GeoScenes Don't Work

Hi,

I just subscribed to the SimpleWave premium service in order to be able to take advantage of the GeoScenes function. My hope was that if it worked properly I could totally migrate all my Vera control over to SimpleWave from Automator.app. Unfortunately though, I’ve yet to be able to get the GeoScenes working at all on my iPhone 5. I am using the latest version of SimpleWave: v1.0.7.

I set my home location (several times actually) while I was at home, and driving away from my home and back towards it does in fact show that SimpleWave can track how far I am from home. When I’m home however my Vera’s ID in the @Home pane is not shaded orange to indicate that I’m “home” like my iPhone locator app ID’s show in the @Home pane. Leaving my home, regardless of the distance never triggers any scenes I set for when I’m leaving home, and returning home never triggers any scenes I set for when I’ve returned. Am I missing something here? It seems like it should be very simple but that the GeoScenes doesn’t register me as actually being home, or leaving home??

Also, what is the threshold distance that SimpleWave uses to determine when I’ve arrived home or left? Is it .15 miles from the home location? .25? .50? etc??

The fact that the user in @home doesn’t change to orange (home) or white (away) means that the scenes assigned will not run because the state doesn’t look like it changing - I’ll do some testing now to see what the issue may be.

The home geofence is currently 100 meters.

Thanks for the quick reply, Mark. SimpleWave’s latest update to 1.0.7 fixed my connectivity issues where my z-wave devices wouldn’t load, and other than a little lag for a few devices, SimpleWave works amazingly well for me. If I can just get the GeoScenes working properly, I can use SimpleWave for all my z-wave control.

I figured the issue was that the state wasn’t changing – no matter if I’m home or not, the @Home never changes to orange (home), and is instead constantly white (away). If you could come up with any ideas as to what the problem could be, that’d be awesome.

After a quick test (walk around the block), for me, the status changes to away and then back to home properly. I can see the color change as well as the events for away, then home in the event history.

however, the scenes did not fire for me either.

We are noticing some mios connectivity issues this morning and this is most likely the cause we are both seeing. The state changes fine, but the scenes are not run. We have some queries out to Vera to see if we need to make any changes related to the recent mios server upgrade.

Stay tuned, I’ll update when we have a resolution.

Sounds good, Markn.

Let me know if you find anything out. I’m eager to get this working and finally have a reliable method for firing arm/disarm alarm scenes.

The migration issues appear to be resolved. It turns out we needed to change the server names after the migration to UI7. Please have a try again and let me know how it goes this time.

Mark,

That did the trick! My @Home changed to orange and fired a test scene I had set when I arrived home! :slight_smile:

Question: what happens when you involve two instances of SimpleWave tied to the same Vera when it comes to GeoScenes?

Example: My girlfriend and I both have SimpleWave and I want scenes to fire when either of us arrive/leave home depending on if one of us is already home or if no one is home. Can SimpleWave be utilized for these scenarios? Prior to SimpleWave I was using a PLEG tied to the iPhone Plugin App to arm a scene, disarm a scene or neither, based on who was home at the time. I’d like to for example run an armed-away scene on my z-wave alarm system when I leave home while my girlfriend is already out, but not have the armed-away scene run if I leave home, but my girlfriend is still present.

It does not yet have capability to fire or suppress a scene based on the location/presence of another person. What you describe makes a lot of sense though.

so your scenario might be as simple as -

if nobody else is home when you leave, fire the scene(s) on leaving

if nobody else is home when you arrive, fire the scene(s) on arriving

Mark,

Exactly as you described above, that’s what I was thinking of. After looking at my girlfriend’s iPhone, I see now that SimpleWave’s Geofence is attached to the Vera ID rather than the iPhone the app is installed on, correct? Before SimpleWave I was using a Vera plugin called iPhone Locator App which tracked your iPhone based on the “find my iPhone”/iCloud functionality. It allowed for individual tracking of iPhones, rather than basing them off a single Vera ID and because of that, you could use individual instances of the plugin as triggers to fire off scenes using PLEG with some advanced logic.

I’m not really sure how you could somehow modify SimpleWave’s Geofencing to mimic the iPhone Locator plugin since it seems like any instances of the Geofence is going to be attached to the Vera ID rather than splitting up the tracking to each individual iPhone. I don’t know how easy it would be to add some sort of dual functionality to the Geofencing where more than one person could utilize the Geofences in that way, but that would certainly take the Geofences to a whole new level. I am able to utilize the iPhone Locator plugins from within SimpleWave as well, but they loose some of the functionality I had under automator.app because you don’t have all the plugins options in SimpleWave.

Yes, for GeoScenes we decided to use the Vera user id - This works if each user has their own Vera login (of course). Once that is ready, each user connects using their own login and save their own GeoScenes, other settings, notifications etc …

Just as the iPL plugin has an instance for each physical phone, we have a (virtual) instance for each user, so they should work the same in that respect where an action can be taken based on when any user is leaving/arriving, the difference being each user controls what scenes to run when they leave and arrive instead of managing it centrally. We figured if you wanted to manage it centrally, there is already iPL to do that.

let me know if there is something i’m missing :slight_smile:

The part we still need to think about is suppressing/firing configured scenes based on if anyone else is home.

Interesting point… can I set my Vera up for two different logins? Currently my girlfriend and I both use the same login to access the one Vera Lite… I didn’t know I could even set up more than one login ID per Vera.

After understanding how the GeoScenes work from your explanation, I found it’s currently much more effective for me to not use them for my purposes and not have it fire off any scenes depending on my change in state. The iPL plugins actually work perfectly fine in SimpleWave, and since I already had PLEGs set up to fire off scenes based on a change in state as well as muting/unmuting the plugin to save iPhone battery life when we’re both home, it just made sense to continue using the iPL plugins. The only functionality of the plugin that I can’t emulate in SimpleWave that I could in automator.app was the “refresh” option for each instance of the plugin, in case the plugin wasn’t updating my location quickly enough. It’s not the end of the world though because I’m still able to mute or unmute each instance of the plugin when desired, which to me is more important anyway with regards to preserving iPhone battery life.

yes, that was exactly our thought - Provide the simple GeoScenes option for more non technical users, yet support PLEG and iPL for the expert users.