I currently have rules set up in rule manager to locks and unlocks the door using the geofencing option in the iOS app. Over the past week, I have had two instances where the my front door lock has been unlocked in the middle of the night due do it sensing I have arrived. This has left my door unlocked through much of the night. In looking at the event logs, it shows an entry for my phone departing, and then returning a few minutes later. This activates the door unlock. In these cases neither me or the phone had left or returned. Any thoughts on what is causing this? I never had an issue such as this on ST. I know I can add rules and conditions to prevent this, but I do not believe this should be happening in the first place.
What are you using for presence? There are a few ideas that come immediately to mind. Your phones are set to turn things off when they're not being used. Like gps and wifi. I use life 360 and it's pretty stable, but I have seen it bounce to 10 miles away and back because my phone doesn't see the satellite. I'm set to high accuracy using wifi, but your phone can sleep the wifi if it's not being used as well. I also had issues like that when I was on smartthings. I've always read that you should put certain protocols into play as a backup in case this should happen. No one has ever guaranteed that it won't happen. Better safe than sorry.
I do not believe this is any sort of phone sleeping issue as I have had it happen twice today while one my phone sitting in my home office. But I think you are correct, precise location information is being lost. I will update rules to protect against this while trying to figure out why this is happening. Like I said, I did not have one issue with this process while on ST.
I found the iOS app to be unreliable for my unlock routines. It would often show me as just outside the geofence area. So I moved to a SmartThings Arrival sensor. Right now I'm testing the Iris key fob 3450-L2 (bought used on eBay) to verify that it works as well as the ST Arrival sensor. So far it looks good.
One thing I have setup on my KeyWe is autolock. Even if it unlocks (which it doesn't) in the middle of the night, it'll lock again in 7 seconds.
This can happen when a phone dies due to battery depletion, among other causes. When it has power again, it suddenly thinks you have arrived, and triggers your rule.
For presence, especially if you’re unlocking doors or disabling alarms, always use multiple triggers to guard against this. I use per-user WiFi presence, geolocation, and physical presence detection via a motion sensor at my front door. You need all three for the door to unlock.
Despite all three of these, I’ve still had unintended triggers. So I now also pause my unlock rules once the door has unlocked and presence is detected inside the house. Only when WiFi presence is no longer detected, and we have left the geofences area, does the unlock rule resume.
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I'm glad to see that you're taking precautions. If someone wanted in, house locked or not, they're gonna get in. But let's not invite them with an open door. I've stayed away from auto unlocking doors for that reason. And I hate to say, I discourage my friends from setting it up too. That's just too big of a thing to trust with a hobby like this. IMHO - and it is a hobby. Albeit a very cool hobby. But, still a hobby.
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Thanks for the feedback. I did not have these issues with ST. I adding a WiFi presence argument as well, and I'm still having the same issue. This confirms the issue is with the phone disconnecting from WiFi and GPS. I will have to explore other options. Does anyone have any thoughts on how ST was able to overcome this issue?
