I started to look into iBeacons and so far from what I have been able to digest this looks like the magic pill for anyone looking to have very accurate location capability. I have been using the iPhone locator plugin with reasonable success but because I live in a marginal service area for AT&T there are way too many situations where I’m not noticed arriving home.
iBeacons uses Bluetooth and are registered with you phone via an application. I would use VeraMate and in such I would be able to trigger a scene when the iBeacon notices my phone in it’s proximity. They supposedly have a range of over 200 feet so that would be the perfect solution to fire off a scene to turn off the house alarm, turn on lights and open the garage door as you arrive. As you leave the reverse could take place. For me it’s all about the accuracy of the location service and the reliability of the solution. iBeacons sound like they are perfect on both those counts.
[quote=“RichardPHarvey, post:1, topic:191245”]I started to look into iBeacons and so far from what I have been able to digest this looks like the magic pill for anyone looking to have very accurate location capability. I have been using the iPhone locator plugin with reasonable success but because I live in a marginal service area for AT&T there are way too many situations where I’m not noticed arriving home.
iBeacons sound like they are perfect on both those counts.[/quote]
Unfortunately non of the current apps are supporting them. I used to use them and they were great, I would literally pay someone to support them again.
[quote=“mbairhead, post:3, topic:191245”][quote=“RichardPHarvey, post:1, topic:191245”]I started to look into iBeacons and so far from what I have been able to digest this looks like the magic pill for anyone looking to have very accurate location capability. I have been using the iPhone locator plugin with reasonable success but because I live in a marginal service area for AT&T there are way too many situations where I’m not noticed arriving home.
iBeacons sound like they are perfect on both those counts.[/quote]
Unfortunately non of the current apps are supporting them. I used to use them and they were great, I would literally pay someone to support them again.[/quote]
What exactly do you mean by no apps are supporting them…? VeraMate for iOS supports iBeacons and many of us use that app.
VeraMate support is a bit spotty. I have tried to use it but have found it very unreliable and have since given up. I have worked with the VeraMate developers but it doesn’t seem to be a priority, which I get if not a lot of people are asking for it.
iViri used to have amazing iBeacon control, unfortunately iViri is gone.
I know you have an iPhone, but it should be very easy to do with an android device with Tasker on it. Tasker can detect the iBeacon and then activate a scene on the vera, or run its own set of commands.
In our case, some people have iphones, some have androids and some kids don’t have phones. We have a wall-mounted android tablet and a future project involves giving everyone in the family an iBeacon. They might keep it on a keychain, wallet, or backpack. The tablet would always know who’s home based on the iBeacons and it can make the vera run scenes.
[quote=“virtus, post:6, topic:191245”]I know you have an iPhone, but it should be very easy to do with an android device with Tasker on it. Tasker can detect the iBeacon and then activate a scene on the vera, or run its own set of commands.
In our case, some people have iphones, some have androids and some kids don’t have phones. We have a wall-mounted android tablet and a future project involves giving everyone in the family an iBeacon. They might keep it on a keychain, wallet, or backpack. The tablet would always know who’s home based on the iBeacons and it can make the vera run scenes.[/quote]
You might consider a NFC solution. I’ve found iBeacons aren’t the best at any type of occupancy sensing. They seem to work best when tripped then forgotten. For example, I had a scene set up that when an iBeacon saw our two iPhones (my wife and mine) it would start a 15 minute timer, once that timer hit 0 it would shut the house down and lock the doors. VeraMate loses communication with the beacons and keeps starting that clock over. I have been hoping someone would come up with a way of using them as occupancy sensors like iViri did, I would put iBeacons all over my house.
Can you explain your iBeacon experience in a little more detail? It sounds like they were stationary, in the house, and when they detected your iphones a countdown was started that locked and shut down the house?
I’m not a fan of NFC for occupancy because it’s not passive. You have to do something to make it work. With a small iBeacon attached to each family member (their phone, keys, etc…) the beacon would basically tell the tablet “hey, I’m here”. I have two initial tasker scripts in mind. The first is a “who’s home?” or “is xxxx home?”. Reliable communication isn’t as important for this because tasker would only poll the beacons on demand. The other would be a “no one is home, lock it up, shut everything down” script. That would start by polling the house and if no one’s home wait 5 minutes. Then if no one is home do it again. After doing this several times it would tell the vera to run the shut down scene. If it detected a beacon at any point it would start over.
I received my set of three Estimote beacons and did some initial testing last night with pretty dismal results. I found that even at full power the signal range of these things is VERY small. They claim distances of up to 200 feet are possible, I would be very happy with half of that but in reality even 20 feet is challenging and un-reliable. I reached out to Estimote directly and they asked me to try another phone which I will do tonight, unless that proves to be my issue I’m going to say that the use of iBeacons as proximity sensors for home automation may be a bust.
I’m still trying to figure out effective ways to use beacons. I have three Meraki APs with BT and they can track my wife and her garmin fitness band, phones, I think what are my Nest Protects, and many other devices. What they can’t do is track Tiles or use ANY of that location or proximity data. I get better location reporting based on WiFi and have implemented actual tracking systems like the old Cisco location stuff and Ekahau to know the bluetooth stuff is still pretty worthless from what I’ve found.
I am using a couple of long-range iBeacons from Social Retail (in the UK) to act as a geofence to set/unset my security alarm. Hopefully, this will be more battery-efficient for my iPhone than GPS.
I use a combination switch with a couple of virtual switches such that sensing at least one of the iBeacons will keep Vera in Home mode. I keep one beacon at the top floor front, and one at the ground floor rear, and that ensures I have no blank spots around the house. However, when I am out of range of both iBeacons, Vera switches to Away mode.
It seems to work very well, and seems to switch faster than a GPS geofence.
I just have to remember to take one of the iBeacons with me if I leave the house with my iPhone when there is still somebody in the house. Otherwise, they are left frantically finding out how to turn the alarm off.
Can you elaborate on your “long range iBeacons”, what manufacture are they from…? I’m attempting to do exactly what you have done but my Estimote beacons, even at full power are not noticed by my iPhone quickly enough or at distance enough to be a reasonable replacement for GPS and iPhone locator.
They are from a firm named “Social Retail”, and I bought them on Amazon UK. They seem to be aimed at retail use within stores, but they work well for this sort of use.
I have some Estimotes. They work decently. I have the iViri app, which works much better than VeraMate, but it has been taken off the app store so you can no longer get it.
I did use them with the garage door and they would work, but would take about 10 - 15 seconds to trip. I currently use them with lights.
[quote=“iankb, post:13, topic:191245”]They are from a firm named “Social Retail”, and I bought them on Amazon UK. They seem to be aimed at retail use within stores, but they work well for this sort of use.
I’m probably getting 100 yards from one or other of my beacons, but it’s not obvious why any one of them is ‘visible’ or not. It obviously depends on walls, etc, when they are positioned inside the house.
When I walk out the front of the house, I lose the one at the back of the house almost immediately. However, when I walk down the road, I switch from the front beacon to the rear beacon as I gradually circle the house. After 80 yards or so, I gave up walking, so not sure quite how far I could go before losing both.
However, there almost certainly is a latency, which is fairly irrelevant when simply used to set/unset a security alarm and cameras. It might take a minute to set the alarm when I drive away, but unsets it only when I approach the garage. However, that may also be due to latency with my Vera Plus, when I’m using virtual switches and a switch combination device to join the two. If I was using the beacons to unlock the front door, I would probably add short-range beacons in each room to monitor my presence within the house. However, I doubt that I would ever trust them in that situation.
I used the BeaconSET app to monitor the beacons while I was walking.
I found the VeraMate iOS app to be very poor at recognizing a beacon with any reliability, the creator claims to be using the native Apple code which could be the issue. I found another free app called Beecon which seems to do a much better job finding beacons. I had all but abandoned using beacons for proximity but I think I’m going to give it another try.