Theengs Gateway 1.8.0 was released on 13 October 2026. Theengs Gateway is a Python program that listens for Bluetooth Low Energy advertisements from sensors such as Xiaomi thermometers, SwitchBot meters, scales and Victron battery monitors, decodes them and publishes the readings to an MQTT broker. It runs on a Raspberry Pi or any other Linux, macOS or Windows computer with Bluetooth, and can create entities in Home Assistant automatically through MQTT discovery.

What is new

  • Python 3.14. On Python 3.14 the gateway failed to start its Bluetooth loop, because a way of creating the event loop that was deprecated in Python 3.12 now raises an error. Version 1.8.0 fixes this.
  • RSSI entity. Every device has always sent its signal strength (rssi) in the MQTT payload, but discovery did not create an entity for it, so you had to write an MQTT sensor by hand. Now discovery creates a signal strength sensor in dBm. It is disabled by default, so you need to enable it on the device page.
  • Diagnostic entities. The new -Dd / --discovery_diagnostic option marks some readings as diagnostic in Home Assistant, so they move from the main sensor list to a separate section. Packet counters, RSSI and transmit power are always marked. Battery and voltage are marked too, except on devices where they are the main reading, such as battery monitors.
  • Theengs Decoder 2.5.0. The gateway now uses the latest decoder, released on 12 October with security fixes reported by Tom Watson. The release notes do not describe the problems, but the fix is in the C++ code that parses Bluetooth advertisements.

Before you update

The diagnostic option is off by default, so existing entities do not change unless you turn it on. If you do, the author notes that existing entities only move to the diagnostic section after you reload the MQTT integration in Home Assistant. Publishing the discovery configuration again is not enough. According to the pull request, Docker users also need an updated gateway-docker image that adds an environment variable for the new option.

The same decoder is also used in OpenMQTTGateway on ESP32 and in the Theengs mobile app. The gateway's release notes do not say whether those projects have already moved to decoder 2.5.0.