I would like to thank The team at Vera for the best new feature since UI7!
I realize that there have been third party add on’s that have done this for quite some time now but I do like the fact that this new feature is built in and I can easily set it up for myself and my customers.
For that, we thank you.
I can not get enough of the new Geofence feature. It truly has made my customers and my families life easier and safer. And for those of us that tend to forget things like arming the alarm or closing the garage door, this is a game changer.
To show our appreciation and to let everyone know how easy it is to set it up, we have created a step by step video on what a geofence is and how to set it up. You can see it here.
I hope you guys at Vera do not mind but I had to borrow one image from your video to illustrate how a geofence does work. If it is a problem, let me know and I will take it out.
This is great, and functional… but EXTREMELY annoying:
Any time I enter the geofence, I get a notification on my android device (samsung galaxy S7):
“Geofencing: Home: Enter - Command can’t be sent to our servers.”
I also get the same notification any time I run the android app while I’m sitting at home.
I get a similar notification any time I LEAVE the geofence.
Same thing happens on my wife’s phone. What’s really the most annoying part of it is that the geofence does appear to be working! The “home mode” changes properly on the VeraPlus. I wish there was a way to suppress this (apparently false) message without suppressing all other notifications from the vera app.
[quote=“garyd9, post:2, topic:193688”]This is great, and functional… but EXTREMELY annoying:
Any time I enter the geofence, I get a notification on my android device (samsung galaxy S7):
“Geofencing: Home: Enter - Command can’t be sent to our servers.”
I also get the same notification any time I run the android app while I’m sitting at home.
I get a similar notification any time I LEAVE the geofence.
Same thing happens on my wife’s phone. What’s really the most annoying part of it is that the geofence does appear to be working! The “home mode” changes properly on the VeraPlus. I wish there was a way to suppress this (apparently false) message without suppressing all other notifications from the vera app.[/quote]
Well the short fix is to turn off the notifications on your mobile device.
Go into the Geofence on each mobile device and uncheck the “Notify” option.
This will turn off just the geofence notifications for that device.
I sometimes get that error when my mobile device is transitioning from the WIFI of my home to LTE. I guess the phone does not have an internet connection for a split second and that just happens to be when the app tries to send its geofence information.
I don’t know what fix is except maybe trying to broadening your WIFI?
[quote=“Jamr, post:3, topic:193688”]Well the short fix is to turn off the notifications on your mobile device.
Go into the Geofence on each mobile device and uncheck the “Notify” option.
This will turn off just the geofence notifications for that device.[/quote]
That does NOT stop the error notification mentioned above. I think that only stops the non-error geofencing notifications.
[quote=“Jamr, post:3, topic:193688”]I sometimes get that error when my mobile device is transitioning from the WIFI of my home to LTE. I guess the phone does not have an internet connection for a split second and that just happens to be when the app tries to send its geofence information.
I don’t know what fix is except maybe trying to broadening your WIFI?[/quote]
I get the error message 100% of the time if I’m at home, sitting with full wifi, and just open the mobile app (it usually takes a minute or so before the error notification pops up.) … so it’s not a transitioning issue. (This is in addition to getting the message when I move in or out of the fence.)
As an additional test, while sitting at home, I disable wifi, wait for LTE to kick in (and verify internet connectivity) and then start the mobile app. Within a minute or so, I get the error notification. (This was done to verify it’s not something my router’s firewall is causing.)
Reading these forums, I see that some people get the error consistently, and some don’t. I’m wondering what might be different.
I’m using a galaxy S7 on at&t running android 6.0.1 (marshmallow.) Background data is enabled.
I have gotten this error when my the app on my mobile has not been “logged” in. So for me, the fix is to start the app, minimize or close it. No more geo fence errors. If the droid is restarted or I download another app the vera application needs to be started again.
I get it every so often on my Android 6.01 LG V10 as well. About 15% of the time I leave or enter the house (geofence) I can live with it as the geofence/ DD-WRT presence combo is about 99% reliable now detecting if I leave or arrive and sets the house mode accordingly.
I have both GPS and WiFi location activated as with GPS only geo fencing wasn’t as reliable.
I just got a new version of the mobile at (7.15.17.60), so hopefully that will do better with the geogence stuff. I won’t know until I go home this evening.
(The “Whats new” section is a bit vague with the generic “various bug fixes and improvements” statement.)
To follow up, I still get the same errors with 7.15.17.60. I’ve been in contact with Vera’s support. They suggested I update to the latest app (which I already had done) and that I try to delete and re-create the geofence (which didn’t help.)
The real irony here is that the geofence is working fine… as far as I can tell, the error notification is meaningless.
[quote=“garyd9, post:11, topic:193688”]To follow up, I still get the same errors with 7.15.17.60. I’ve been in contact with Vera’s support. They suggested I update to the latest app (which I already had done) and that I try to delete and re-create the geofence (which didn’t help.)
The real irony here is that the geofence is working fine… as far as I can tell, the error notification is meaningless.[/quote]
It is still working fine for me. I wonder if it is conflicting with another app on your mobile device? Is it giving you the error on different devices or just that one?
On both Samsung Galaxy S7’s in my home. (Both my wife and I have the same phone.) She has very different apps than I do. She’s into the social network thing. I hate people.
On both Samsung Galaxy S7’s in my home. (Both my wife and I have the same phone.) She has very different apps than I do. She’s into the social network thing. I hate people.[/quote]
I would try it on a different device like a tablet or a different model phone. If it works without the error, than is is something on your S7"s.
@Jamr, you don’t replace 2 $700 current generation phones because of buggy software. Especially when the phones in question are one of the most popular current android phones. You fix the software.
With extensive testing, I’ve managed to isolate the problem. A quick summary is that when I edit the geofence and:
When “Notify” is NOT checked, I get error notifications when I enter or exit the geofence, and whenever I start the application and am inside the geofence.
When “Notify” IS checked, I get normal enter/exit notifications, as well as an “enter” notification any time I start the application from within the geofence, but no error notifications.
Of course, I’ve sent the same info to Vera’s support. It should help them to find the problem, as it might even be something as simple as a missing “else” statement handling the case of the checkbox not being checked, and instead letting the code fall through to an error case.
[quote=“garyd9, post:15, topic:193688”]@Jamr, you don’t replace 2 $700 current generation phones because of buggy software. Especially when the phones in question are one of the most popular current android phones. You fix the software.
With extensive testing, I’ve managed to isolate the problem. A quick summary is that when I edit the geofence and:
When “Notify” is NOT checked, I get error notifications when I enter or exit the geofence, and whenever I start the application and am inside the geofence.
When “Notify” IS checked, I get normal enter/exit notifications, as well as an “enter” notification any time I start the application from within the geofence, but no error notifications.
Of course, I’ve sent the same info to Vera’s support. It should help them to find the problem, as it might even be something as simple as a missing “else” statement handling the case of the checkbox not being checked, and instead letting the code fall through to an error case.[/quote]
No one said anything about replacing your phones. To determine where the problem is, I try the same setup on different hardware. If you do not have any other hardware around to test it on, no problem. I am sure Vera is working extremely hard on a fix for you on your S7’s and you can wait for it on the next software update.
Sorry about the tone of that response. I do software development professionally, and I get extremely annoyed by my so-called “peers” who try to refuse bugs that are platform specific. (example: It only happens on Windows 7, so it must be a 3rd party issue that we’ll ignore. Nevermind that 80% of our clients use Windows7.)
I actually don’t have any other active phones (that I can test something personal on.)
Please call Vera and see what they say about this. I rarely get this error on my Nexus 5X (maybe once in two months on average).
Does it happen constantly? occasionally? rarely?
I would love to know what is causing this.
