Ring: Hubitat vs Alexa

[steveff]

@HarleysWorld

This is good to know! If you’ve tried different geolocation apps, is Life360 the one you recommend the most? I was going to try HSM, but willing to use others.

If you're in the US then Alexa will probably work OK for you if you just want arriving or leaving home, I am very happy with Life360+ though as it covers a much broader geofencing setup such as arriving or leaving home and arriving or leaving work/school etc. Multiple places can be setup and used in Hubitat.

I have thought about using a few options and merging them but haven't really needed to so far and have used just life360 for the past couple of years, occasionally it is a bit slow and the alarm doesn't auto disarm (there are a few other rules around this such as the door lock keypad being used as well as arriving home on life360 etc) but 99% of the time it is good and Alexa announces (via echo speaks) when the alarm is auto disarmed anyway so you soon know if you need to manually disarm on the keypad.

[HarleysWorld]

This is a good suggestion! Do you have an example on what an “Away” mode would look like using a combination of these different apps?

One problem we’ve noticed with our dog’s Fi collar (uses AT&T cellular service for the geolocation), it would sometimes say she’s like 0.3 miles away when she’s actually just sleeping on the couch lol. That would be problematic if we only depended on one app to determine our location especially if it’ll act like our dog’s collar.

Also, what’s the name of the app do you use to see certain phones are connected to the WiFi? My husband was wondering if this would be better.

[Sebastien]

In order to combine multiple presences into one, I use the following app:

[RELEASE] Combined Presence

https://github.com/joelwetzel/Hubitat-Combined-Presence Combined Presence app for Hubitat An app for Hubitat to combine two or more presence sensors to control an output Virtual Presence Sensor. There are 3 types of combiners: Standard Combiners (Use this for combining wifi and gps-based sensors for a single person. It is optimized for that.) Boolean-OR Combiners (Example: If Person1 OR Person2 is home, then the virtual SomeoneIsHome sensor should be home.) Advanced Combiners (All logic o…

The driver that finds the phone’s IP on the network is;

[UPDATED] iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor

https://github.com/joelwetzel/Hubitat-iPhone-Presence-Sensor iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor for Hubitat A virtual presence sensor for Hubitat that checks if an iPhone is on the WiFi network. Note: iPhones can put their WiFi to sleep, so you should not use this as your only way of detecting presence. However, it can be used to augment other presence sensors. Interpret results this way: If this sensor shows "present", the iPhone is DEFINITELY present. If this sensor shows "not present", the iP…

And like you, I find that some solutions work in some cases, some in others. The presence combiner seems to make them all work better.

[HarleysWorld]

Thank you this is super helpful! Do you recommended putting these multiple apps in an OR or AND operand? I feel as tho maybe AND is better (e.g. Geofency away AND Hubitat away AND WiFi away, then Mode = “Away”)? If our internet connection dies or one of us leaves our phone, we can just override the Arming of the security system, right? Rather than dealing with our system Arming/Disarming while we are home. Not sure what’s worst.

[HarleysWorld]

Alexa wouldn’t work for us if it only lets you use one phone to determine geolocation

[Sebastien]

This is how I have setup my combiner:

[steveff]

@HarleysWorld

Alexa wouldn’t work for us if it only lets you use one phone to determine geolocation

Where are you located, if in the US then this is not the case, if in Australia (and I assume other places as well) then I'm afraid that's the case. In short if you cant do this (I think this is right but of course I dont have the household profile option so cant check) then you cant add more than one phone for geolocation.

Open the Alexa app on your phone.
Tap the More tab at the bottom.
Select Settings and choose Household Profile. An overview of Amazon      Household displays.
Tap Start.
Invite a family member to share your Echo.

[HarleysWorld]

Thank you! Do you know on top of your head if those work as OR statements? Or if those work as AND statements? Or do you pick? I should probably just try it lol. Not at the other home to try atm tho.

[terminal3]

I was going to add the Alexa app works pretty well for Geo location, and you can have two phones control geo location. On IOS anyway.

You can create a routine in Alexa that when your phone leaves or enters a location that it turns on a switch. That switch can be a virtual switch in HE. This may be different now as I set it up a long time ago. The problem was on my wife's phone I could not see the smart home devices when creating a routine. She can tell Alexa to turn on a smart home switch while in her account but I could not create a routine to turn it on. When Alexa added the custom action item in the routines it fixed the issue. So in the routine I can't just turn on the switch directly but I can create a custom action, which I can say Alexa turn on a switch, and that works. I used the Alexa app as my main Geo location app for quite some time.

All that said I, like others have mentioned, use several geo location devices. and use a combiner. I have seen two times when Alexa Geo location stopped working for several weeks at a time. That is why I added GeoFency. As far as I know it has never failed and I have been using it for a year or better now. Since I use the combiner it could have but between it, the Alexa app, Wifi Presence, the HE app itself I have not had a miss in a long time.

[Sebastien]

I suspect it may be different for arrival and departure. I would try for an “OR” on arrival and an “AND” on departure. For sure, if an IP is detected, then it sees this as an arrival. Departure ignores the presence of the device on the network I think (as devices can seem to linger, or even connect / disconnect during the day)