I set up alexa to play music when i arrive home, and that is working. I tried to set hubitat to detect if music is playing on a device to unlock the door. Of course the echo it is playing on wonât show up in the amazon skill on hubitat. Shows up on the alexa app. I tried uninstalling and unlinking accounts. That didnât make it show up either. I am pretty sure it is the only echo not showing up. But of course it is, as it is the only one i would want to use this way. All others may have music playing at some point.
Yes i am using the built in geofencing sorry for not being clear. Not sure how to check it when i am away. I canât connect to my hub.
The Hubitat mobile app on your phone will show if youâre inside or outside the geofence.
You should also be able to see arrival and departed events on the webpage in your third screenshot, but that looks totally blank.
Have you tried logging out and back into the mobile app? When logging back in, it should ask if you want to create a new mobile device or select one that already exists.
I am ok buying an apple tv or homepod, just to use for presence detection if that is what it takes. It just seems i should be able to use the built in, or even alexa
I have not tried that but i will try that now
Ok i have hope that fixed it. I canât get out of bed today so far though so it will be a while before i can test this. But i had to redo the routine and now under events it isnât blank anymore
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Hopefully thatâs an encouraging sign.
Using mobile phones as presence sensors can be tricky (regardless of which exact app youâre using).
If you have some time on your hands, you might find this thread to be helpful:
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Thank i just read that. Looks like something i will try. I didnât see a way to use alexa as a presence sensor. Though i thought there would be a way
Door did not unlock, and nothing new in the events on my iPhone device events tab. Just the event it added when i logged in with it earlier.
Did your presence change to Away when you were out? And then switch back to Home when you got back in the geofence?
There's no use thinking about the lock part until you've verified that the presence detection itself is working reasonably reliably.
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I honestly didnât think to check, i just noticed when i walked up to the door and it was locked
Ok i am out, and my geofencing on the hubitat says i am away. I can not connect to the hub though to show my devices and see if they say present or not
Viewing devices via the Rooms feature and Dashboards is included with app access - that doesn't require any add'l subscriptions or costs. You just need to build a dashboard with the devices you want to review.
I have my locks and presence indicators on a dashboard so I can easily view those statuses whether I'm on or off my own (home) network.
What do the logs say for your presence and the lock when you arrive? You can temporarily enable additional logging in the lock rule too - that can help give additional info about what's happening. Is it possible that you're not getting to your lock w/in 5 minutes of your (programatic) arrival and so the lock is already re-locked?
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Do you mean the Hubitat app on your phone? Or the phone device on your Hubitat hub?
In the hubitat app on my phone the geofencing says away. I do have a dashboard set up donât have my phone virtual presence on it though
I added the phone to the dashboard. It says present though.
I just added the new lock in 5 mins feature, but the logs for the lock are empty. Well that isnât true it shows that it was unlocked with the keypad but not the rule like it used to do.
I think it needs to refresh presence, but canât figure out how to make it do it. I manually hit the life360 refresh and it changed my status to not presence for both my life 360 sensor and my built in hubitat presence sensor for my phone app
If the virtual device corresponding to your phone is working as intended, you should see events populate here as you come and go.
I am on my way back home so i will know in an hour. I went ahead and purchased a month of the remote service just so i can try more things while i am away if it doesnât work today. I might just end up just buying a year of the service anyway. I am also trying to decide what apple device to buy. I donât think i would use the apple tv, and i donât want to spend so much on the homepod as i doubt i would use it much. But i was thinking about buying the echo studio, so maybe the homepod would be worth it. I know i can get the refurbished minis a lot cheaper, but then the only thing that would do is provide the presence detection. With the larger one i would get decent sounding music too.
Ok i am home. Door did not unlock, hubitat presence still says not present. If i go click on the life 360 refresh it will show phone is present then unlock the door
My recommendation is that you first solve for the best presence-sensing solution that works for you - it sounds like you still have L360 in the mix as well as the HE app geofence. If L360 is still working for you, that's great, but I'd get a backup plan ready.
Part of that solution is setting up a virtual presence device that's tied to your desired presence solution - that device can then be leveraged in a dashboard for easy reference and used in rules related to arrivals/departures. You do not need HE's (extra) Remote Admin feature to do any of that.
Right now, it sounds like your virtual presence device is still tied to L360 -- that's fine if that's what works, but if you go a different direction from L360, that needs to be addressed.
Worry about the lock rule last -- thinking about that is just wasted time until you get a working presence-sensing solution nailed down.
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