Dashie can help you put your tablet's Bluetooth to work for your Home Assistant ecosystem to extend your coverage or free up ESP32s. This guide will show you how to set it up.
In This Guide
What This Does
Home Assistant can hear and connect to Bluetooth devices through your tablet. Thermometers, sensors, presence beacons, and SwitchBots can be picked up by the tablet and controlled the same way it would through any other Bluetooth proxy. Connecting is a separate switch you turn on (Let HA connect to devices), and the tablet handles three connections at a time. Devices that connect briefly and drop off again, which is most of them, take turns in those three slots, so three is not a limit of three devices.
Devices that need Bluetooth pairing aren't supported yet
Some Bluetooth devices — most Bluetooth locks, in particular — will only talk to something they have been paired with first. Dashie can't do that pairing yet, so for now plan on a dedicated proxy for those. Devices that don't need pairing, such as sensors, beacons and SwitchBot buttons, are fine.
How This Compares With an ESP32 Proxy
If you already run an ESPHome Bluetooth proxy on an ESP32, you may be wondering where this fits. The honest answer: Dashie's Bluetooth is a bonus on hardware you already mounted on the wall. A dedicated proxy still may be the better tool depending on your use case.
| Your Dashie tablet | A dedicated ESP32 proxy | |
|---|---|---|
| Extra hardware | None — it's the tablet that's already on the wall | A board to buy and flash |
| Where it reaches | The room the tablet is in | Anywhere you can put one, and cheap enough to put several around the house |
| Connections at once | Three | Three by default on an ESP32, and configurable higher — ESPHome allows up to nine and recommends staying at five or below |
| Devices that need pairing | Currently not supported | Supported |
| Older Bluetooth (non-BLE) devices | No | No — Bluetooth proxies are Bluetooth Low Energy only |
| Doing anything else | Yes — it's also your dashboard, and the screen being off changes what it hears (see With the Screen Off) | No — it does this one job, all the time |
ESP32 figures above are from ESPHome's Bluetooth Proxy documentation, read 9 October 2026. Slot counts vary by chip and ESPHome version, so check your own board.
What You Need
- Dashie 1.1.8 or later on the tablet. There is no Bluetooth support at all in earlier versions.
- The Dashie Home Assistant integration, version 1.6.0 or later.
- For connecting to devices, and not just hearing them, Home Assistant 2025.8 or later. On older versions the tablet still listens, but Home Assistant won't offer it for connections.
- The tablet's Device API switched on. The integration hands the tablet its webhook through that API, and without it the tablet has nowhere to send what it hears. If you haven't turned it on, the Home Assistant setup guide covers it.
Turn It On
- On the tablet, open the Control Center and tap Connections & Battery. On a device without a battery, such as a streaming stick, the card is called Connections.
- Tap Bluetooth for Home Assistant.
- Turn the switch on.
- Android asks for location: "Allow Dashie to access this device's location?" Choose While using the app. Bluetooth scanning counts as location access on Android, which is why it asks.
- On Android 12 and newer, a second prompt follows — "…find, connect to, and determine the relative position of nearby devices?" Choose Allow.
- The status settles on Connected to HA, usually within about 15 seconds.
- If you want Home Assistant to connect to devices, turn that on too. Tap Let HA connect to devices — it starts off, and listening works without it. With it on, Home Assistant can reach devices through this tablet, three at a time.
- Make it survive a restart. If the page shows a row called Allow it to work after a restart, tap it now and choose Allow all the time — it changes to Works after restart: On and you're done. If that row isn't there, what applies depends on your Android version: see Make It Survive a Restart just below.
Two prompts on Android 12+
Two prompts arrive in sequence, not together, and the page reads Needs permission until you've answered both. On Android 11 and older there is no second prompt — the Nearby devices permission didn't exist, so one prompt is all you'll see.
If you dismiss a prompt by accident, Android stops asking. The page then offers Open Android settings to allow it, which takes you to the right screen to grant it by hand.
Make It Survive a Restart
Worth doing now, while you're set up on the tablet, rather than meeting it the first time the power blips. On Android 14 and newer, when the tablet restarts on its own — a power cut, a system update, a scheduled reboot — Bluetooth for Home Assistant starts again but cannot listen. It isn't a reduced version of working: the tablet hears nothing at all, screen on or off, so Home Assistant stops seeing devices through it while everything still looks settled.
What to do depends on what the Bluetooth page shows you.
If you see a row called "Allow it to work after a restart"
Tap it and choose Allow all the time when Android asks about location. The row is then replaced by Works after restart: On, and that is all — the tablet starts listening again by itself after a restart, with nobody opening Dashie.
If that row isn't there
Your tablet is on Android 13 or older — most Fire tablets and Fire TV devices are. Nothing to do: a restart is fine on these, and the row doesn't appear because it isn't needed.
What the Status Means
The page shows one status line:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Connected to HA | Working. The tablet is hearing devices, Home Assistant is receiving them, and Home Assistant can connect to them through the tablet. |
| Listening | Working, with nothing forwarded yet. Normal right after setup — it clears as soon as a device is heard. |
| Off | The switch is off. |
| Needs permission | Location, or Nearby devices on Android 12+, hasn't been granted. See Turn It On. |
| Turned off in Android | Bluetooth itself is off on the tablet. |
| Location is off | Android's location setting is off device-wide. Bluetooth scanning needs it on. |
| Waiting for HA | Home Assistant hasn't handed the tablet its webhook yet. Check the integration version and that the Device API is on. |
| Not running | The scanner isn't running. Reopening Dashie restarts it. |
| Open Dashie once | On Android 14 and newer, the tablet can't listen after restarting by itself. Opening Dashie clears it, and it can be avoided altogether — see Make It Survive a Restart. |
| No local HA address | Dashie has no address on your network for Home Assistant to send to. |
| Can't reach HA | The address is there but the last send failed. |
The Two Device Lists
The page shows two lists.
Bluetooth Devices
Home Assistant's own Bluetooth devices, under the names you gave them in Home Assistant. Each one is marked This tablet or Another receiver, so you can see which devices this tablet is the one hearing. If you have more than one receiver, Home Assistant picks whichever hears a device best, and that can change.
Other devices nearby
Everything else the tablet can hear and Home Assistant doesn't know about — useful for checking whether something is in range at all. This list is a snapshot, not a live view: tap Refresh to take a new one.
With the Screen Off
Listening carries on when the screen is off. However, to keep the traffic down, the tablet only sends on the devices Home Assistant can actually use.
Troubleshooting
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| Stuck on Needs permission | One of the two prompts hasn't been answered. If Android has stopped asking, use Open Android settings to allow it on the page. |
| Location is off | Turn location on in Android's own settings. Android requires it for Bluetooth scanning even though Dashie isn't using your position. |
| Stuck on Waiting for HA | Home Assistant hasn't sent the webhook. Check the integration is new enough, and that the tablet's Device API is on. |
| Can't reach HA or No local HA address | A network problem rather than a Bluetooth one. Check the tablet can reach Home Assistant on your local network. |
| Presence stopped updating after a power cut, or the status reads Open Dashie once | On Android 14 and newer the tablet can't listen after restarting by itself. Open Dashie once — see Make It Survive a Restart. |