❮ Choose a controller Link: BLE (Bluetooth)

BLE opening controller

Pick a ready-made module or build a controller from a couple of parts, set a few parameters, and upload the finished program into it straight from your browser.

What the firmware does

A phone — the owner's, or a guest's with a valid key — sends the Open command directly over Bluetooth when you are near the controller. The controller closes a pair of the drive's contacts for a short time (one second by default), just like an ordinary button, and opens them again; it does not switch power. For bistable drives and locks you can enable a mode with separate open and close and position tracking in the settings below. Opening happens on a tap in the app; automatic opening as you approach is available too.

What is inside

The link between phone and controller is properly encrypted — it cannot be forged or intercepted. There is nothing to configure, the protection is already built in. Between openings the controller sleeps and uses almost no power.

My configurations

Sets of settings you have saved in this browser. Pick one and every field below fills in automatically, leaving only the build. If you are signed in, configurations are kept in your account and available from any device.

Saved configurations Choosing one fills every field in the form with the saved values.

1. Pick your board

First decide what to build on: take a ready-made modulewhere the controller and the relay are already soldered together, or build it from parts (a separate ESP32 board plus a relay module). Tap your board and we will show how to wire it, while the right settings drop into the form below. At the very end you upload the finished program — also called firmware — into the controller.

Controller boards

ESP32 with a relay on one board

Ready boards with the ESP32 and the relay already soldered together — no separate module needed.

Off-the-shelf Wi-Fi relays (replace the program)

If you want a neat factory case and a certified relay, take an off-the-shelf device and load our program into it instead of its own. Inside it is still an ordinary relay: a pair of contacts that closes for a moment and presses the open button. Such a device does not need its own Wi-Fi — Entrixy talks to the phone directly.

What else you will need

These pictures are not clickable — they just show what the components look like.

Relay module Needed when the board has no relay. Three wires go to the ESP32: control, power and ground (GND). The relay output goes to the drive

Programmer with a socket A bare ESP32 or ESP32-S3 module drops into this socket so the program can be uploaded

USB-to-UART adapter Used to upload the program to relay boards and to Shelly — it connects to a few pins

Smart plugs and Wi-Fi switches will not do here. Athom Plug, Shelly Plus Plug S and similar devices switch mains voltage to a load — they have no dry NO/COM output, only a socket. To drive a gate motor you need a Plus 1 or Plus 1PM relay, or a DIY board with a relay module.

Before loading the program into an off-the-shelf device, check which pin is which. Manufacturers move pins around from time to time within the same model. We took the diagrams from open sources and checked them on our own units — yours may differ slightly. Go by the markings on the board itself.

2. Board

Board which ESP32 model — it determines the available pins

Not sure which chip you have? Connect the board to your computer with a USB cable (a bare module goes through a programmer) and press the button — the browser detects the chip and selects it in the list above. Works on a desktop in Chrome or Edge.

3. Lock type

The main choice: it decides how the relay behaves. Latch: a single Open pulse. Bistable: two positions, with open and close on separate pins; the state is stored and shown in the app.

Lock type

Bistable mode: the controller remembers the current position (open or closed) and toggles it on every activation. The position is visible on the object icon in the app, to owner and guest alike. The pin for the Close command is set below, in the Pins section.

4. Pins and polarity

Relay and lock

Open relay pin (PIN_RELAY) The GPIO number the relay module's control input is wired to. The relay contacts (NO/COM) go to the terminals of your drive's Open button — the controller briefly closes them, imitating a press. In bistable mode this is the opening pin. Important: the grounds (GND) of the controller and the relay module must be wired together — without a common ground the relay will not work.

Level during the pulse

Idle level (between pulses)

A HIGH pulse suits direct transistor switches; a LOW one (pulse = LOW, idle = HIGH) suits most off-the-shelf relay modules and Shelly. The idle level is usually the opposite of the pulse.

Pulse length, ms How many milliseconds to hold the contact closed per activation. For an Open button 500–2000 ms is typical. Too short and the drive may not react; too long and you get needless heating and power draw.

Indicators

Open LED (PIN_OPEN_LED) The pin of an external indicator LED. It lights for the duration of the opening pulse. If your circuit has no such LED, set -1.

Open LED polarity How the LED is wired. Active-LOW means the cathode goes to the pin and the anode through a resistor to the supply — the common arrangement. Active-HIGH is the other way round.

Status LED (built in) The pin of the board's built-in indicator LED. It depends on the model: ESP32-S3 is usually GPIO48, ESP32-C3 is GPIO8, the classic ESP32 (WROOM) is GPIO2. The default follows the chip selected above and can be changed. Set -1 if there is no such LED.

Status LED polarity It lights on a high or a low level, depending on the board. Most DevKits are active-HIGH.

Pairing button

Pairing button pin (PIN_PAIR_BTN) The pin of a physical button on the board. While the controller is unpaired, a short press starts pairing with a phone. A long hold resets the pairing to factory state. On most boards this is the built-in BOOT button, GPIO0.

Hold time for a reset, ms How many milliseconds the button must be held for the pairing reset to fire. As a guard against accidents this is usually 5000 ms, five seconds.

Diagnostics

Debug output (UART) A technical log to the serial port, needed only while debugging. On the ESP32-S3 the port occupies GPIO43 and GPIO44. In normal operation it is better off: no log is written and those two pins are freed up for the relay.

5. Power and battery saving

Advertising cycle period, ms How often the controller wakes and goes on the air — the full advertise-plus-sleep cycle. A lower value means the phone finds the device sooner but the batteries drain faster. A higher one saves power at the cost of a slightly slower response.

Advertising window length, ms How many milliseconds the controller advertises actively in one cycle before going to sleep. It must be long enough for a phone to catch the device and connect — usually 1500–2000 ms.

Connection hold, ms If a phone managed to connect, the controller stays awake this many milliseconds longer, so it can take the command and reply.

Pairing window, ms How long the controller waits for a phone in pairing mode before sleeping. Ninety seconds is ample even for slow phones.

Sleep between cycles, s How many seconds the controller sleeps between advertising cycles. 0 means it never sleeps, for mains or USB power. 10–20 seconds is the sweet spot on batteries: a pair of AAs lasts for months.

6. External clock (optional)

A small clock module (DS3231, DS1307 or PCF8563) with its own coin cell keeps accurate time for years. Without one the controller's internal clock drifts noticeably, by roughly 5% an hour. Accurate time matters only if you issue guests time-limited keys — otherwise skip this section.

External RTC type

Save this configuration

Short name "Yard barrier" or "Country house gate", for instance. If you are signed in it goes to your account and is available from any device. If not, it is saved in this browser so you do not have to set everything up again.

Building and uploading the program

The server builds the program (the firmware) for exactly your settings. You can download the file or upload it into the controller straight from the browser.

Download the file

Keep the pairing with the app (update the firmware without erasing settings)

If you want to look at it, tweak it by hand, download .ino or share a link, press "Open in the editor". It is the same source the server compiled into .bin.

Next: pair the controller in the app

After the upload the controller waits 90 seconds for an owner in pairing mode. Open the Entrixy app in the owner role → Add object → BLE — the controller appears in the list, select it. If it does not, press the pairing button on the board, the LED starts blinking and the list refreshes. The app exchanges keys and the controller becomes yours. Details are in the guide, section "Pairing".

Connecting the relay to the drive

You use two contacts on the relay: NO (normally open) and COM (common). These two wires go to the "Open button" terminals on your drive's control board.

Drive	Where to connect NO/COM
BFT (Phobos, Deimos, Ares)	Terminals `START` or `OPEN` (usually numbered 21–22 in the diagram)
CAME (BX, ATI, BK)	Terminals `2–7` (open), or PED for a pedestrian gate
NICE (Robus, Run, Spin)	Terminals `1–3` (step-by-step)
FAAC (740, 844, 391)	Terminals `OPEN A` (open fully)
DoorHan (Sliding, Arm)	Terminals `CMD` + `GND`
Boom barrier	The Open push-button post — in parallel with its contacts
Intercom (Cyfral, Vizit, Eltis)	The relay in parallel with the door release button on the handset, or straight onto the magnetic lock terminals

Check the exact labels in your control board's manual. If the board is already wired and working, find the two wires running from the Open push-button post and connect the relay's NO/COM in parallel with them.

Uploading with esptool (if the browser route failed)

Download .bin above.
Install esptool: pip install esptool
Connect the ESP over USB.
Flash it: esptool.py --chip auto --port /dev/ttyUSB0 write_flash 0x0 entrixy-ble.bin
On Windows the port is usually COM3 or COM4.

Getting to the UART on off-the-shelf Wi-Fi relays

Ready-made units (Shelly Plus 1, Plus 1PM) have no external USB. You have to open the case and connect to the ESP32's UART pins with a USB-to-serial adapter — CP2102, CH340 or FTDI, any of them.

General wiring

USB-to-serial adapter	ESP32 on the board
GND	GND
3.3V	3V3 (only if you intend to power it from the adapter; otherwise leave the device on its own supply)
TX	RX
RX	TX
—	EN (RESET) — briefly to GND to reboot into the bootloader
—	GPIO0 — to GND while powering up, to enter the bootloader

Do not apply mains voltage to the device's mains terminals while the USB adapter is connected. Power it either from the adapter's 3.3 V or leave the mains supply fully disconnected. Otherwise the USB and mains grounds may sit at different potentials, and your computer's USB port will be destroyed.

Pinout by model

Device	Where the UART is	Entering the bootloader
Shelly Plus 1 / Plus 1PM	Inside the case next to the ESP32 module. The pads are labelled `3V3 GND TX RX GPIO0`. Take off the front cover (two or three clips); the board sits on top.	Tie GPIO0 to GND and briefly pull EN to GND

If your model is not listed here:

templates.blakadder.com — an open database of Tasmota templates with the GPIOs for each model. It maps onto our settings as: Relay1 → the relay pin, Button1 → the button pin, Led1 → the status LED.
devices.esphome.io — the ESPHome registry.
If the model is nowhere to be found, reach for a multimeter: ring out the relay coil back to an ESP32 GPIO. That is your PIN_RELAY.

BLE works on the ESP32 only. For an ESP8266 (Wemos D1, NodeMCU) or an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi relay use the Internet configurator — there the link runs over the internet.

If you would rather not upload the program yourself

Three options that avoid it:

Build it yourself — take an ESP32 DevKit board (about $5) and any 3.3 V relay module (about $2). A junction box makes the enclosure. It wires to the drive just like an industrial relay. This is the recommended route for most DIY cases.
An internet device — reflash an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi relay with a dry contact (Shelly Plus 1) with our program in the Internet configurator, or keep its own firmware and open it through a webhook. Wi-Fi and mains power are needed next to the drive.
Ready-made firmware out of the box — Tasmota or ESPHome. In the app you create a Webhook object with the device's address. This suits you if you would rather not put our program on the device at all.

After pressing the button, wait a moment — the file is usually ready in under a minute. Once the program is built, a download button appears.