I already have presence detection for my partner and me using Life360, Hubitat app, Alexa, and Wi-Fi ping. It's been working adequately for a few years, and I have a lot of (mostly lighting) apps built around it, like turn off all lights when we both leave, turn on entry lights when the first of us comes back in the evening or night, trigger Alexa guard 10 minutes after we leave, etc.
However, two things that I still do manually when we leave town, not just leave home, are:
Turn off Nest thermostat (its built-in location stuff doesn't seem to work reliably enough)
Turn off some smart plugs, particularly Emporia ones (I can't find an app/driver for these )
Is there any suggested way of knowing I'm out of town? Larger radius for more time? Would I need to define that radius in each of the apps reporting location?
I haven't really starting thinking about how to do this beyond the above, so open to all ideas/suggestions. If there's another thread discussing this, also all ears. Thanks!
If you use Locative you can set up multiple geofences. I assume these can overlap so that you could use a small one of a few hundred metres for when you leave home; then a much larger one to cover town. I don’t know much about Locative as I’m new to it. There’s a request designer (paid version) that allows you to create custom http requests per location. You may be able to get around that by simply creating an additional virtual presence device that changes state when you’re in town/out of town.
We have a "VACATION" virtual switch, on a dashboard, with the little "umbrella over beach chair" icon. It's become a "thing" whose turn it is to push it when we leave.
WAF very high.
I'm actually remote at the moment but my use case may be a bit different as I just use it to automate lights (as in simulate someone is home). So the rule is triggered daily at certain times of the day and is conditionally limited based time since away mode.
In your case, it might be useful to have a rule triggered based on location mode change to away. Then a cancelable wait for time event (now + 48 hours)...then do stuff.
Just be sure to you have a reset...mine is just lighting stuff so my normal modes will correct upon return.
Edit:
Just mocked up something, not sure why I never thought of adjusting thermostat but I'm gonna try it out.
vacationMode variable is a hub boolean variable. Using it in my normal mode automations (i.e. if mode changes to Day...do light automation, etc...then if vacationMode true resumeProgram on My Ecobree and set vacationMode to false
I’d actually tried Locative previously but it was just out of interest some time ago, as I didn’t have a need for it then and I deleted it.
In light of the current issues with Hubitat presence (on iOS 1.2.8) I’ve had no choice but to go back to it to restore operation for a single rule.
I’ve stopped posting regarding the issue as I’m pissing in the wind getting anyone to acknowledge a new issue (I’m not talking about it being hit and miss/unreliable, I’m talking about an issue specific to version 1.2.8 of the iOS app). There have been several other complaints recently and it’s not until yesterday that any member of staff bothered to respond. The only ones who’ve responded were already using an alternative, or using it in combination with something else. Only those users on iPhone, using version 1.2.8 and solely using that for presence could reasonably comment, agree/disagree as to whether it has failed as a result of that latest update. Who knows….
)
I was waiting for that, fair enough.
