Know if Devicename = Present (i.e. Wife's Cel Phone present = she's home) - ?

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Can Vera know if a device has checked out an IP?

This seems like a great way to know when someone comes home, since most of us always carry our cel phones with us.

Can it be done?
Perhaps via a MiOS app?

Thanks
Roger

2

Look at this:

http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Ping_Sensor_Plugin

It should do what you are looking for, others were using it successfully.

edit: the page for this plug-in seems to be missing from the code repository (follow the ping sensor link, 3/4 down the page, under Sensor/Environmental Monitoring):

3

The files are actually buried a bit deep there, but essentially you need the following:

http://code.mios.com/trac/mios_ping-sensor/changeset/21/trunk?old_path=%2F&format=zip

Depending on the phone type, you may have varying degrees of success! Some phones such as the iPhone turn off the WiFi when its in standby (screen off), while others such as Blackberries do not!

4

Very nice, thanks for that link! Is this plugin still being maintained?

I have set up something like this, but I use a small PHP script running on a Mac Mini. With some trial and error I arrived at the following logic, which works well in my case.

  • When I am “at home”, the script doesn’t ping the phone. (I use a virtual device in Vera to indicate home/away status).
  • When I leave, I set the Away status (I have a push button next to the front door for that). The script starts pinging the phone once a minute.
  • When the script does not see the phone anymore, it will wait for 3 minutes. This is so that the lights won’t turn back on in case the phone happens to comes back into Wifi range for a moment.
  • After the 3 minutes are up, the script considers me to be gone. It will now ping the phone every 5 seconds.
  • If it sees the phone on the network again, it will switch off the Away status and turn on the lights.

It’d be nice to have the Vera itself perform this function; I’ll see if I can modify the plugin to follow this pattern, and check that performing such frequent pings does not negatively affect Vera.

I found that pinging a cell phone on the Wifi network is not a reliable indicator for someone leaving, but it works great for detecting when someone returns home. I do have to wake up my phone when I return home for it to register itself on the Wifi (it’s an iPhone).

5

I believe it’s coded to not ping more often than once every 15 seconds.

Also: re-advertising the Luup plugins and Luup code wiki page, initiated by @Ap15e. :slight_smile: It has links to code and the associated forum thread(s).

6

Hmm we are using iPhones, so, that wouldn’t work for us.

I imagine bluetooth must turn on only when needed to save battery too.

RFID keychain fob? Surely there’s some way of knowing if my wife’s keys are hanging on the hook by the door by embedding an RFID sensor in the wall behind the key hooks, or perhaps the same idea knowing if her car is in the garage.

This Home Automation with Kinect - Followup Q&A - YouTube is cool but unless out of the box is beyond me.

Speaking of RFID, has anyone done one one of these crazy cool Bill Gates media-follows-me based on RFID pin sort of things?

Thanks in Advance