Looking for self-powered BLE Environmental Sensors with available characteristics (or BLE MESH sensors)

[esp32besbar]

Dear community,



I have set a BT MESH network to control lights and security at home. All nodes have been provisionned within NRF MESH app.

These nodes are controlled by 3 ESP32 (coded with BLE MESH Client models).

- Lights from Ledvance and Sengled Brand

- Plugs from Ledvance

- Self powered PIR (motion detector) Sensor, Door Sensor and Switches are from Tuya (real bluetooth mesh sensors for which a hub is actually not necessary to obtain BT mesh messages, reverse engineering is very easy)



As for other self-powered sensors for environmental data, I use 1 Thingy53 from Nordic, which is thus the only BT MESH sensor (°C, %RH, Pressure, IR Light level)
Additionally I use Thingy52 as a BLE ONLY device ,(excluded thus from mesh network, actually not a problem). I obtain same data as with Thingy53 + VOC/eCO2 data.



I have however found no other BLE MESH environment sensor available in industry except the Thingy53 (or equivalent from TI for instance). But I would be very interested by Light level, °C, %RH, motion detector sensor (all of this combined if possible, otherwise separately).

I have tried quite a lot of BLE ONLY sensors like EVE MOTION, Tuya Smart Brightness sensors and some others, but reverse engineering and connections look like a war to lead.



Where/How can I find either BLE MESH sensors or BLE ONLY sensors whose characteristics would be available and easy to access like Thingy52 ?

I have found some modules, named sensor tags, on Aliexpress. Would it be the solution?


When one buy any sensors with I2C, RS485, GPIO or other similar interface, one have all the information to connect to the sensor and get the data.

But for Bluetooth senors, it looks much more complicated with vendors products. I am very interested by sharing experience on this topic.

[bidrohini]

I think it's better to biy BLE MESH development kits that include environmental sensors. Some development kits include temperature, humidity, and air quality sensors etc. These kits typically come with sample code and documentation that can help you get started with accessing the sensor data.

[esp32besbar]

Thank you. I see that in addition to the Nordic Thingy53, there is also an equivalent Texas Instrument LPSTK-CC1352R. Another one from Infiniteon CYBT-213043-MESH, which looks very complete.

But yesterday I managed to add some sensors namely the SHT31 env sensor, BH1750 light sensor, SGP30 gas sensor and a PIR sensor on a ESP32 (all drivers available for esp-idf 5.0) that I coded with a bluetooth mesh sensor server model which sends the sensor data to my network.
This solution is actually satisfying my needs. I can this way design a homemade BT mesh multi-sensors.

I will design a printer case for this, add a LiPo battery and a battery monitor.

Anyway I am still very much interested in sharing about bluetooth or bluetooth mesh sensor reverse engineering with a ESP32.
I listed already above some sensors from Tuya I could reverse.