iPhone Locator + Reactor = Win!

Plugins & Plugin Development IPhone Locator
#1

For those interested, here’s my strategy for low battery use but reliable Home/Away activation:

I’ve set iPhone Locator polling to 15 minutes plus used Reactor scenes triggered by our Garage Door:

Coming Home - Garage Door Opens (Conditions: Home mode = Away, Garage changing from Closed to Open):

Garage_Open_v2
Garage_Open_v21159×519 38.8 KB

Leaving Home - Garage Door Closes (Conditions: Home mode = Home, Garage changing from Open to Closed):

Garage_Closed_v2
Garage_Closed_v21167×676 50.4 KB

This seems to work pretty well and not impact battery life negatively. I also Use night mode to mute location polling when we go to bed.

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UI7 ▾ Web UI ▾ 7.0.29 GA - April 24, 2019
#2

PS, I’ve also added an automatic Vacation mode which triggers when we are both more than 100kms from home - this also mutes location polling and I have a Reator sensor which will re-enable location polling if it detects the Garage door change from Closed to Open while Vacation mode is active.

I think I have about 36 reactor sensors atm - I think they are like Pringles, once you start you can’t stop! :grin:

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#3

Thanks for sharing this. Right now using reactor to trigger when the phone go home / away seems to be working rather well.
Except that the mobile Beta app expired on the way home today, so that didn’t work! And I’m going to be rather a long way outside my geofence for a while so much testing will be dependent on the resident :slight_smile:

C

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#4

No worries, I’m glad it was helpful.

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#5

im sad i have a pixel

#6

Doh! I personally refuse to use Android, Google knows enough about me from using chrome on my desktops without giving them all my mobile habits too!

#7

I’ve just updated the pics in the original post as I’ve made a few changes as a result of another week of testing and tuning.

I’ve also reduced the Home radius to 100 meters (0.1 km’s) and this combined with slightly more aggressive polling seems to work even better.

#8

Does this mean anyone who is able to open your garage will disarm your whole house? Or you have no alert/Siren upon Garage opening and house mode = Away/Vacation?

#9

No for two reasons:

1/ if we aren’t home and the garage opens and we arent within 100m of the house, Vera does not switch to home mode. The garage state changing is merely a trigger to check our phone locations.

2/ we also have a monitored alarm system that isn’t tied to our Vera as a backup.