Hi there, I am trying to add a BT device through the iHost settings page, but the iHost is not picking up any BT devices while they are in pairing mode.
Your help is appreciated, thanks, Matt
You will probably be disappointed, but the iHost does not support Bluetooth at all out‑of‑the‑box. And just to clarify: the Wi‑Fi part of the RTL8723 module is enabled and fully used by Cube OS. Only the Bluetooth/BLE part is disabled. In short: Wi‑Fi works out‑of‑the‑box, but Bluetooth does not.
Even though the RTL8723 module inside the device technically includes BLE capability, the Bluetooth part of the chip is completely disabled in the firmware and not available to users.
In practice, Bluetooth is not used for anything on the iHost - not for pairing, not for provisioning, not for reading BLE sensors.
The device can only pair Zigbee devices, as Zigbee is the only radio stack that is actually enabled.
The key part is the note on the marketing illustration: “Module are currently not enabled.” It has been like this since the day iHost was released, and hell knows if it will ever change - you could even place bets on it
However, once you install Home Assistant on the iHost, Bluetooth does work, because HA uses its own drivers and BLE stack to access the RTL8723 hardware directly. So: Bluetooth works under Home Assistant, but not under the native iHost firmware. Odd but true.
Thank you, I appreciate your time and effort in getting back to me. It is disappointing, but I could use Google Home as a work around, although I try to use iHost for the majority of my home auto setup. I wanted to use my Google Nest speakers to transmit a message if for example smoke detector gets activated or the garage door is open after a certain time..
I’m not entirely sure I fully understood your intention, but I tried to extrapolate what you’re aiming for. And based on that… I’d strongly suggest abandoning the idea of using Bluetooth + Google Nest for alerts or TTS messages.
I actually went down that road myself — and it was hopelessly bad. iHost doesn’t expose any usable Bluetooth stack, and Google Nest speakers don’t accept TTS or broadcast over Bluetooth anyway. Even if BT magically worked on iHost, Nest wouldn’t care. It only responds to Google Cast or cloud-based Assistant commands.
And about using one of those Nest “smart displays” with a speaker…
Yeah, I tested that too. Let’s just say the audio quality was somewhere between a cardboard box and a shoe box with a hole in it. Definitely not something you want to rely on when your smoke detector goes off at 3 AM.
If you want reliable TTS on Google Nest when your smoke alarm triggers or the garage door stays open, the only stable setup is iHost → Home Assistant → Google Cast → Nest. HA has proper local TTS for Nest, works instantly, and doesn’t depend on Google’s cloud mood swings. But honestly, there are several better ways to run Home Assistant. From a hardware perspective, iHost is… not exactly an excellent choice 
Are you using Node-red? If so there is another route for BLE devices (not normal Bluetooth) so that of course depends on what you are trying to do. Are they BLE?
If that’s yes and yes I could post more on this.
Out of the box, as commented here, nothing can be done.
Edit No answered without reading your reply! You are talking about traditional Bluetooth, so can’t help you here.
Hi there, thank you for your replies. I am trying to find a solution to playing sound files when a certain action or scene is activated. For example - When the door to my “Man Cave” is opened it triggers the door contacts which activates a scene that plays a laughing monster sound file over the iHost internal speaker, but it is really crap quality. This was very easy to setup, but I would like to improve on the quality and volume.
I would like to play the sound to a better quality speaker and play a voice sound file reminding me my the garage door is open after a certain time instead of a simple sound file that gets lost between all the other sound alerts that you end up using.
For my alarm notifications I am planning to use the SONOFF Zigbee SenseGuard Indoor Siren SNZB-09P.
@jam3 I agree with the flimsy-ness of the Google HomeCloud Swings and I try an avoid it where possible.
@john.e.dixon thanks for trying
I am open to any suggestions, cheers Matt