I have upgraded both my phone and my wife’s phone to the latest UI7 app. I set up a home geofence on both devices and I get a notification on my phone that I leave and enter an area. I have the two boxes checked on the UI that state to set house away when both are away and set house to home when one or more are home. However, when both of us are away, the mode does not change to away.
I heard some rumors that this geofencing does not work on more than one device at a time. Is this true? If not, what do I need to do in order to actually make the mode change when both devices are away?
FYI, I have set up IFTTT to handle this using Android location, Maker channel, the multiswitch app and then setting up some logic on my VeraEdge to flip to away when certain switches are set on.
You should be happy that it works at all. Mine is so unreliable (I think it is more on the iOS app side since it does not seem to show geofencing on consistently) I gave up on it. It is also not a rumor… It was designed to work on one device. Have not seen any update since.
I have lost interest and found the iPhone locator app to work very well.
[quote=“mostlychris, post:1, topic:188110”]I have upgraded both my phone and my wife’s phone to the latest UI7 app. I set up a home geofence on both devices and I get a notification on my phone that I leave and enter an area. I have the two boxes checked on the UI that state to set house away when both are away and set house to home when one or more are home. However, when both of us are away, the mode does not change to away.
I heard some rumors that this geofencing does not work on more than one device at a time. Is this true? If not, what do I need to do in order to actually make the mode change when both devices are away?
FYI, I have set up IFTTT to handle this using Android location, Maker channel, the multiswitch app and then setting up some logic on my VeraEdge to flip to away when certain switches are set on.[/quote]
I do it kind of similar to your work around, but without using IFTTT. I have an Android so I use the Vera Proximity app (which is awesome). My wife has an iPhone so I have hers set up with VeraMate (which is also awesome). Our phones are on Verizon which means that if we are talking on the phone while we cross the geofence boundaries, the command(s) are not sent from our phones to the Vera until after we get off the phone (which sometimes is after we actually get home). Because of that and also the fact that geofencing is still not 100% reliable, I also use ping sensors for both of our phones. If have the logic set up so that as soon as one of our phones is pinged, it switches to “home” mode. And once a phone is not pinged for an hour, it is considered “away”. I use PLEG and the multiswich as you mentioned to make it all happen. It works pretty well.
How did you set the ping monitor up?
Can someone describe a ping setup? This has SO MANY applications…Thanks.
Does anyone have instructions laid out to allow geofencing to work with two iphones?
[quote=“kirstenk, post:6, topic:188110”]Does anyone have instructions laid out to allow geofencing to work with two iphones?[/quote]I would like to understand this as well…
Many people use PLEG to handle the integration of multiple user occupancy.
Note when using PING there is often a false trigger when the phone goes to sleep. It’s best to use two different indicators for each user.
UserAHome UserAIndicator1indicatesHome or UserAIndicator2IndicateHome
UserBHome UserBIndicator1indicatesHome or UserBIndicator2IndicatesHome
SomeOneHome UserAHome or UserBHome
NoOneHome NOT SomeOneHome
You can use Ping or GeoFence indicators for the above.
For the ping monitor to work correctly you first have to setup your router to always assign the same IP address via DHCP to each phone/device you want to use. Then you install the ping monitor app on your Vera (need one for each device you want to ping). Then you configure the Ping Monitor with the IP addresses of your phones that you assigned in your router. You also have to decide on ping times and timeout times. This can be anything you want, but just be aware that the more often you ping, the more network traffic you are creating.
For my overall setup, I have 2 Ping Monitors and Vera Proximity (for Android) and Vera Mate (for iPhone). I then use a MultiSwitch and PLEG for all of my logic. Here is an overview of how it works.
[ul][li]PLEG monitors each ping sensor and will turn one of the switches on if the corresponding phone is pinged. If it is not pinged for 1 hour, it turns the switch off. I have two “ping switches”, one for me and one for my wife.[/li]
[li]The apps on our phones will turn other switches on if we enter a geofence or turn them off if we exit a geofence. I have two “geofence switches”, one for me and one for my wife.[/li]
[li]Then I have PLEG monitor the status of the four switches that I described above (a ping switch for each person and a geofence switch for each person). If either of my switches are turned off (meaning that I have either exited the geofence or my phone has not been pinged for 1 hour), then another switch which represents my home/away status is turned off (as well as the other switch that did not cause the action - i.e. if exited the geofence in less than one hour from last being pinged, the ping switch is also turned off). This switch would also be turned on once I enter the geofence or my phone is pinged again. The logic also turns the other switch on as well (i.e if I got home and my phone was pinged, but the geofence never triggered, it would change the geofence switch on also). The reason for turning the “other” switch on in both cases is so that it is available to be turned off at a later point.[/li]
[li]So at this point a total of 6 switches have been used, 3 for me, 3 for my wife. Each of us has: geofence, ping and status.[/li]
[li]The next step in PLEG is to look at the status of my wife and I and determine if anyone is home. This is pretty simple because home is true when either of us are home (me OR wife = home) and away is true when both of us are away (me AND wife = away). I use another switch to indicate the home/away status based on this logic.[/li]
[li]From there you can have scenes or other PLEG actions happen based upon your overall home/away status.[/li]
[li]I have also use the 8th switch from the multiswich to be be a “prevent” option. I use this if we have someone staying with us who’s phone is not part of the logic above and I don’t want the house to go into away move while my wife and I might be away but while that person may still be at the house.[/li][/ul]
Please let me know if I can be of any further help with this.
I wanted to add two quick notes.
The reason for the 1 hour delay in my ping sensor is to try to prevent the false notifications that Richard mentioned. iPhones automatically turn off their wifi radio when the are not charging and not being used. I have found that 1 hour seems to work for my scenario. You might have to adjust that time for your use.
While my example above uses 1 Android phone and 1 iPhone, there is no reason why it couldn’t be used for multiple of either phone. One thing that I should have mentioned is that Vera Proximity (Android) can directly control the multiswitch that I use. The geofencing feature in Vera Mate can only control scenes. So I have an “enter” and and “exit” scene for my wife’s phone which turns her multiswich on/off.
lingerba, This is exactly what I have been searching for, I am going to try and set it up this evening.
Ok I got the ping sensors working and installed Vera Proximity on both phones. I have a couple questions. 1. what would the condition look like in PLEG for the ping sensor being armed and tripped? 2. How do I link the Vera Proximity app on the phone with the controller? I set up the credentials and it sees my controller i am just not sure how to see it in the controller.
Thank you for any help I am a little lost.
Here is what I use for the PLEG condition for the ping sensor. The 60:00 is for 60 minutes, so you can change that to be whatever you want using the HH:MM:SS format.
BRIAN_PINGED AND (BRIAN_PINGED; NOW > 60:00)
In Vera Proximity, once you see your controller you know you are logged in. Now, you need to setup/edit your geofences and when you do that you will establish “actions” for entering and exiting that specific geofence. When yo select “Vera Action” you will then select your Vera and from there you will select which Scene, Virtual Switch or Multiswitch you want trigger based on that geofence.
Did you create a custom action in PLEG for your “Home” and “Away” mode?
I am not 100% sure which way you are asking this question. The action that PLEG performs is to lock doors, change thermostat mode, turn lights off, etc. whenever the logic has determined whether people are home or not. Another “action” is to change the state of the “HouseModes Plugin” which controls the Home/Away mode in Vera.
Great thank you for the reply I am using the house mode plugin and wanted to make sure that would work. How do you change the setting to away, I have it set so that if button 7 is on then the house mode plugin changed to home. Is there a way to indicate that if the condition is not met then take this action.
Thank you for all your help I am going to test it all tonight.
So you have one condition that says “IF 7 = 1” then “HOME”. You need to make another condition that says “IF 7 = 0” then “AWAY”
The VeraProximity has ACTIONS when you transition a fence
These include:
Notifications (Text To Speech, SMS, Ringtone)
Remote Vera Actions (Set/Reset Virtual Switch, Multi-Switch, Run a Scene)
I plan to ADD:
Set a house mode
Run an HTTP command
The Remote Vera Actions is how you trigger Automation logic on your Vera.
If you have multiple users, your Phone would trigger a Virtual Switch.
You would use something like PLEG to monitor the home/away status of each house user to determin if:
1) Any One is Home
2) Every One is Home
3) No One is Home
For a single person this reduced to:
1) I am home