A comparison of 4 presence detection methods

Lounge
#27

Yes no prefect solution.
I am not totally anti cloud no getting away from it now.
Just trying to be as secure as possible especially with garage doors. Since the car sensor is powered off after arriving it should never accidentally fire an open rule.

I also use a battery powered SmartThings arrival sensor in my kids backpack. I had to set these to 10 minute departures to try and avoid false departures caused by hub slow downs.
Note:
To set SmartThings arrival sensor depart to 10 minutes you have use the
Xbee3 presence DH

2 Likes
#28

Hey @stevebott123, could you share more about whats going on in your dashboard?

#29

Yep, on the advice and experience of other forum members I setup the above.

So if either the iOS app (he phone) or Life360 (steve 360) register as in the geofence, set group A to present (steves phone)
if either steves phone or sb wifi (wifi presence community driver) register as present, set group b to present (steve all home)
If group a (steves phone) or group b (steve all home) are present, set "someones home" as present.
The same went for my wifes setup.
This was to counter false positives and negatives - which worked 60% of the time.

My current setup is ive deleted all of this, and combined presence, I am Just running maker API and Locative iOS app. Its been 99% accurate for me.

2 Likes
#30

Another option for android is Macrodroid via maker API
It has a geolocation service - i have been using this for about a week, and it seems to be working quite well

1 Like
#31

SmartThings Presence Sensors - 3 (with battery hack) Have worked perfectly for about 3 months now. No battery drain on phone which was an issue with HE app and not reliable.

#32

Thanks @stevebott123. Where did you find the best way to setup Locative? I've been trying and keep getting errors all over the place. I must be setting up Maker API incorrectly

#33

This was the link I was given, got it working first go.
just take your time to read it all.

3 Likes
#34

uhm .. can you enlighten me on this? Rules? Can you explain this in one word or less? and "Yep" or any form thereof isn't an acceptable answer. :crazy_face:

Just kidding. But, I'd really like to know how you're managing that. I'm evaluating my garage door automation and even though it's capable, I'm not using it because I don't feel like presence is going to cut it for me entirely.

1 Like
#35

I have had absolutely 100% success using Life360 for geofencing. That being said I have a very large circle around my home. I don't want it firing when I go the mailbox. If I remember right I have about a 2000 foot radius and it has never failed to lock up when we leave the house and never failed to unlock and turn off the alarm and all the other stuff that we want to happen when we come and go. It is just speculation on my part but I think that most folks are probably using too small of a radius.

Edit: Not sure if it matters or not but we run Android phones.

1 Like
#37

How is everyone using Wifi for presence detection? I've seen lots of talk about it, but no guide on how to set it up.

#38

One way:

1 Like
#39

Thanks for the rapid reply. Would this work for Android?

#40

Just wanted to mention that there are several other ways to do presence now.

On iOS, native geofencing can be used, although it requires a Home hub and HomeBridge. Locative seems to be another popular choice.

On Android and iOS, OwnTracks works really well. @brianwilson has written a Hubitat integration for it.

[RELEASE] OwnTracks Presence

1 Like
#41

I use an Asus AX11000 router with two Asus XT8 aimesh nodes. I have a script on my NAS(Qnap) that runs every 15 minutes that checks if a script on the primary AX11000 router exists and if it doesn't it copies it back over using scp and then uses ssh to schedule the script to run every 5 seconds on the router. The script basically uses ARP to check for the presence of certain MAC addresses. It then creates a reference file on the router which acts as a flag so the router knows the last state. If the state changes it fires off an http get request to change a virtual presence sensor on HE using API Maker.
It works perfectly once you have it all set up but it does take quite a bit of effort to get up and running. Just need to make sure you don't use randomised MAC addresses on the phones you want to use for presence, make sure to set the option of using the device MAC address.
I have tried sooooo many different presence detection methods and this is the only one that is 100% affective. Been running for quite a few months now without issue.

#42

Yup.

#43

Never mind, I see now that it would likely!

#44

I'm not super technically advanced, but I'll take a crack at this sometime

#45

Not that one but there are others like

1 Like
#46

I have a tasker profile handling a basic home/away mode based on geofence, Bluetooth and WiFi, which sends an http, but we are moving soon and I'm not sure what the cell reception is like there (it's not great at my parents, which is about 8 blocks away) so I was wondering if anyone has a method that doesn't rely on the phone have internet to communicate with the hub

#47

My method only requires wifi to be left on on the phone which I generally do anyway as this helps the phones location services. All processing is done off phone so no battery eating app is required. House locks/unlocks, alarm sets/unsets when I'm close to home (within sight) but not so close I can't go to the rubbish bins etc. By the time I've walked to the front door or got out of the car on the drive the door is unlocked and the alarm turned off.....every time!

1 Like

Download the Hubitat app