mobilinc back GPS locations!!!

[viper14]

Hey everyone, i had this happen for a 2nd time again today, and once last week, I'm and driving home and no where near my house, first time was a good 15km away 2nd time was a good 8-10km away, all of a sudden mobilinc announces "entering region" and then my garage door opens and all the lights come on etc, i can check this via my IP cams in my home. The first time i thought this might of been a small glitch but when it happens a 2nd time it really makes me thing that i cant rely on the mobilinc application, I'm running this on a iphone5 32gb on ios 6.1.3 with mobilincHD application and using the mobilinc cloud service. I'm not sure what i can possibly do to fix this it seems like there some sort of glitch with the app... why is it thinking I'm at home? Normally form day to day when i drive up the street most days it shows entering region at the correct time, other times I'm sitting in my driveway for a good 30-45 seconds before the phone even thinks its in the zone... why cant this app work more reliable

[ISYhbsh01]

The location accuracy really has nothing to with Mobilinc. It comes from ios.

 

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[InsteonNut]

viper14,

 

hbsh01 is correct, any notices about geo-fencing (entering/leaving) come directly from iOS. MobiLinc responds by setting the location variable to a 1 or a 0. The question really is, why does iOS think your phone is home or away several KM out?

 

Based on your description it sounds like you might have Wi-Fi turned off. If you do, that would explain the large distance to your region. With Wi-Fi off, iOS ONLY has cell towers to base any decision about location on. When your phone attaches to the cell tower near your house, your phone is "inside of your region" as far as iOS can tell. In order to get finer granularity you need to turn Wi-Fi on to allow iOS to see Wi-Fi access points in the area for finer location notifications.

 

Please see our website on tips to improving the geofence experience: http://mobilinc.com/geofence/

 

Wes

[viper14]

Is there a way to have mobilinc only run the geofence program once it hits your internal WiFi, i have a very large enterprise WiFi system with multiple AP's in my home, its accessible 3-4 houses away, would be nice if it could only run the program once its on the internal wif. is there any other variables that could be added to the geolocation so that if the devices is within the geolocation and joined to a wifi network "then" the program runs, this would defiantly help with the phone thinking its randomly in the zone when its not?

[InsteonNut]

Hi viper14,

 

I would recommend setting your geofence radius to the minimum of 100 meters. This is a minimum defined by iOS and is roughly the radius of a Wi-Fi access point.

 

Wes

[mitch236]

I've had a similar experience with geofencing inaccuracies making it useless. I'm hopeful that either Mobilinc or Apple will allow for GPS use. Until then, it is only useful for non-critical uses.

[mmb]

Same experience. Pressing the power button usually wakes it up but as I'm using it to open my garage door, I just as well press my remote..

 

I'm set to 100m

 

mmb

[hmatos]

Same here - very nice feature, but not terribly reliable. I thought that setting the area to 200m would help - but it has actually made it worse.

[InsteonNut]

Hi All,

 

I just wanted to comment on the geofence feature. GPS isn't an option yet with iOS and geofencing with one exception. If another app is using the GPS like Apple Maps, then iOS uses that GPS data for the geofence. However, if the GPS sensor were on all the time, the battery would drain within a few hours. So, when no other app is using the GPS sensor, iOS uses cell towers and known Wi-Fi nodes in the area to supplement location data.

 

This will work better for some folks than others. It all depends on Wi-Fi node density in and around your home. Let's say your neighbor at the end of your street has a Wi-Fi router that's visable from the street. A good geofence setting would be to set it up so that the radius includes your neighbor's house. That way when you drive home and turn the corner near the end of the street, iOS has a good shot at seeing the neighbor's Wi-Fi node and can notify MobiLinc you are "home".

 

With that in mind, widening out the radius to capture more Wi-Fi nodes will help with the responsiveness. Also, you must keep Wi-Fi ON in order for iOS to use Wi-Fi nodes as a location supplement. With Wi-Fi turned off iOS only has cell towers for location which is only accurate down to the radius of the cell broadcasting area (several miles).

 

Even with all the tweaks to finetune your geofence, Apple's documentation on geofence notification to the app states that iOS will try to deliver the notification within about 4 minutes of entering or leaving a geofence. Usually it's instant, but even in good Wi-Fi dense areas, there can be a delay to get the notification to MobiLinc.

 

I too hope that iOS 7 brings continued improvements to this feature.

 

Wes

[jwagner010]

In NYC and NJ area works great for me. Very accurate and reliable but then again when I walk outside my apartment in NYC I see 30 access points so not surprising. I love this feature. Lets hope Apple drives improvements for those not in dense areas like NYC.

[abuttino]

In NYC and NJ area works great for me. Very accurate and reliable but then again when I walk outside my apartment in NYC I see 30 access points so not surprising. I love this feature. Lets hope Apple drives improvements for those not in dense areas like NYC.

 

You've got to be in a dense area for iOS geofencing to work? Wow.. I still wonder why Apple dropped Google Maps. They could have had all the access points in the world with it.