Change modes when someone arrives

Hello! I was wondering if there is a way to change modes based on arriving and leaving. For example, I arm the system to night and I am home but alone. My wife arrives when that happens I want to disarm. Not if someone is already in the house.

I use iPhone Locator, a couple of virtual switches, and a combination switch. When either of us leaves, our virtual switch Person_Home is turned off. When both of those switches are off, the combination switch No_One_Home is turned on. When on, it sets House Mode to Away and arms Blue Iris. When either of us come home, the combination is turned off, House Mode is set to Home, and cameras are disarmed.

These switches only display in VeraMate when on to make the screen less cluttered. If we are home, the Person_Home switch is shown. When one leaves, that person’s switch turns off and stops displaying on VeraMate. When both gone, the No_One_Home switch and the cameras armed switches display.

And I use VeraAlerts to send me messages to VeraMate when these switches change status.

Just so you know … since you use PLEG … you can replace the Combination switch with a PLEG condition.

For 3 out of 4 to trigger:

Combine = (T1 + T2 + T3 + T4) > 2

Not aware of that. But I like using the combination switch to display No_One_Home in VeraMate when it is on, and not displayed when off. I suppose I could create a virtual switch that is turned on by a PLEG action. I’ll have to think about it.

You could make a geofence trigger scene, so it disarms the home when wife enters the geofence.

This implies that you have to use the mobile app to create a geofence, then create a scene with a geofence trigger.

John,

I have another question along the same lines as this topic…and it may very well be the direction the OP ends up having to ask later anyway…

A long time ago I set up my account and got it hooked up with my Vera3. As I have been growing my system I have also gotten married, moved, etc… and I did the thing you are not supposed to do and just logged my wife’s phone in under my account as well so she could “turn on the danged lights!!!”. I have since started automating things and have now begun to play with Geofencing, locator, etc. NOW, it matters WHO’s phone it is. I have been trying to find the old post detailing how to have a second account hook up to the same controller and I cant find it. I set up an account but cant figure this part out. All references I can find in the forum just say to set it up but not a word on how to actually do it.

Hey there,

Indeed, for Geofence and user based house mode change/scenes to work correctly, all mobile devices used in the process need to have each, it’s own account. If you use the same account on multiple mobile devices, geofence won’t work correctly, or won’t work at all.

For this, to work correctly, you have create additional accounts, by logging in your master account, then navigate to Users & Account Info → Other users → Add user, and create any number of accounts, with Administrator access level, for each mobile device you want to participate in your home automation. Once you have created these account, you can login with them on each of the mobile devices.

Hope this helps.

It does. I had remembered in one of the threads I saw that we were to make the second account in MIOS not our personal vera. I gues I either read it wrong or it has changed. So, If I have her go to the vera app in her phone right now and log out of mine name, and log in with the USR/PASS i created in my vera unit, she can log in?

Yes, if the username has been created from your master account, it will work and your wife will have the same access to Vera, as you. In addition Geofence will work correctly.

The additional accounts have to have Administrator level access?
According to the level information, “Basic” level accounts can change modes. “Operate the Vera system by changing Modes and operating devices such as lamp dimmers (as allowed by the Administrator).”
I am assuming that is all the geofencing is doing. Changing modes?
The reason I ask is,

  1. I would rather not have some accounts like my kids or room mates not have administrator level access to the Vera system.
  2. I have an additional account on the “Basic” level and it worked flawlessly previously to change modes when geofenced. But this week the geofence suddenly started having problems monitoring this accounts mobile device. For example the Vera would go into away when this Basic accounts mobile device was the only device at home.
    Please advise.

Samething for us we have Iphone 6 and 6s and sometimes they show away and we re in the house.

I think iCloud has a little “wobble” or it loses track of the exact location of the iPhone. Here is a screenshot of datamine tracking both phones using iPhone Locator. You can see the “wobble” when were are home and asleep. I have my radius set to 0.1 miles. If it is too tight, you may get false exits from the geofence.

Oh, iPhone Locator shows I am in my neighbor’s living room at the moment when I am in my living room.

I hope they have good internet connectivity and their fridge is full of beer :slight_smile:

I’d settle on a fridge full of beer ;D

[quote=“Jamr, post:10, topic:196412”]The additional accounts have to have Administrator level access?
According to the level information, “Basic” level accounts can change modes. “Operate the Vera system by changing Modes and operating devices such as lamp dimmers (as allowed by the Administrator).”
I am assuming that is all the geofencing is doing. Changing modes?
The reason I ask is,

  1. I would rather not have some accounts like my kids or room mates not have administrator level access to the Vera system.
  2. I have an additional account on the “Basic” level and it worked flawlessly previously to change modes when geofenced. But this week the geofence suddenly started having problems monitoring this accounts mobile device. For example the Vera would go into away when this Basic accounts mobile device was the only device at home.
    Please advise.[/quote]
    Sorry to be a month late on this. No, the additional accounts don’t have to be Administrators. I have this set up with my wife and with a guest user, and they’re both basic users. They have their own geofences set up, the geofences can trigger scenes and cause changes to house modes, and they can control devices.

What the Geofences do (as far as home/away) is set a flag for the user called ishome based on the geofence that’s flagged as home for that user. Provided you have geofencing configured to enable both home and away, then when any users have ishome=1, the controller will set house mode to home. Once all users have ishome=0, the controller will switch to away. It isn’t the users setting the house mode directly.

I use the ping sensor with some custom lua which works very well. When none of the trigger devices can be pinged, you can call a timer to switch modes. Just before the timer changes modes it checked the last time the ping sensor was triggered, this allows for rebooting the devices and transient connection losses.

I use a raspberry pi and a python script to ping devices over Bluetooth (just has to be turned on, not connected) and WiFi to see who’s home. The python script flips virtual switches on the Vera depending on if the ping was successful or not, and PLEG picks up the virtual switch status to see which mode the house needs to be in. This has been rock solid reliable in our house of four for over a year.

There is a ping sensor plugin for Vera, if can set static ip’s for people on your network then just a tad bit of code to put it all together.

This is probably a good idea for a plugin.