It would be really cool if Vera could tell if I’m home or not by checking if my iPhone is active on the home wi-fi network. This feature could be used, for example, to switch on different combinations of lights at dusk depending on whether I’m in or out. Thoughts?
The problem here is that the iPhone shuts down wifi when it goes to sleep. If you keep the wifi on your battery life will measure a small number of hours only.
I would also say ping by the hostname and not by ip as if the ip on the iphone changes then you have to change it. with hostname it will be able to ping with whatever ip the router (if you’re using a typical home setup) gives out.
Most home routers allow you to reserve an ip address in the DHCP for a given mac address, or alternatively you can set your iPhone to use a fixed address for any WLAN. If you want to ping by hostname then you’ll have to set up some kind of DNS service too.
Thanks for the replies folks! It’s really nice when you get cool responses to your first forum post. I think I’m going to like it here 