BLU Gateway | Bluetooth WiFi Gateway in a USB-A dongle | Home Automation | Compatible with Alexa & Google Home | iOS Android App | WiFi Range Extender | Wire-Free

This gateway has been rock solid so far. Setup with HA was quick, it paired easily with other Shelly devices, and the connection has been stable. It bridges Bluetooth sensors to Wi-Fi reliably and integrates cleanly with the Shelly app and other smart home platforms. Small, simple, and does exactly what it’s supposed to do.

I have a lot of ble temperature sensors around the house and was using both native bluetooth on my intel nuc running HAos and also another bt dongle connected via usb/ethernet extension; but with 3 floors on the house needed another bluetooth gateway. There are plenty of esphome projects to do this, but was impatient and didn't want to wait for m5 stack atoms I have ordered to come, so took a chance on the shelly gateway with next day arrival. It took a few tries to get this set up onto my network. My last shelly products were natural gas sensors I set up for local control ages ago and control directly from ip address so I hadn't loaded the app in forever. I opened shelly app to be prompted to install the new shelly app as that one is discontinued. The new app found the gateway immediately once set to scan BT but failed repeatedly to bring it onto the network despite several resets. Finally I went with the alternate route in the instructions which is to pair to its own setup wifi network on your phone and configure from there in a browser. Once I had done that, I reloaded the app and locked the device to its own ip address. Turned off cloud control for the device and removed the app. Home Assistant found the device right away (it popped up on my computer screen while I was deleting shelly app. Configured device for passive scanning (you would want it set to active if using shelly buttons or motion detectors or something like that; for ble sensors, passive is fine). To test that the device was actually pulling data from sensors, I moved it (its a usb stick that plugs into any usb charging brick, its not battery powered) to rooms that had sensors in it far away from the nuc and saw the rssi drop dramatically on next scan. For best usage and aggregration, I positioned the gatway in a recessed outlet in by the 2nd to 3rd floor stairs. Checked data on bluetooth devices the next day and found much better readings for all devices, HA charts were showing mean/median for all devices instead of single readings. This lead me to believe the secondary plugged in bt adapater is conflicting with the built in nuc bluetooth. Despite both being installed and configured it seems only one or the other works (probably why HA recommends mqtt/wifi gateways for bluetooth). I may purchase another so I have gateways on all 3 floors (nuc basement, shelly 1st floor, shelly 2nd floor) and reused the esp devices that eventually will come from china to another project.

Necessary for shelly smart control. Works as designed

Setting this up with the Shelly ap was a breeze. I paired a couple of Shelly BLU temp/humidity sensors to monitor kitchen and garage fridges. I was surprised at the capabilities of this little server/gateway only need power to it's USB-A port to operate. It was easy to add to the optional Free Shelly Cloud app and set a temperature alarm to notify my phone.

If you are buying this device under the impression that it will act as a seamless, native gateway for your Shelly Bluetooth sensors within the official Home Assistant Shelly add-on, save your money. It does not work. Shelly claims this capability exists, but the native technology stack is fundamentally broken. Here is the actual breakdown of the problem versus the symptoms: The Core Problem: The device is completely incapable of performing its native gateway functions locally. You cannot see your Bluetooth devices as native sensors inside the official Shelly integration in Home Assistant. Cloud Works, Local API is Broken: To be fair, the gateway functionality technically handles data for Shelly's proprietary cloud app, which is likely how they justify claiming that gateway mode works. However, somewhere deep in the local Bluetooth stack, the data is mangled or improperly formatted, meaning the Home Assistant local integration cannot accept or parse it natively. Forced Gateway Mode Does Nothing: To make matters worse, recent firmware updates now force the device into "Bluetooth Gateway" mode the second you enable the Bluetooth radio. You cannot toggle this gateway feature off anymore. You are forced into a broken mode that effectively does absolutely nothing for your local smart home setup. The Time-Sync Symptom: The much-discussed time synchronization failure is not a load or overrun issue. It is a mechanical symptom of their re-engineered firmware kernel. Because the underlying network and time stack are broken at the OS level, any native, time-sensitive passthrough or device inclusion hits a wall and gets stuck in a constant loop. It cannot sync time to e-ink displays or any other local device. A Buggy and Insecure Fallback: Because the native gateway feature is dead in the water for local networks, you are forced to rely on the default BTHome fallback. This fallback is buggy at best and insecure at worst. To get data to pass through the native app right now, you essentially have to bypass all basic security handshakes because the firmware fails at proper validation protocols. Abysmal Local Performance: This ESP32 has virtually no physical native job on your network other than running its local web configuration UI and acting as a gateway. Yet, it is easily the slowest, most sluggish implementation of a web interface Shelly has ever released. The only reason people are getting data from their sensors into Home Assistant at all is by abandoning Shelly's software entirely and forcing the hardware to act as a dumb radio transceiver via an ESPHome Bluetooth Proxy script. To be absolutely clear, these are not assumptions or guesses. These are definitive technical findings based on my own troubleshooting and direct email correspondence with Shelly's technical support team, who has pushed the issue up the stack, albeit completely without haste. I am only taking the time to post this because the rest of the Shelly hardware and software stack is actually quite reasonable and reliable in a smart home infrastructure. But this specific, neglected Bluetooth gateway disaster is making my entire Shelly experience completely unpalatable. Do not buy this expecting the out-of-the-box Home Assistant integration to function as advertised.

Justwhat I needed to upgrade my Home Assistant! Easy setupand integrated flawlessly!

Works as expected and missions accomplished in the RV. One of these BLU gateway devices combined with three (3) of the Shelly BLU HT temperature sensors (refrigerator, freezer, and coach) and a Shelly Smoke Detector, made for the perfect upgrades to my RV.

They advertised that you do not need a hub. But you actually do they technically call their hub a dongle. So lame! You still need another thing to make this work.

Works great with Home Assistant.

Lätt att integrera i systemet

Il gateway Bluetooth‑to‑Wi‑Fi Shelly BLU è un piccolo ma molto utile dispositivo per chi ha sensori e accessori smart in casa. Si presenta come dongle USB da collegare a una porta USB standard, e una volta connesso alla tua rete Wi‑Fi fa da ponte per i dispositivi Shelly BLU (sensori, pulsanti, termostati ecc.), rendendoli accessibili e controllabili anche tramite l’app centralizzata. La configurazione è semplice e veloce: dopo averlo inserito e collegato al Wi‑Fi il gateway intercetta i segnali Bluetooth dei dispositivi compatibili e li porta sulla rete, così puoi ricevere notifiche, monitorare stati e impostare automazioni dalla app Shelly Smart Control o da sistemi di domotica come Home Assistant tramite MQTT. Inoltre è compatto e discretissimo, consuma pochissima energia e può contribuire anche a migliorare la copertura Wi‑Fi in zone un po’ più lontane, rendendo più stabile la connessione con i dispositivi collegati. In sintesi, un accessorio pratico e ben funzionante per espandere e integrare facilmente il tuo sistema di domotica Shelly, specie se utilizzi diversi sensori Bluetooth 💡. Consigliato se vuoi collegare e gestire i tuoi dispositivi BLU in modo semplice e smart!

Very good device, paired with a Shelly BLU Motion. The setup of the whole thing in the android app was a little bit troublesome but it works solid. You can see those devices have been nicely engineered.

Funciona a la perfección, es muy estable y fácil de configurar. Me encanta lo bien que conecta con otros aparatos inteligentes. Una gran compra para cualquier hogar conectado.