Clear skies, no clouds
Hi everyone. I have some sad news. For the time being, I am going to stop manufacturing and selling Happy Bubbles devices. There are two reasons for this. The first are the recent US tariffs that went into effect which would all but eliminate my margins from selling the Presence devices and beacons. My partners in China source the components and assemble the boards, which are then sent to me in the USA from where I flash, test, and ship them.
Hi everyone and sorry for the lack of updates and being out of stock for so long. The reason is that there were a few delays from suppliers, as well as the big Chinese mid-autumn festival during which all production stops. I finally having a tracking number though for the next batch and I hope it will arrive early next week. As soon as I verify the units to be working, I’ll email everyone and open the store to orders again.
I’ve made a new release of the Happy Bubbles Presence Detector firmware, it’s version 12. To find which version you’re on, connect to the device in config mode, and see the version number in the home page. Upgrading to this newest version 12 will improve your device’s functionality. You can download the new release here: https://github.com/happy-bubbles/presence-firmware/releases/tag/12 What’s new in this release: This new version includes a complete rewrite of the parsing of Beacons to determine if they are Eddystone or iBeacon types.
Thanks to Jurgen’s suggestion on the forum I’ve added a new option in the web settings of the Presence Server. It tells the Happy Bubbles Presence Server to only send messages to Home Assistant when the location of a beacon changes. The default setting is to always send the location to Home Assistant every second. This new setting should help those of you who might be getting too many messages from the Presence Server in your Home Asssitant logs.
I should have updated this earlier, but for those of you asking for enclosures for the Happy Bubbles kits, Ben from Bruh Automation designed a 3D-printable case: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2028844 It’s really cool and fits the board perfectly. Ben has also done a fantastic review of the Happy Bubbles Bluetooth detectors as one of his videos and he goes through very nice and detailed steps on how he got it all running on his Home Assistant based system.
The newest version of the Happy Bubbles Presence server, version 1.5, has been released. You can find it at https://github.com/happy-bubbles/presence/releases/tag/1.5 The biggest improvement by far is better stability. The server has been re-architected based on your feedback that many of you have experienced crashes at times with the previous versions. I’ve done extensive testing on the new one with many beacons and stability has greatly improved. I’m pretty confident in saying that crashes should be pretty much eliminated at this point.
Thank you everyone for your patience and a lot of you have asked when more Happy Bubbles Presence Detectors will be in stock. I’m happy to say that the new shipment of boards just came in! So they’re ready to order and send out again. Also, the new Happy Bubbles Presence Server version 1.3 (https://github.com/happy-bubbles/presence/releases/tag/1.3) now works with Home Assistant! This is something I am very excited about because I know a lot of you have been asking about it and use Home Assistant in your setups.
First, thank you to everyone who has ordered devices and shown support. The response for the presence detector has been great and I’ve heard from many of you that you like using them. This is fantastic! In fact, it’s been so fantastic that I’ve recently sold out of the first production batch and am waiting for the new one to come in. I hope they’ll arrive in the beginning of October and I can start selling them again.
I’ve made a new release of the Happy Bubbles Presence Detector firmware, it’s version 11. To find which version you’re on, connect to the device in config mode, and see the version number in the home page. Most of you probably have version 9 so if you do, upgrading to this newest version 11 will improve your device’s functionality. You can download the new release here: https://github.com/happy-bubbles/presence-firmware/releases/tag/11. What’s new in this release: This new version now allows you to upgrade the firmware directly from the web interface in the ‘config mode’.
Hi everyone! I’ve made a new release of the Happy Bubbles Presence Detector firmware, it’s version 10. To find which version you’re on, connect to the device in config mode, and see the version number in the home page. Most of you probably have version 9 so if you do, upgrading to this newest version 10 will improve your device’s functionality. You can download the new release here: https://github.com/happy-bubbles/presence-firmware/releases/tag/10.