Geofencing : Set house mode to away is not working

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

Hello,

I’ve recently installed the vera app on my phone and changed the enabled “set house mode to away when nobody at home”. When i leave my home, the phone pings me to say i’ve left the geofence area but does not change the house mode to away. There is only 1 user setup on Vera plus. How do i change the mode to away when i leave the house automatically?

Thanks

#2

I can tell you that, in my experience, it’s never worked as designed. You can get around it by using the House Modes plug in. You can create a scene that fires on the geofence (enter or exit) and set the House Mode plug in to be Home or Away. However, when you do it this way, it doesn’t observe the setting that should NOT set the mode to Away as long as any other user is at Home. Alternatively, you can use the VeraMate app. Geofencing works fine with that app…will set the mode to Home or Away appropriately…but it doesn’t obey the setting to override the Away setting if another user (your spouse, for example) is still at home. For me, this is becoming a deal breaker because when I go to take our son to school, it turns all the lights off while my wife is getting dressed for work.

#3

I had/have the same issue and started playing with a multi-switch as a solution. Phone 1 is away throw switch 1, phone 2 is away throw switch 2. When both are away run a scene. I’ve abandoned this because of time and my wife getting a new phone but I’d be interested in hearing what others are doing.

#4

Better using IPhone Locator or VeraProximity to set a MultSwitch for each user … then using PLEG logic to set the appropriate house mode.

#5

I have several Nest devices, and the Nest Home/Away has proven pretty reliable, so I’ve got scenes set up that trigger the House Modes Plugin to set the proper mode when the Nest Plugin changes Home/Away.

It’s working for me so far.

#6

Geo fence is an odd duck within vera…my experience anyway. It works for me. Sometimes for weeks on end with no issues. Then there will be a few days where it works but does not push a notification. Then perhaps other days when it works for exit and not entry.

After the last update geofence went away for me. A ticket was filed but eventually, without any outside influence, it started working again.

Sigh…

One thing worth mentioning because I did this myself. I had the microsoft desktop app set up on my computer. I had not disabled geofencing on the desktop/microsoft app. So vera considered me home even though my phone left the location.

#7

I had that going at my last house and it was great…with one addition. I had a mute iPhone Locator setup when we were home and a scene that unmated when a door was open/unlocked. This kept the phones from being pinged when at home and saved batteries. Problem with the current house is my wife works close to home and when the un-mute runs it doesn’t ping the phone right away, often, and she has no signal at work. If iPhone locator can’t find the phone it just assumes the last location is correct and she never shows away…so the house never went into away mode.

#8

My wife and I use the iPhone Locator app, and a multi-switch. When both phones are gone, the multi-switch triggers a No One Home scene which changes mode and enables Blue Iris to record on motion. If either of us arrive, the phone triggers a scene to change the mode, and disable Blue Iris recording.

I do not use geofencing (too much battery drain) but instead have a scene called iPhone Check. When the garage door is opened, it immediately pings both phones, then pings them every minute for 5 minutes. If we are arriving, Vera knows pretty quickly to change modes and disable Blue Iris. If we are leaving, No One Home fires about 2 minutes after we leave.

Dynamic polling was also killing batteries. Setting the poling to 300s took too much time for the No One Home scene to run but more importantly, when one arrived, we may receive up to 5 minutes of notifications and camera recordings.

#9

We are running UI7 and we both have iPhones (6 and 7). Geofencing works quite well with the exception that when either of us leaves the house mode switches to Away. However, has anyone tried using different logins on their iPhone devices? It dawns on me that both our phones are using the same ID on the Vera application. I will let you know if this helps. The battery drain problem was solved with an iPhone update around Christmas or a little before.

#10

I use a multiswitch and each iPhone uses its own iCloud account. Only if both are gone will the No One Home scene trigger, setting the mode to Away, and notifying us both of the scene. Similarly, if either comes home, the other gets a notification and the mode is back to Home.

#11

We also use a multiswitch. My wife and I in fact both have 2 switches. 1 switches when connected on home wifi, the other via tasker and AutoLocation from our android phones. If 1 of the 4 switches are ‘on’ → home, else away. We also use an override button for when the housekeeper is at home.