RVAltCtrl can pair with small, battery-powered Bluetooth sensors, buttons, and motion devices, and use their readings or events anywhere else in the app, on your Dashboard, in Routines and Triggers, on your smartwatch, or over MQTT.
What does BTLE mean?
BTLE stands for Bluetooth Low Energy, a short-range wireless standard built for small, battery-powered devices that need to run for months or years on one battery, like the sensors RVAltCtrl pairs with. You'll see it referred to as BTLE or just Bluetooth throughout the app.
You manage everything BTLE-related from Settings → BTLE Devices.
Supported sensors
Today that's temperature & humidity, motion, door/window, and button sensors. See Browse Supported Sensors for the current list of exactly which products to buy, along with Amazon links. We're always adding support for new sensors, so it's worth checking that page again every so often even if you didn't find what you needed the first time.
Setting up a sensor
On the BTLE Devices page, make sure Enable BTLE is turned on, then tap Setup New Device. Power on your sensor near the RVAltCtrl unit; supported devices that are advertising and not yet set up appear in the list as they're found. Select one, give it a name, and it's added to your Configured Devices list.
Some sensors don't advertise right away. Govee temperature & humidity sensors in particular can take 30 seconds or more to show up, so give it a little time before assuming it isn't working. Button and motion sensors are different: they only advertise when something happens, so you'll need to actually press the button or trigger the motion sensor before it appears in the list.
Naming a device and showing it on the Dashboard
The name you give a sensor is just a friendly label, it's what shows up for that sensor in the Configured Devices list, and anywhere you pick it later, like a Motion Sensor or Temperature trigger. You can rename a device at any time from its Edit button without losing any history or breaking anything else, since RVAltCtrl actually tracks the sensor by its Bluetooth address underneath, not by the name you gave it.
Govee temperature & humidity sensors also have a Show on Dashboard option, which adds a live reading tile for that sensor to your Home dashboard.
Renaming and your smartwatch or MQTT setup
If you've already set up a smartwatch complication or an MQTT/Home Assistant integration using one of your sensors, feel free to rename that sensor later without worrying about breaking either one. Both are wired up using the sensor's underlying device ID, not its display name, so renaming a sensor only changes the label you see in RVAltCtrl. Your smartwatch complication keeps pulling data from the same sensor, and your MQTT topic for it doesn't change either.