this is more a general thing question.
in a perfect world in a single guy household … everything is very easy …
but what is if there are more as 1 person in the house.
do you guys have any conclusions on how to “detect” someone home ?
my Vera does know for sure if i’m myself is home … (since my cars vehicle tracking does trigger “comming home”)
but what about other persons ?
specially the ones NOT Appreciate any technology ?
how did you manage that ?
There are a lot of strategies for a single occupant. For multiple occupants that come and go at different times I can think of a couple of strategies …
All make some type of assumption to infer presence, or lack thereof …
[ul][li]Alarm System State - Assumes you have one, different alarm state for armed when someone is home vs away.[/li]
[li]Ping Sensor on everyone’s phone using LAN IP address. Need to handle false hits when Phone is sleeping[/li]
[li]GPS (Google Lattitude) on all phones[/li]
[li]Motion Detectors and Exit Door, (No motion after last Exit - vacant, Notion after last Exit - home)[/li][/ul]
Pretty good discussion of some of the possibilities and pitfalls here at Dream Green House*:
[url=http://www.dreamgreenhouse.com/projects/2013/presence/index.php]Stylish and environmental smart home design & build
Or if you really want to go all out on detection of house events, then here:
[url=http://www.bwired.nl/]Bwired.nl, The Connected Home | IOT Showcase
Generally a trickier problem than you might at first suppose.
[Edit] * I do recommend their ‘Wasp in a Box’ algorithm described on that page.
yeah you quite right, i did go trough all of them pretty much too …
motion detection, tracking or other and even phone pings are out of the question …
but i must admit the “ping phone” idea is quite out of the box … that could be from me 
but this idea goes down the drain in less than 36 hours as my wife regulary forget her phone at home
and the even more tricky things are non-technology-people … people totally off the grid … like in-law’s
but the alarm aproach seems the best way i guess, force them to punch a number into a panel.
i was thinking of having a z-wave button with the label “i’m Home” somewhere and a Relais Module on something “essential” they can’t bypass
like the TV Power or in the in-law case the power to the Oven 
well lots of thinking to do …
I’m still looking for a good automated solution; push buttons are not a good solution as I found… my girlfriend regularly forgets to push the “away” button.
What does work well for me is to trigger the “home” state when a door is unlocked. I’ve mounted micro switches in the deadbolt wells so I can reliably detect a lock being opened. This detection is armed 5 minutes after the “away” button is pressed (to allow a quick re-entry to pick up forgotten items 
).
I’m thinking of ways to use the lock detectors to trigger the “away” state as well… no one really forgets to lock the door when they leave (and this way you can check that via Vera); I just have to distinguish someone leaving from other reasons the door might be locked, e.g. going to bed, or me leaving while GF still sleeps. Motion sensors don’t quite cut it, I don’t want the cats to cancel out the “away” command, and these sensors will not detect a sleeping person.
Like has been said before, the alarm state is a good way. Each person has their own alarm code, so you know who disarmed the system to enter.
I also have occupancy sensors. You could have these (or a PIR) send you and a trip alert. With the OC’s, you could even know their location in the house.
If you get an alert, log into your NVR and look at the cams too.
i actually do auto-arm if i leave my house by car (independent geofence)
that does fix the away button issue for me.
well everyone is pretty much extreme about energy saving, so i spend like the rest of my life preventing everyone from pulling plugs all the time.
(its not really about saving the energy because the Airconditioners running but the doors wide open) … its just some pre-school trained-on behaviour
maybe a “ALL off” button and some “light with no real function” in direct sight may solve it …
so naturally they would follow the instinct and try to get the lamp off …
a human trigger (so to say)
but then there is a new scenario, trying to get the lamp off … lock the door but stay inside …
well okay a movement sensor could fix this
if all off + door locked but still someone walks arround = mother go to sleep
if all off + door locked + no movement = everyone out … ready to arm
A lot of people use bluetooth. Once the adapter “sees” your phone/anyone’s phone, you are home.
Not everyone keeps Bluetooth on all of the time. I only turn mine on when needed and turn it off when done to conserve battery power.
Tasker.
Have it turn your BT on when your wifi is near.
I was rather intrigued by this recent, highly publicised, paper:
Through-the-Wall Sensing of Personnel Using Passive Bistatic WiFi Radar at Standoff Distances
[url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6020778]Error Page - IEEE Xplore
which claimed to detect presence using Doppler analysis of ambient WiFi signals at 2.4 or 5 GHz.
Not that there’s a Z-Wave module for that yet, but I’d quite like to prototype one…
That is quite agood aproach, give me the idea of using real connections to the accesspoint.
Having the mobiles in a dhcp group with a very short lease time.
Then query the Mikrotik Router if there are Leases for mobile devices.
If none = everyone left
Even if the phones are “forgotten” the sleeping of WiFi will do the job then.
So arming could be happen even with a mobile left in the house.
Easy to do as well.
[quote=“intveltr, post:5, topic:175326”]What does work well for me is to trigger the “home” state when a door is unlocked. I’ve mounted micro switches in the deadbolt wells so I can reliably detect a lock being opened. This detection is armed 5 minutes after the “away” button is pressed (to allow a quick re-entry to pick up forgotten items ).
I’m thinking of ways to use the lock detectors to trigger the “away” state as well… no one really forgets to lock the door when they leave (and this way you can check that via Vera);[/quote]
I have played with the same idea to detect home /away to adjust the thermostat setpoints, as we never lock the doors when at home unless when we go to bed (then we want to reduce the temperature setpoint in any case).
What kind of sensor / transmitter do you use for the microswitch? mains or battery powered? Did you build it into the frame of the door (is it visible)? I would like to build it into the wooden frame in an invisible manner, but still be able to access it for battery change etc.
Any images to share?
Anders
I used regular micro switches recessed in the wells; quite invisible so no pictures to share. I use a Fibaro switch to read the micro switches and transmit their state to Vera, so they are mains powered in a way. The wires leading from the switches to the Fibaro are hidden in the wooden frame and behind panels, so invisible as well.
An alternative is to open up a magnetic zwave door sensor and to wire up the micro switches to these, not hard to do with a little skill. Then you’re battery powered.
Very interesting topic. I will be curious what approach is finally taken for home detection.
I’ll throw in my two cents. I think home detection (location awareness), should be dictated by your mobile phone. It adds an extra layer of security by default, for example, your pin code.
GPS, Bluetooth, and WiFi Network status are all accessible triggers without any input from the user, if that is their choice. Profiles setup on the phone can trigger scenes. Simple logic can detect the location of multiple family members to ensure everything operates smoothly. Each person coming home can have their own scene for example.
As far as manual input, you can have a lock screen shortcut, notification shortcut, home screen shortcut, NFC tag, gesture, 3rd party app, custom app, and more.
If you have an Android device you can take advantage of all of these scenarios right now, by using Tasker, and Tasker plugins, apps like AuthomationHD, Home Buddy, and Vera Alerts, enhanced by plugins like PLEG and the XBMC plugin. This is all done without any Luup code by the way.
We are that much closer to the true Domotic lifestyle we envisioned when we bought-in to this technology.
With Google I/O tomorrow, we are at a turning point. Exciting days ahead.
IF (!!) you live by yourself, and/or the peoples arround you do live the same livestyle as you do …
and/or in a perfect world,
we would not even have this topic here, because everyone would nice and smooth “check in” at your house
and mios would decide to let you in or call the cops
no issues at all.
the trouble starts if there are peoples different in genders, ideology, age
then the issues start, and the “triggers” need to be more human-alike.
its easy to babyproof a house, but making technology “compatible” to everyone is a job for life.
even by force this is still something very “individual” …
i think.
as for me.
there are 3 groups now of individuals to take care of in the home automation side.
Force would be a option of course … in a silent fashion like turning off essential items like the TV or the internet for the mobile devices of the user in question
My 2 cents:
Most solutions right now are kluges and most are not universal enough to cover the potential user-base, as @nullx8 discussed. Even his car tracking method, which I plan to implement for car presence tracking, is not in my opinion, an acceptable “key” to the house.
Of late I have been thinking about modern cars. Many or most are shifting to push button start with proximity sensing of the “key” fob to open doors and activate the ignition. It’s very short range(possibly NFC I don’t know) and seems to work reliably.
My current thought is that it would be more ideal to (re-)use or piggyback on that same key fob, with a sensor at the doorways to the home. This way, presence (entry/exit) in the home could be tracked and doors opened or locked, regardless of whether the car is in the garage or not. I sometimes go out, but leave the car in the garage. I want the doors to remain locked and the security system to remain armed even though the car is still in the garage and I don’t want my alarm disarming or my doors unlocking until I am placing my hand on the door knob. I also don’t want my house to open up and disarm because it sensed my phone while I’m asleep in bed.
The present options are too vague and prone to misinterpretation or misfiring, I want something much more positive and definitive. If I could inexpensively sense(positively identify) the car key fob at the door, rather than yet another “key” in my pocket, that would be great. Right now, presence won’t control anything more than lights and fans, for me.
This may not be an easy thing to do. Many of these car security RFID devices use a challenge/response form of encryption which is designed to prevent determination of the embedded key through the capture of message exchanges. It may be possible to detect that some key-fob is present but detecting that your key-fob is present will be a real challenge.
Using an RFID reader and adding an additional transponder to your keyring should achieve the same results, though. Some of the RFID systems offer good read-range so the reader could be in a convenient position near the lock without requiring power and signal cables to be run onto the door.
I’m using motion sensors and yes I have 10 of them and each room has one.
So I set arm my house if there is no motion for 30 minutes.
Someone may have objection what about night?
All beds in my house has occupation sensors and yes if there is someone sleep in the bed then thermostat will work but house stay armed.
What if sleep in the couch? You will be getting cold or hot and back to your bed.
Siren will go on if window/door opens without unlocking door event or no motion inside of house.
I figure that this way quite fit my case and using phone and car can do it but you may have guest but your family is out or carpool or leave cell phone home will bug you.
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