I was wondering if it would be possible for a plugin tied to Google latitude? It seems there are some basic API’s for it and perhaps it could be used so that you could have Vera fire some events or trigger scenes based on proximity? Like for instance if i get withing one mile of home then turn some lights on, or maybe even disable motion sensors if i get even closer?
Interesting idea. In my experience though, Lattitude location updates are highly inconsistent time wise, just when it feels like that, not on schedule as I would expect. So I’m not sure it’s a good idea to base security on this feature. See if there are other apps that do location updates, may be with other services, in more reliable way.
I have another couple of apps on my BB that might do it that are based on sport location tracking but i think they all might be as unreliable in the update department.
Possible better way to implement the same concept would be to have Vera react when your phone joins the WiFi network in some way. That way you are not relying on outside service.
If you give your phone a static IP on your wifi network you can use the ping senor plugin (http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Ping_Sensor_Plugin) to know when it is connected. You’d have to check if your phone keeps the wifi radio on when in standby mode. I was going to do this with my iPhone, but the iPhone only leaves the wifi radio on in standby when it’s plugged in.
@Chimpware—you’re right. I could base a great many scenes on my iPhone being on my home wifi. If you and mikeholczer could figure this out, we’d be very grateful!
Wifi G range is too short for the originally suggested application, also wifi takes time to connect, so there’s no chance Vera will be able to react on me while I’m still outside coming to open the door. And once I entered home it becomes much less interesting. This is why it would be better to base it on GPS, so Vera can “sense” me while I’m still 200m far from home, and it has enough time to run the scenes.
I would be thinking apps like Android’s Locale that make the phone to do things when it appears in predefined location. It could, I suppose, run findvera.com URL triggering a scene or setting a “state device” in Vera. This way it doesn’t depend on any service, everything is between the phone and Vera
As I said, an iPhone turns its wifi radio off basically when the screen is off, so it won’t work with an iPhone, at least for now. If Apple provided a way to configure the wifi radio to stay on (in a future software update) it would be doable, but it would also drain the battery faster.
Unless I’m doing something wrong, I don’t think the DROID phone will work with MICASAVERDE as it uses a JAVA interface (or is it FLASH?). Either way, I keep getting messages that the server is busy and to try again.
Hopefully soon we can arrive at a reasonable fix for this.
Any takers? :
[quote=“stoney, post:9, topic:165389”]Unless I’m doing something wrong, I don’t think the DROID phone will work with MICASAVERDE as it uses a JAVA interface (or is it FLASH?). Either way, I keep getting messages that the server is busy and to try again.
Hopefully soon we can arrive at a reasonable fix for this.
Any takers? ::)[/quote]
That’s actually a problem with the Andriod browser. Google is apparently aware and working on it:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=2572.msg12421#msg12421
I’m not a big fun of wap-like interface. IMHO HomeBuddy is the way to go for Android - it let you connect from anywhere over 3G just as if you were at home