Sounds very nice!!
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I would also be very interested in beta testing if you need more people. This concept sounds very awesome and just what I thought my HA system was lacking: the perfect mobile app. I have an iPhone 5, an iPhone 5s (both running iOS 7) and a 2nd Gen iPad.
Sounds good agoodman. Is there an email address I can send you screenshots at. Beta testing will open up shortly and the first release will be on iPhone only, but it won’t take much to move it to iPad shortly after. I am a one man developing crew so I like to release for one device first, work out all of the issues and give support to as many vera devices as possible and then the transition to iPad will be easy.
I had a thought around the location services and triggering scene’s when the device is away or present. Since the location services would be a huge chunk of battery usage to run in the background, I could utilize my functions that determine when you are on the network with your vera vs. not on your network and I am wondering if that thread running in the background to trigger stuff wouldn’t be much better usage of battery life. Thoughts? I know people get a little worried providing their location to apps as you never know what the developer is doing with that information and if it was ever breached someone now has your home address and a hacker could take over your vera.
I guess this overlaps something like the ping sensor plugin and the iPhone locator plugin a bit, but if there is no real hit to battery life (compared with the iPhone locator plugin), then it may well be worth doing.
Not sure whats exposed in the APIs, but there are a lot of these Bluetooth low energy proximity tags available, and that would be also something that would be good to see if it could be utilized.
Could you link me to one of these Bluetooth Tags so I could look at them and see if we could get them added to the app?
Well not sure they are accessible, since I guess they depend on somebody else’s app rather than an Apple API (or maybe not?), but this sort of thing:
http://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Device-Smartphones-Iphone-Smartnudge/dp/B009K2KAPO
Something similar
Also discussed here before:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16907.msg138721.html#msg138721
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16666.0.html
If this app leads me to some sales I will certain look into purchasing one of these and playing with the API. That should be fairly easy to incorporate these with the phone and make it perform actions when it comes into communication with one of these bluetooth devices. Thanks for sharing as I wasn’t aware of any such thing.
If you read the iBeacon thread, @Guessed had mentioned it may be possible to emulate the iBeacon I think using a second phone. If this is correct then you could test it so long as you have two iOS devices that have Bluetooth 4.0.
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,16666.msg127775.html#msg127775
You can indeed emulate a beacon with a second iDevice. I’ve messed around with the Estimote app that way.
That sounds pretty cool. Last night and today I have been working on location services and having them run in the background. So now there are preferences that you can set your home Long/Lat, set a reaction distance and then assign a scene for when it detects home vs a scene for when it detects away and it will trigger them. Its pretty cool since it responds a lot faster than the iPhone Plugin will Allow you to poll without killing your battery or exceeding Google Quota errors on that plugin. So in theory it responds fast enough that you could have it open your garage door or close it once you are a block away from home, if you have the distance set correctly.
True, but little Johnny playing by the door, or your wife who has parked the car half way under the door might not appreciate how quickly they get crushed though 
Most modern garage doors have a motion sensor here in the United States that stops the door from closing when something is obstructing it. Is this not the case in other countries? Also does anyone see any value to assign a Scene number to the iPhone leaving and arriving home? If you use occupancy sensors you could potentially put LUUP logic in your scene to not activate if people are home? I thought it was kind of cool having the phone use its GPS to indicate home vs. away and let the user define what happens in those instances. This will get us away from the iPhone plugin and the long polling periods and the google quota exceeded, plus it will react a lot faster than the plugin. Thoughts?
I am accepting beta testers through the end of today. Please send me a email at support@instruodev.com with your Name and UUID of your device. Currently lets keep the testing only to iPhone devices as that is where initial release support will be.
Thanks.
[quote=“jpete7683, post:54, topic:178954”]Most modern garage doors have a motion sensor here in the United States that stops the door from closing when something is obstructing it. Is this not the case in other countries? Also does anyone see any value to assign a Scene number to the iPhone leaving and arriving home? If you use occupancy sensors you could potentially put LUUP logic in your scene to not activate if people are home? I thought it was kind of cool having the phone use its GPS to indicate home vs. away and let the user define what happens in those instances. This will get us away from the iPhone plugin and the long polling periods and the google quota exceeded, plus it will react a lot faster than the plugin. Thoughts?[/quote]Not sure about other countries (but I’m sure they are the same as the USA), but I wouldn’t trust to do it with mine here in the USA since its not fail-safe (counter balance failures etc) and most of us don’t have the additional UL requirements (audible pre-warning etc) even installed for remote opening manually, let alone automatically.
I never operate my door unless I know we are all away from home, or check with my IP Cam first. I have done it a couple of times to let a neighbor place a UPS delivery inside, but that’s it unless I can see the door on approach to the driveway, or inside (going out).
Of course you can script a scene that only pulses the door opener if its closed, or use the garage door plugin to issue an “unlock” command to make it safer, but I wouldn’t like to gamble.
I think the iBeacons idea is a great concept as well. I had actually forgot about the Estimote devices from awhile back, but these would be an awesome way to really save battery (aka Blutetooth LE) vs using GPS geofencing. Being able to do something like place one of these in/near the mailbox at the end of the driveway to detect you pulling in would be MINT!! At the same time, it could detect you leaving as well. It could also be used in situations where proximity would be valuable in the home. Think multi-zone heat/cool system. Both myself and the significant other work from home. My schedules mostly keep only upstairs where our offices are heated, but at times the GF likes to work from the kitchen or the living room couch. This is an easy way to let some proximity to an iBeacon allow it to make changes to the environment.
Honestly the potential for iBeacons is really strong in the world, but it will take some embracing on the part of places like retail outfits, larger orgs, etc to really make it useful for the average user. BLE really is a next wave of really powerful devices and we’re already seeing a huge influx of the technology being used. iBeacons like the Estimote devices could really bring this technology into the mainstream home use.
I only received emails from 5 people wanting to beta test. I will keep it open for another day and go from there. Please send me an email at support@instruodev.com if you would like to beta test and include your name and UUID of your device. Please keep it at iPhone only devices for now.
jpete, I sent you an email.
Program is working great. I like the voice commands. Thanks for all your work.
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