Managing mode changes through presence sensing

[krstevens87]

Hello, first time poster, and fairly new to this side of tech, so if I’m not providing the necessary or correct information, please let me know. I will be happy to provide it.

I feel like I’ve gotten a fairly good handle on my Hubitat, but I am struggling with the mode management. There seem to be several ways modes can be managed, and I’m not sure if they are conflicting with each other, if I am causing that or if it’s something else so here we go.

Hubitat REV C-8 Pro
Ethernet connected
Direct power from wall outlet
Platform version 2.4.3.171
App version 2.1.53 (454)
iPhone 16 running iOS 26.1

99% of all interaction occurs through the app on my phone.

To my knowledge, mode can be set to a change by automation (presence sensing) many ways, but the primary sources I am aware of are below. Screenshots of each at bottom of post.

NOTE: This post is strictly discussing automated mode changes through presence sensor (mobile phone). I’m not seeking any info about manual mode changes.

1. Clicking the “Mode” button at the top of the Home Screen when you connect directly to IP which allows the choice of:

1b. New Integrated manager (For the sake of this post, all references to “1” will assume that the “New Integrated” mode manager is being used)

1c. Other apps (of which I’m sure there are many), which leads to number 2.

2. When I asked the Hubitat chat-bot for guidance, he informed me that the right way to manage modes was through the built-in-app “Mode Manager”, which I later came to realize likely requires a toggle flip from 1b to 1c above as well.

3. Once in a while I found myself somehow tripping over another mode manager, that seemed built in, but was very hard to access. I finally found a way to it, but even though it’s URL path shows it as an app, the app doesn’t exist and is un-searchable in my apps, the App Library and even community apps. It was called “Exit Away Mode Setter”, suggesting it is one of several similar apps that handle other modes, and is a flow chart style app.

   • It will not save my edits, and is not reflecting my mode settings set elsewhere.
   • It feels like a broken leftover piece of an older version that just won’t quit.
   • I can access it through my phones device logs when it re-enters the geofence, because it lists this app as a recipient of that message.

All 3 of these allow automatic mode changes based on presence sensing and all 3 seem to remain active in some way/affect certain apps/programs no matter how I set it up or restrict them.

So, with all that context, my simple question really is: What is the right way to manage modes through presence sensor automation?

[Alan_F]

There's not necessarily a 'right' way, but there are two main approaches to mode management. There's the newer integrated mode manager, and a mode manager app that you can install as shown in your #2 screenshot.

There is also a built-in app called Hubitat Safety Manager that is meant for managing 'alarm' type modes, although there is always the disclaimer that it shouldn't be relied on for life and death matters. HSM is where you'd normally see modes like 'Armed away' and 'Armed home'. For example HSM can be set to notify you when a door open while armed away, when a different door opens while armed home, and to always notify you when a leak sensor activates.

Huh modes are more commonly used to control lighting and other automation not related to flood, fire, and intrusion. Changes to Hub Modes can be used as a trigger on HSM to set HSM modes, so it's easy to get the two confused. It looks like you've named your hub modes with labels that match HSM modes. There is nothing stopping you from using the same names in both places, but it would probably be less confusing if you use different names.

The integrated mode manager should have had a pre set mode for Away. That is a special mode and you probably shouldn't rename or delete it. The Edit Away Mode Setter you found is related to that special mode, and as you discovered, it's really an internal page that isn't meant to be used to edit the mode.

When you edit Away mode, you'll see a message that says "While away mode is active, other modes are tracked in the background". This is critical because if you have a Day mode until sunset, and a Night mode after sunset, the hub needs to know which one to set when you 'Return for Away". This is the only mode that works this way. There is also a note that Away mode doesn't support day-of-week scheduling. Away mode is also the only one that has a section for "Mode Resets". The others have triggers and schedules, but no reset.

Typically the away mode trigger would be 'everybody leaves', and the Away mode reset would be 'someone returns home'.

If you deleted Away mode (assuming that's even possible), you're going to need to get the integrated mode manager reset to defaults. If it's still there but you renamed it, I'd rename it back so you can keep things straight.

So: Use modes to track times of day. You can layer complexity on that, but as a relatively simple example I have modes for
Early morning, Day, Sunset, Night, and Sleeping. All of those are based on some combination of time, sunrise/sunset, and even switches that turn on. (I use a rule to determine when to go into Sunset mode that depends on time and illuminance, and that rule turns on a virtual switch that triggers the mode along with some other things). I use away mode as described above, but also exit away and disarm HSM if one of my keypad door locks is unlocked, which works as a failsafe if the GPS-based presence sensing failed.

Once you've set up your hub modes, you can then use the modes in Room Lighting, Rule Machine, HSM and other places as triggers or conditions for automations.

Set up HSM and use that for things related to the house being Armed or Disarmed. You'll use the Away mode from the hub modes to trigger the Armed Away status, and the return from Away to Disarm.

As with many things in Hubitat there is more than one way to do the same thing, but hopefully what I've described will get you pointed in the right direction. For example you can also use changes to HSM mode to trigger other actions in rules, so if you manually switch HSM modes you could have a rule trigger from that.

[krstevens87]

Hey there,

Thank you so much for your response. I really should have also explained what I'm using my hub for, which is in fact for my own home security system, and yes I'm aware of the disclaimers LOL.

My modes are intentionally named as HSM labels to correspond with the HSM state that they activate or align with. This is because the HSM is automated through mode changes, and since this hub really doesn't support any other devices that are not part of my security system, I have dedicated the entire functionality of it to the security system.

I did not delete away mode, but I did edit the title to armed away mode. I did delete day and night mode or any other time of day mode because I don't need or want those.

Everything works perfectly when the modes change, all my rules fire and the HSM state changes, triggering more rules. Everything is perfect if I can just get the modes to consistently change based on presence sensing, because I'll set up the modes in one area and they'll work for... I don't know, a day, and then all of the sudden it's like they're listening to rules from somewhere else because my settings haven't changed where I set them, but I'm miles from home and it doesn't say that I'm away in a way mode.

So I'm certainly not discounting all of the helpful information you just provided, but Including the newly provided context of what my system is and how I'm using it, I hope you see that I haven't confused the modes and the HSM states, I've just simplified the labeling system between them since in my situation the hub is only a security system, but I have to go through the mode change to activate the HSM state that I need if I want to rely on presence sensing.

I suppose the other alternative is that I could create these same HSM state changes through the rule machine and simply do away with modes entirely, but I feel like that's probably not how the system is designed and maybe not the best solution. I'd rather gain a better understanding of the proper use of the hub then to eliminate a potentially powerful tool because I'm struggling to understand it

[Alan_F]

@krstevens87

my settings haven't changed where I set them, but I'm miles from home and it doesn't say that I'm away in a way mode.

Different strokes for different folks... I'd get very confused if my modes and HSM modes had the same names, even if I always kept them in sync. If it's working for you, no need to change anything, but if it's ever hard to tell which is which, maybe differentiate them by calling your mode manager mode "Armed_Home" to match to the HSM mode of "Armed Home", etc.

Recreating the Away / Return from Away behavior in Rule Machine is possible, but it gets complicated due to the need to track the other time-based mode changes in the background. However, I don't think your issue is with Mode Manager at all. This sounds like an issue with presence sensing for your phone.

Turn on logs for your phone device and then check to see if your phone is reliably reporting your geofence status. If the phone isn't reporting that you left, nothing in Mode Manager or HSM is going to fix that. If the phone is reporting but Mode Manager isn't getting set correctly, then we can work on figuring that out.

There are many discussions on this forum about the frustrations people have with phone presence sensing. Make sure you've already done all the best practices for phone settings. I use Android, so I'm not familiar with the specific iOS settings, but on both you have to make sure the phone is not putting the app to sleep to save battery.

I use the Combined Presence app to aggregate the Hubitat app, OwnTracks, and Google Home to get reliable presence sensing. For iOS there are other non-Hubitat geolocation apps I've seen mentioned here, and I believe you can use HomeKit to tie into your phone's location sensing.

On the 'return from away' side, I have a rule to set the Combined Presence sensor to 'present' when my phone WiFi connects and gets a DHCP lease from my OpenWRT router. This is frequently the first method that detects that my wife or I have arrived home. So in many cases, none of the three GPS-based sensors catch the 'return' event before my phone connects to WiFi.

So in summary, the first thing to do is ensure your phone is telling the hub when you arrive and depart. Once that is working correctly, you can run down any issues with the setup of Mode Manager or HSM.

[krstevens87]

And that kind of brings us back to the root of the issue for me, which is that my phone is sending a message about its arrival and presence. It’s just sending it to the wrong places and some of them I don’t even know what they are.

Actually, that just reminded me you didn’t really mention anything about number 3. Are you familiar with the third option for managing modes that I described up above iand showed in the screenshots? Because that’s the one that my iPhone is apparently talking with in this event log from my presence sensing iPhone. When I’ve been able to access it, it doesn’t allow me to save changes. It doesn’t work at all. It always reverts back to the original setting.

[Alan_F]

I mentioned it, but it was probably easy to miss in a long answer. The 'Exit Away mode setter' is an internal app that, as far as I can tell, is how the Integrated Mode Manager's Away mode hooks into events. You phone arrival is triggering two apps. When you say "some of them I don't even know what they are" do you mean that, or the one that starts with "Action-Set" or both?

Check your "Away" mode... have you set up both of these sections?

If you don't have the 'Mode resets' populated, then the phone arriving won't do anything with the modes.

[If you don't have the 'Mode resets' section at all, then you aren't in the Away mode settings, and if that's the case I'll suggest again that Mode names and HSM mode names are different things and might need different names.]

I thought they had made the Exit Away Mode setter app read-only in a recent build to prevent confusion about where to edit the modes, but it may still be on the to-do list for Hubitat. See my previous post about it appearing to be editable here:

UI Bug related to Exit Away mode setter

While updating some things on my hub I came across what looks like a UI bug. Hub is a C-8 Pro v 2.4.3.137. Lots of screenshots below, but here is a text summary: When using integrated mode manager, devices listed in "Mode resets - ANY of these will EXIT mode" will show the they are in use by "Exit Away mode setter". When clicking through from the 'In Use By' tab of the device, it is possible to navigate to a point where it appears you can clear and then recreate the list of devices for 'Mode…

[krstevens87]

This is where I first started using modes and I have had it set up this way most of the time I’ve owned my hub. It’s very simple. It’s just me here so I think it’s all set. It works beautifully when it works. I just don’t know why it’s not talking to it sometimes, and tracking down where these commands and messages are actually going is confusing because, as you said, to the best of your knowledge, the exit away mode setter is part of the integrated mode manager, but I can’t access it fully and I can’t change it even though it looks editable, and it’s instructions are contradictory to what I want it to do.

This is what it keeps defaulting back to, but I don’t want it to just exit away mode. I want to enter home mode. That’s how I have it set up everywhere else and half the time it won’t fire and I suspect that this could be overruling something of mine and I can’t do anything to it. If there’s a next step like “enter home mode setter” or something comparable to the “exit away mode setter” these applications aren’t accessible. You can’t search for them. You can’t pull them up directly. You can only find this one in logs and click on it through that, and even then it’s got no done or update or configure or even an OK button anywhere. If it’s an intentional part of the system, it should really be much more accessible. If it’s not intentional, that means it’s a remnant of something that shouldn’t be there anymore I would assume.

Either way, whatever this app is, I guess I’m just frustrated with how many different places these rules can be set simultaneously and how easy it is for them to contradict each other. I am aware that is how almost every aspect of this system is if you’re not careful, but in this specific case it feels like I can’t win because I’m not able to control all of the apps with settings that are influencing this.

Oh, and action-set is a rule that I created. It’s just the prefix I use for some rule sets to keep things organized.

[krstevens87]

Hang the heck on… I realize that you’re using the web GUI and I’m using the mobile app, but I just reread your post and there is a very distinct difference between your pics and mine and it’s not because I’m not in the mode settings because I’m definitely in the mode settings. I’m wondering now if this could just be an app issue and I need to go check this out on the web GUI.

Even if I go to create a new mode entirely, there is no line for resetting the mode. There’s just a line for the primary and alternate schedule.

[krstevens87]

No, we must be on different models or versions, because my web view is the same as the app.

[krstevens87]

Well, you were essentially right. Because all of my modes just saidf SET under primary and alternate schedule, I began to wonder if only "Away" mode had the reset/exit option. So, I created a new mode just called "Away" like it originally was.

There it is.

I specifically made sure to change the existing "away" mode to my "Armed Away" mode... but I didn't notice it changed the mode type and options completely. I'm a little surprised I can edit the name of this mode so casually without any warning of the significance of that... Geez. I had no idea my little edit to simplify the alignment of Mode/HSM for my setup would be system breaking. Thank you for your time and all your thoughts, you were right on it, and I don't think I would have found this myself.

[Alan_F]

Edit: We were typing at the same time. Most of my message is no longer relevant. Glad you figured it out.

I'll leave this part of my original post:

If you're not using modes for anything but:

• Arm HSM when everyone leaves
  and
• Disarm HSM when someone returns

Then you might be better off not using Mode Manager at all, and just creating two Rule Machine rules that arm/disarm HSM.

[krstevens87]

Yeah, I kind of started to realize that during our back-and-forth, it just never crossed my mind because the mode function felt like such an integral part of the hub that I never even considered removing it from the process due to the simple nature of my system. I’m gonna try eliminating the home and away mode entirely and make sure I can do that with everything I have set up. Time to back up the system! Thanks again for your help.