How to sense away versus in house...

[jspoon]

How are you determining if someone is away or home?  I would like to take action like opening my garage door, etc. when I arrive and  I would also like to send notifications if I am away and something is sensed.

 

I have tried geofencing on my iphone, and it is not anywhere near consistent.  I have been miles away when it changed...  It may have something to do with the phone sleeping.

 

I was wondering if the ISY can somehow determine that my phone is connected to my wifi, that may also help (an OR condition but again phones can be sleeping).

 

I guess I could set a variable with my phone or with a keypad button on the way out, but that requires more manual intervention and I would prefer something that does not require my action...

 

So, was wondering what others have done in this area...

[Xathros]

How are you determining if someone is away or home?  I would like to take action like opening my garage door, etc. when I arrive and  I would also like to send notifications if I am away and something is sensed.

 

I have tried geofencing on my iphone, and it is not anywhere near consistent.  I have been miles away when it changed...  It may have something to do with the phone sleeping.

 

I was wondering if the ISY can somehow determine that my phone is connected to my wifi, that may also help (an OR condition but again phones can be sleeping).

 

I guess I could set a variable with my phone or with a keypad button on the way out, but that requires more manual intervention and I would prefer something that does not require my action...

 

So, was wondering what others have done in this area...

Hi jspoon-

 

I use both Mobilinc geofencing and the presence of our phones on the house wifi network.  I have found that using only one of these can result in false arrivals or departures.  The ISY itself is not capable of monitoring the WiFi for connected devices.  For that, you will need something like a router running DD-WRT or Tomato firmware and a script to watch for connected devices and update state variables in the ISY via the /REST interface.  There are some good threads on this forum about how to accomplish that part.  To add to that, I have found that I need to time buffer disconnects as our phones often drop off the network then reattach a couple of minutes later.  I logged these connects and disconnects for a while to build a profile by device type to determine the best wait time before I consider a device "gone"  on average that worked out to 4 minutes.  I do still get a false disconnect on occasion but maybe only once a week now.  I have also found it valuable to have an extra variable for each device that gets set to 1 when both the WiFi and Geofence say the device is home and 0 when both say gone.  This way I can act on the first indication that a device has arrived home and not on a reconnect after I'm already home.

 

I hope this helps.  I'm happy to provide additional details if needed.

 

-Xathros

[andyf0]

I use MobiLinc geofencing and it is reasonably accurate. More accurate for leaving the area than arriving. If the phone is sleeping I can arrive in the driveway before it triggers.

 

I use 4 motion sensors with 15 minute timeouts to detect motion in the house. If all sensors timeout it is assumed no one is home. This sends a text to my iPhone and shuts down the house and thermostat 5 minutes later. Of course, this only happens if the iPhone is away from home. Before the geofencing feature the house would shutdown if I took a nap.

[Xathros]

I too monitor motion sensors and other control events in the house to control occupied/vacant status and like Andy, take into consideration the visibility of our phones to prevent the house from sleeping if somebody is home.  I had to build in an override that I can set from Mobilinc for those times when someone forgot their phone at home...

 

-Xathros

[EricK]

I am not sure where the thread is, but someone who travels a lot set up progams to monitor devices in the house.  If no device was manually activated for a period of time then an away mode was triggered.   This assumes that during typical home living you hit a button or switch every so often.  Obviously the time window for this (ex: 10 hours) may be greater than the time you run out for an errand.

Or just set up an away button by the door to turn off the lights and trigger your away mode when you leave.

[raymondh]

You may only be interested in insteon solutions but I thought I would mention that I'm using the arm state of my security system.

[MWareman]

You may only be interested in insteon solutions but I thought I would mention that I'm using the arm state of my security system.

What if you want to arm away based on everyone's lack of presence in the house to protect against kids that constantly forget to arm the alarm when they go out, but NEVER forget their phone?

[larryllix]

I use motion detectors everywhere to detect presence/away. 6 - X10 old units and 3 Insteon units. In the bedrooms they are mounted over the head of the beds (on top of the usual picture) so people sleeping cannot trigger them but upon rising the BR lights go on time-dependant  brightnesses.

 

If there is no motion anywhere for four hours we are away.

If there is motion in the mudroom and no motion elsewhere for 20 minutes we are away. (our usual exit)

Between 11 PM and 8 AM doesn't count = only update to occupied status (just sleeping)

If there is motion in the workshop building between 11 PM and 8 AM then flash some lights, text message me and ring the doorbell.

[Bob P.]

I use MobiLinc geofencing and it is reasonably accurate. More accurate for leaving the area than arriving.

I've found that increasing the home radius has a significant effect on sensing the arrival. It's easy for the phone to know if it's outside a small fence because most position errors don't bring it back into the circle. It's harder to know if you're inside the fence, because position errors are apt to indicate that you're outside the fence.

 

Increasing the radius from 100 meters to 300 meters usually doesn't impact functionality that much, but it makes it much easier for the phone to know that you're home.