Geofencing with 2 phones

Vera Controllers, Services & Devices General Vera Discussions
#1

We are with 2 users, but geofencing is only triggered by one phone. What am i doing wrong?

#2

Are you using the same account for both phones? In my experience native Vera geo-fence is vert hit and miss

#3

You will definitely need to have different accounts created in Vera and log into the second device as that user. You also need to have the additional user set as an advanced user to be able to create and set the geofence on their device. You can then demote them to a basic user if you desire, once you create the geofence.
In my experience Vera’s goefencing is extremely unreliabale, it may work 50% of the time for me. It’s up to you if you think its worth the effort.

#4

Yes, we do have different accounts and on both accounts geofencing is defined and enabled.
If it’s unreliable i think it’s better for Vera to just not support it…such things will scare people away from their system.

#5

If you are using iphones you can use the iphone locator plugin. It pings the phones location via icloud. In my little experience with Android Vera geofence works well with it.

#6

I believe Vera also recommended to set location to always and enable background app refresh and not close the app.
I have not personally tried locator for the iphone but I I know there were some concerns about battery drain on the forums and asking about workarounds on reducing polling frequency when close to home. This was some time ago so maybe its not an issue any longer.

#7

if you configure your polling maps correctly battery drain wont be an issue with the plugin, I used it for a while with no noticeable difference

#8

Any security issues with the plugin? Are the credentials encrypted? I know some plugins expose login credentials in the app settings in vera.

#9

I believe its all encrypted, cant confirm for sure. Maybe someone on that thread can confirm that.

#10

I found a solution for the problem. It was the intention to set the modes to “away” or “home” using the geofencing feature. I replaced it by the ping sensor which is working perfectly.

#11

If you find that to be successful I would be interested. My concern would be that if I am out in the yard and lose wifi signal on my phone it would set my mode to away, not a huge deal but would be somewhat of an annoyance.

#12

I have to reconsider the ping sensor solution. It seems that the ip addresses on our phones change…so in that case the ping sensor is not useable.

#13

You could set up an address reservation for each phones mac address. Then you will always get the same ip assigned.

#14

Thanks RogerO, that will do the trick :+1:.

#15

Hi there, is this working ok now? without battery drainage of your iPhone?
I would be interested in how to set this up.
how do you get/use the ping sensor?

gr

wouter

#16

Hi, we’re using it on android phones…works perfectly with ip address reservation.
In the router I set the address reservation for the phones. Furtheron you setup a ping sensor for each phone. Finally with the reactor sensor you can use the results of the ping sensors to set the house mode to away or home.