House Mode doesn't change

I’ve been looking for something with a reliable and usable geofence capability. I’ve been using Vera Mobile and Veramate. They are either very unreliable (Vera Mobile) or the battery usage makes it almost unusable (Veramate). While doing some research, I came across this plugin. Just to test it out, I am simply trying to see a change in house mode depending on whether the phone is away/present. These are my settings:

UI version: 1.7.513
Plugin version: 2.0

Home range: 0.01 statue mile
“Participates in House Modes”: Checked
Pollling period: 60sec (also tried 10se, 30sec, etc)
Distance mode: Direct

My understanding from the initial post is that when the phone is present, it will change the mode to “Home” (say from "Away) and from “Home” to “Away” when the phone is “away”. I’ve also tried creating a scene to execute based on the trigger “A device is present or away”.

Is there anything I am missing? I am pretty sure the plugin sees my phone ok as “Home Lat” and “Home Long” are filled in. I did have to change my Apple ID password per an earlier post to exclude special characters. After the change, the iphone name popped up almost immediately.

FWIW, I also had the HouseMode plugin installed. I deleted it thinking this may be a problem but the results are the same

Any suggestions/guidance would be appreciated

[quote=“JohnC, post:1, topic:186293”]I’ve been looking for something with a reliable and usable geofence capability. I’ve been using Vera Mobile and Veramate. They are either very unreliable (Vera Mobile) or the battery usage makes it almost unusable (Veramate). While doing some research, I came across this plugin. Just to test it out, I am simply trying to see a change in house mode depending on whether the phone is away/present. These are my settings:

UI version: 1.7.513
Plugin version: 2.0

Home range: 0.01 statue mile
“Participates in House Modes”: Checked
Pollling period: 60sec (also tried 10se, 30sec, etc)
Distance mode: Direct

My understanding from the initial post is that when the phone is present, it will change the mode to “Home” (say from "Away) and from “Home” to “Away” when the phone is “away”. I’ve also tried creating a scene to execute based on the trigger “A device is present or away”.

Is there anything I am missing? I am pretty sure the plugin sees my phone ok as “Home Lat” and “Home Long” are filled in. I did have to change my Apple ID password per an earlier post to exclude special characters. After the change, the iphone name popped up almost immediately.

FWIW, I also had the HouseMode plugin installed. I deleted it thinking this may be a problem but the results are the same

Any suggestions/guidance would be appreciated[/quote]

it sounds that your HouseModeActor variable is set to 1 and you have only one device. so it should work this way :

if your phone is away, and the current mode is home or night then HouseMode is set to away ( so if the mode was vacation , it is left unchanged )

if your phone is at home, and mode is away ,then housemode is set to Home. ( so if the current mode was vacation or night, it is left unchanged )

I use this but with 2 phones. it works reliably for me, should be no reason it does not. in case it still does not you can capture a LOG ( debug mode enabled ) and share so we can look.

After upgrading to 1.7.541, everything seems to be working. A simple test of manually setting the house mode to away (2) while at home, the mode will change back to home (1). It did not do that in the past. I did have to play around with the home range making sure it’s not too small.

One thing I noticed that is that it still consumes quite a bit of battery on my iphone (running ios 8.2). From 100% charged at 8am to noon, the battery is already more than half way gone with no other apps running and minimal notification. In fact, it’s not much of an improvement over Vera Mobile or Veramate in terms of battery usuage. Are there tips for better battery management?

[quote=“JohnC, post:3, topic:186293”]After upgrading to 1.7.541, everything seems to be working. A simple test of manually setting the house mode to away (2) while at home, the mode will change back to home (1). It did not do that in the past. I did have to play around with the home range making sure it’s not too small.

One thing I noticed that is that it still consumes quite a bit of battery on my iphone (running ios 8.2). From 100% charged at 8am to noon, the battery is already more than half way gone with no other apps running and minimal notification. In fact, it’s not much of an improvement over Vera Mobile or Veramate in terms of battery usuage. Are there tips for better battery management?[/quote]

lots of tips , cf http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16907.0.html and the use of the PollingMap etc… also it all depends on your pattern/useage, you can also mute /unmute it at the right places… it does require some thinking & fine tuning but the parameters are there to find a good useage for your needs hopefully

Thanks. I’ve read that doc before but with the pointer and context of polling map, you know what you are looking for when you go thru the document

How do you use this plugin? I have two iPhones that have the Vera app installed. I’d like to set it up so if both are outside of the geofence area, then the mode is set to Home mode is set to away, and the alarm system is armed. (I know I’ll need to use PLEG)

I’d also like to set it so it won’t arm my alarm system on the daily schedule if one of the phones is present. (again, PLEG)

[quote=“tamorgen, post:6, topic:186293”]How do you use this plugin? I have two iPhones that have the Vera app installed. I’d like to set it up so if both are outside of the geofence area, then the mode is set to Home mode is set to away, and the alarm system is armed. (I know I’ll need to use PLEG)

I’d also like to set it so it won’t arm my alarm system on the daily schedule if one of the phones is present. (again, PLEG)[/quote]

you do not need Vera app nor PLEG. there is a built in feature in the Iphonelocator plugin with the 'participates in house mode" check box in the setting tab. You choose which phone participates in the logic, in your case let’s say you have 2 phones, so set the check box for both.

once that done: if both phone are out, the mode will be set to Away, if either one is on, the mode will be set to Home.

then using the housemode plugin you can have some triggers when the house mode changes and do what you want with this trigger

hope that helps.