bluetooth Low Energy Tracker Hub

The bk72xx_ble_tracker component creates a global hub so that you can scan Bluetooth Low Energy advertisements on a BLE 5.x Beken node in the LibreTiny beken-72xx family.

Chip support is inherited from the BK72xx BLE controller component, which lists the supported and unsupported SoCs.

This component provides the BLE scanner and the listener interface used by ESPHome’s advertisement-based BLE sensor platforms — for example BLE RSSI, BLE Presence, BLE Scanner and Xiaomi BLE — which attach to this tracker automatically.

NOTE

This tracker is scan-only: it receives advertisements but cannot open GATT connections, so connection-based components such as ble_client and bluetooth_proxy are not available on this platform.

NOTE

The tracker builds on the BK72xx BLE controller component and loads it automatically — the BLE stack (CFG_SUPPORT_BLE) is enabled in the build with no manual platformio_options flag.

NOTE

The BK72xx are single-core SoCs — WiFi and BLE share the same ARM CPU core. See Use on a single-core chip below for how the scan window / interval ratio balances BLE against WiFi.

# Example configuration entry
bk72xx_ble_tracker:

Configuration variables

scan_parameters (Optional): Advanced parameters for configuring the scan behavior. See also this guide by Texas Instruments for background reading.

NOTE

The BK72xx controller scans passive only — there is no active option. Passive scanning is sufficient for BTHome/ATC thermometers and most beacons, which broadcast all their data in the advertisement (no scan response).
- interval (Optional, Time): The interval between each consecutive scan window. The scanner cycles through the three BLE advertising channels at this rate. Defaults to 100ms — the BK reference scan rate, which together with the default window gives a 30% duty cycle. A larger interval lowers the duty cycle and frees more CPU time for WiFi on the single-core SoC, at the cost of catching fewer advertisements.
- window (Optional, Time): The time the receiver is actively listening for packets on a channel during each scan interval. Must be ≤ interval. Defaults to 30ms (a 30% duty cycle with the default interval).
- duration (Optional, Time): The length of each complete scan session. When continuous is true the scanner restarts immediately after each session ends. Defaults to 5min.
- continuous (Optional, boolean): Leave this at true. When true the scanner runs permanently, with the duration period used only for per-session bookkeeping. When false a started scan runs for duration and then stops. Defaults to true.
id (Optional, ID): Manually specify the ID used to reference this component in lambdas.

WARNING

Automation triggers (on_ble_advertise, on_scan_end, …) and the start_scan / stop_scan actions are not available on this platform yet. Because nothing else starts a scan, setting continuous: false leaves the scanner permanently idle: there is no config error and no scan-start log line, and every attached BLE sensor simply stays unknown. Starting a scan is currently only possible from C++ (start_scan()).

With BLE sensors

Sensor platforms attach to the tracker automatically (identical to ESP32). The BK72xx scans passive-only, which is sufficient for BTHome/ATC-style sensors that broadcast all their data in the advertisement:

bk72xx_ble_tracker:

sensor:
  - platform: xiaomi_lywsd03mmc
    mac_address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
    bindkey: "00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff"
    temperature:
      name: "Temperature"
    humidity:
      name: "Humidity"
  - platform: ble_rssi
    mac_address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
    name: "BLE Beacon RSSI"

Use on a single-core chip

Unlike the ESP32 which runs BLE on a dedicated core, the BK72xx run both WiFi and BLE on the same single ARM CPU core. The scan window / interval ratio decides how that core is split between BLE and WiFi, and passive-only scanning (no scan requests) keeps the radio cost of each window minimal:

interval: 100ms, window: 30ms → 30/70 BLE / WiFi — the BK reference default
interval: 200ms, window: 50ms → 25/75 BLE / WiFi — catches fewer advertisements, but leaves more of the core for WiFi

BK72xx Bluetooth Low Energy Tracker Hub

Configuration variables

With BLE sensors

Use on a single-core chip

See Also