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The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/the_Skimmy on 2026-06-24 16:36:39+00:00.
After years of running a pretty extensive smart home (50+ Shelly devices, HomeMatic IP, Hue, Zigbee, the works), I stumbled across something today that I somehow completely missed: Shelly Plus and Gen3 devices can act as Bluetooth proxies for Home Assistant.
I always knew my Shellys had a BLE chip, but I assumed it was only there for initial setup. Turns out you can enable BLE scanning in the Shelly settings AND flip a switch in the HA Shelly integration per device, and suddenly your existing Shelly infrastructure becomes a BLE scanner network – no additional hardware required.
Combined with the HACS integration Bermuda BLE Trilateration, I now have room-level presence detection using devices I already owned. I activated sixteeen of my Shellys as scanners, extracted the IRK from macOS Keychain for my Apple Watch, added it via Home Assistant’s built-in Private BLE Device integration, and within an hour my Watch was being tracked room by room across the house.
What you need:
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Shelly Plus or Gen3 devices (Plus 1PM, PM Mini Gen3, Plus Plug S, Plug S Gen3 etc.) – Gen1 does NOT support this
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Home Assistant Shelly integration: set BLE scanner mode to “Auto” per device
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Enable BLE + BLE Gateway in the Shelly web interface
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Bermuda BLE Trilateration (HACS)
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A BLE beacon: Apple Watch/iPhone via IRK, a Tile tracker, or any BLE tag
Tips:
Assign your scanner Shellys to areas in HA – Bermuda uses this for room detection
The more scanners spread across your home, the better the accuracy
For Apple devices: the IRK is sitting in macOS Keychain Access, search for “Bluetooth”, find your device’s public MAC and grab the Remote IRK from the XML
If you’ve got Shellys and haven’t looked into this – go check your integration settings right now. You might already have a BLE scanner network and not know it.