I love the plugin and thanks to amg0 for all of his work on it.
I thought it would be neat to start a thread to find out what folks are using “presencing” for in their systems.
Do you trust it enough to automatically unlock the doors when you get home?
Or do you use it as a way to turn off the lights in the morning when no one is left in the house?
A warning message when the wife is almost home so you can stop surfing the MCV forums and look busy?
What other things are you doing with it?
Thanks,
bds[/quote]
I do absolutely all of these examples including sneaking in when I can expect my wife to arrive at home . With the new “PollingExtra” option (v1.80) I get even increased accuracy so prediction of arrival should be really good now and thus enabling scenario like opening the Garage door or property gate when I get real close. I have not fully done this one yet.
I do mute off all phones devices during night hours and only if both of them are “present” using a PLEG
I also regularly poll the iPhone device and sends the distance to my thingspeak channel so I can see an history of distance/overtime just for the fun.
Some ideas : turning on lamp / heater when phone are approaching ( IconCode variable ) and below a certain threshold. Turning a Philips Hue lamp ( or a led strip ) into some predefined color when your significant other is approaching , etc … Could be: you surprise her by ordering a pizza in a online pizza internet based service when it is a friday evening and she comes back from work …
I expect that proximity beacons will work best for applications needing high reliability like door locks; A bluetooth handshake with specific smart phones runs the “arriving home” script.
I just installed iphone locator and I’m unsure of how to best set it up to reliably indicate away/present without excessive battery drain. A FAQ on the basics would be nice. The map features added are confusing for some of us who didn’t follow the development of the plugin.
[quote=“dzmiller, post:3, topic:180290”]I expect that proximity beacons will work best for applications needing high reliability like door locks; A bluetooth handshake with specific smart phones runs the “arriving home” script.
I just installed iphone locator and I’m unsure of how to best set it up to reliably indicate away/present without excessive battery drain. A FAQ on the basics would be nice. The map features added are confusing for some of us who didn’t follow the development of the plugin.[/quote]
For now, I am abandoning the use of the plugin although it arms all my sensors and turn on virtual switch using PLEG with it; even if my wife and I are both home, it still shows “away”. Then I will force-click “present” and click the mute button. If I don’t mute it, it will go back to “away” state and arms all the sensors.
I am afraid the quote issue on valid for all devices for now, have been lazy to code around this issue. ( if anybody feels like it the code is public domain )
I’m not sure this counts as “cool,” but I’ve just started using this plugin.
I have polling while devices are at home set to 1800. Whenever an event occurs that might possibly indicate that someone has left (garage door opens/closes, door locked, alarm set), I have PLEG poll the devices after a 2-minute delay to get an updated position.
I had these same issues until I realized that my home zone was too small AND I needed to make 100% sure that the longitude and latitude for my base location was spot on. I now have a 1.5 mile home zone and use the polling map to manage the time between pings and it works great. I set up VeraMate Alerts and now on my way home each day I get a message on my iPhone when I’m noticed inside the home zone, these messages come is at almost exactly the same spot each trip. Once inside the home zone I reduce polling to once every 5 minutes in order to conserve battery. I also reduce polling when my wife and I are at work for the same reason. It all took a little tweaking and learning the tool but it’s now working perfectly.
Care to share your setup? I’m in a fairly urban area, with relevant “stuff” within a 0.4-mile range of the house, so even if one of us is in that range, it doesn’t mean we’re necessarily home.
I’d love to see your polling map with range… but I don’t need to see you pinpoint where you live on a map!
Care to share your setup? I’m in a fairly urban area, with relevant “stuff” within a 0.4-mile range of the house, so even if one of us is in that range, it doesn’t mean we’re necessarily home.
I’d love to see your polling map with range… but I don’t need to see you pinpoint where you live on a map![/quote]
So the first thing I needed to do was to make 100% sure that the pin drop for the location of my Vera (home base) was totally accurate. I found that it was not accurate in the initial set up. I went to one of the web based latitude longitude tools where you put in the address and it gives you back the exact numbers, cut and paste those into the iPhone Locator plugin settings screen. Also take a look at the map in the tool when your iPhone(s) are home to see where Apple’s find my iPhone thinks it actually is. If they are widely different then adjust your home base location to be as close as possible to what Apple thinks. Now you have these two data point synchronized.
As far as polling map goes this really depends on your typical driving patterns to and from home, and the speed you typically can drive. The slower your typical ride is (traffic etc) the better because you can keep polling frequency low and still have good location accuracy. In my case my typical driving speed is 45mph or more so I needed to tweak my polling map to find a good balance. Here is my map:
0:300,1:10,3:20,6:30,10:200,15:600
Breaking this down, 0=when you’re inside your home zone setting which in my case is a 1 mile circle around my house. When inside polling is low at 300 seconds. Once I’m noticed outside that zone the map rapidly increases polling as noted in my map. I have very rapid polling from 1 mile to 6 miles to provide good quality location info for the return home. I have VeraMate alerts set up so that I’m notified when I’m noticed inside the home zone and I get that notification in just about the same exact spot every ride home. Leaving however is very different because the 300 second home setting can end up causing me not to be noticed as being outside my home zone for up to 5 minutes if the app happens to poll right as I’m leaving the driveway. That may not work for some folks depending on what actions you want automated when your outside the home zone. In my case I only have it turning on my alarm so worst case it the alarm is not turned on for as much as 5 minutes after I leave but I’m OK with that, and I also get a VeraMate alert indicating the house has been armed for confirmation. I work 17 miles from home so when I get to work I’m outside the 15 mile range so polling is further reduced to 600 seconds, this saves battery life big time. Your situation could be very different and you need to really think it thru and then tweak as needed to make it all work for you.
Hope this helps but if you have specific questions please ask away…!
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. With the new “PollingExtra” option (v1.80) I get even increased accuracy so prediction of arrival should be really good now and thus enabling scenario like opening the Garage door or property gate when I get real close. I have not fully done this one yet.