I used to use Geohopper for my presence controls but have migrated to Geofency (iOS only, Android folks - but perhaps OwnTracks will work for you?). The benefit of this over the Hubitat app for presence is you can use as many geofences as you want and trigger as many virtual presence sensors as you wish. Benefit of this over Life360 is that you're not giving a company access to your location/private info.
My use-case for this over Hubitat's native geofencing is I have a wider geofence to do things like adjust the HVAC, start/return my robot vac, etc; while also having a narrow fence to control things like unlocking home doors and opening garage doors. I also have a use case for iBeacons to help eliminate false positives with my security cameras, and this allows me to integrate them into Hubitat.
Installation is also available via HPM - just search for keyword "presence"
If you have Android folks in your family, you might want to look at OwnTracks, which is based on the same code as Geofency - [RELEASE] OwnTracks Presence. The benefits of Geofency to OwnTracks is that Geofency allows a per-location webhook while OwnTracks has the same webhook for all locations. The cons for Geofency is that it is iOS only.
this might be a stupid question, but how do iBeacons keep track of your presence across rooms/locations? I'm assuming you'd always have to have the beacon on your person?
Beacon is plugged in powered by USB; the trigger is your phone (assuming it’s on you). I have one on lower power in my garage to help with false positives on my security cameras (if I’m leaving, don’t trigger anything). I also have one in my car, the web hook calls an API call to lock/unlock it.
Unfortunately, it looks like Geofency is iOS only.
Made an update to this - available via HPM. You can now have your device name be ser whatever you want (in case you have virtual devices and name them in a specific way). Because of this, you have to update the location and user within the driver itself - one driver per user, per location.
If you have Android folks in your family, you might want to look at OwnTracks, which is based on the same code as Geofency - [RELEASE] OwnTracks Presence. The benefits of Geofency to OwnTracks is that Geofency allows a per-location webhook while OwnTracks has the same webhook for all locations.
How has your battery usage been with Geofency? How has the reliability been for you? Do you find that suddenly it stops working and you have to load it up to make it work again? I'll spend the money on it but I don't want it to turn out to be just like OwnTracks when is free. I just want something that is reliable.
For those that have used OwnTracks, does this one seem to be more reliable for you?
It's been very reliable. I've actually had OwnTracks have issues (since I developed the HE integration for it as well), I run both. I'll be sitting in the living room an OwnTracks will tell me I've arrived/left. I also like that Geofency allows for multiple regions/locations per app. This means I can have different spots or different radii to do different things (one may lock house, one may start vacuum, etc). It's been worth the money for me.
I have a related question -- we're an iOS family, so Geofency's great. However, I've only figured out the most basic features of the app (enough to integrate with HE) by guessing my way through the UI, but the app seems capable of many more things. I can't find any real app documentation online, just marketing materials.
Does anyone have a link to more in-depth information on the app?
I have the device etc set up and when I send the Webhook it says successful but it doesn't change the device (Present/Not Present) when I send a Enter or Exit. Any ideas?
Does Geofency in cooperation with a bunch of iBeacons give you room-level granularity? In other words can I use the combination to tell who enters a room and whether the room is occupied? (Assuming, of course, they have their iPhone in hand.)
The geofency integration is working great! Wish I could say as much for the iPhone app itself. Have you seen any documentation out there that might help me figure out how this thing actually works? I can manually check in (and HE gets the update so I know that's working) but it doesnt seem to be sending updates as I enter or leave a monitored area, and while it detects the iBeacon it doesn't ever seem to change status. I know it's not your integration, that's all working fine. Just wish the guy who wrote the app had some decent documentation or troubleshooting tips or something.
Whew. After some fussing and lots of googling I've managed to get Geofency working for geofencing as well as ibeacon presence. One of the tricks for me was reconfiguring the transmit power on my beacons. Now to see if the iBeacons are as useful as they sound or if this is an automation looking for a solution. I have one rigged next to a Yale lock to open it if I approach from the outside. Anyone else played with this kind of functionality?
