Is there a hubitat app feature that looks for hub connectivity through bluetooth and/or wifi vs geo boundary?
Id prefer to have my home/away reacts when the hub detects a Bluetooth device or a device (phone) connected onto the wifi/lan network.
Id prefer that home/away changes once im in view of my house.
My wifi signal is out to the edge of my driveway so it is a fairly reliable indicator of location.
Its not welcomed having arrival notifications start anytime i drive into my neighborhood. I have shrunken the bouandry as far as it will let me but its still .25 mile radius. I might be stopping at the gas station or store near my home but could be minutes from being i front of it or in inside of it.
Ive had to move my location to avoid the unnecessary triggering when i drive by on the highway next to my house during the day but not actually at home.
So it seems GPS signals are not exactly reliable at the boundary I would prefer to have for activations.
I used to use a SmartThings Arrival Sensor.
They're not made anymore, but come up on eBay periodically.
It uses Zigbee.
Hubitat does not have Bluetooth capability.
Are you currently using the Hubitat mobile app or another geofencing app?
The smallest radius for the Hubitat app’s geofence is quite a bit smaller than a quarter mile, probably more like 100 yards or so (maybe 200?).
This is possible, with a custom driver developed by the community. Can work well for arrival but not a good solution for departure, since phones can shut off WiFi while sleeping to save battery.
There is this Driver DriverWiFiPingPresence which pings for your mobile on the wifi network. Only thing you will have to do is reserve your IP address on the router for you phone(s) so they always connect using the same IP address.
I have used ST presence sensors since day once but I found, after testing ZB issues on channel 15, that they don't work on that channel.
That wasn't a huge problem as I use Owntracks, very successfully, on my and my wifes phone.
I have a few 'play cars' though and I need to know if they leave and come as the garage door is tied to these events. My phone coming and going doesn't tell HE what car I'm driving.
I bought an APRIL gateway/tags and installed the BLE Gateway manager.
Now I have a BT tag in each vehicle as well to identify their presence.
I have since gone off ZB ch15 and back to 20 so my ST sensors are working again but not in use as the BT tags have taken over.
I've tried this driver in the past, but it didn't seem totally dependable for me, but it may have just been my phone or something. It was working though, generally.
Hi,if you're on Android, then the community "iPhone WiFi presence sensor" app by joelwetzel is extremely reliable and does what you you're asking in terms of using your WIFI connection to determine location. I've been using it for 2 years with 6-7 android devices and it's never failed me.
I'm told it's not good on iPhones because they purposely disconnect from WIFI to save power. I've not had this problem with Android and we've used, Samsung, LG, Huawei, Motorola and perhaps one or two others.
Agreed the Geofence is a but under a 1/4 mile but ive had random issues ive blamed on the boundary being too small.
I believe there needs to be a better way with a more integrated system with some type of beacon that phones can detect and also the beacon can detect Bluetooth devices.
So you would have a beacon or multiple beacons forming a mesh monitoring Bluetooth id numbers floating around and if it sees a Bluetooth device it recognizes it can start a connection and notify hubitat via wifi integration. I would also expect the beacon to monitor wifi MAC addresses as they connect. Problematic on apple if someone has random MAC address option turned on for the wifi network but it could also operate with the bonjor protocol.
This would presumably require an application on each client device to register itself to the beacon mesh network. Once a Bluetooth device is paired im not sure how often iphone looks for Bluetooth devices with the phone off or transmits a Bluetooth-le signal but you shouldn’t need to rely on the application to run in the background, should be able to register a on-connection event trigger with apple api when it sees the beacon and simply reply to a push notification from a Bluetooth device or network push notification.
Iphone shortcuts app has the ability to launch an application and show notifications with some simple commands.
I currently use shortcuts app to open hubitat app when i connect to my wifi network to be sure the geofence works properly.
I’ve definitely noticed that iphone will not reliably allow apps to trigger with geofencing. Hubitat and my security apps both have the same issues before i started launching them automatically when I connected to wifi.
Thats what has brought me here seeking for a more elegant solution.
