Running geofencing on an iphone (IOS 11.2.2), with the native Vera app, more often than not it doesn’t trip when I’ve left the geofence, so my house modes don’t change. I get no exit notification, and my scene notifications don’t alert me to a house mode change because there was never an exit sent.
It seems to work more often when I walk the dog than when I get in the car and drive away, but it’s not consistent.
I’ve tried iphone locator app, but it’s garbage, none of the settings stick, so I can’t set it up.
What special incantation do I need to utter for geofencing to be reliable?
I had another 3 tries with iphone locator, and eventually got it to configured. I ended up having to finish it using Advanced - variables, since the Settings would only get so far as saving my icloud info, but not selecting my iphone.
I have the same experience with the Iphone 6s and geofencing. My scene will trigger about 20% of the time and I cannot determine an explanation. I tried making the geozone larger and smaller but found the same results.
I love it when it works. I have it opening my schlage door lock when I enter the geozone and open the detached garage door. The house light also goes on to notify me that the door with unlocked. PLEG handles the logic and also allows me to see that the geozone did not trigger.
Now, if I can only make it work 100% (or even 80%) of the time.
I have an Android phone. I know an Android phone is not the same as an IPhone, but I have found the placement of the cellphone to be critical. When I go for my three mile walk, I head out going north and away from the cell tower that is 4.5 miles southwest of me. The fence is at 328?. I will receive notification that I have left the fence about ? mile away. When I return via the same path, I receive notification between 200-400? away. This situation has repeated many times with similar results. The phone is in my front pocket and when I am walking north I believe my body is shielding the phone. I realize there are many factors including cell system latency, attenuation, and system load. When traveling, a vehicle can also act as a faraday cage.
[quote=“ckohouse, post:4, topic:198422”]I have the same experience with the Iphone 6s and geofencing. My scene will trigger about 20% of the time and I cannot determine an explanation. I tried making the geozone larger and smaller but found the same results.
I love it when it works. I have it opening my schlage door lock when I enter the geozone and open the detached garage door. The house light also goes on to notify me that the door with unlocked. PLEG handles the logic and also allows me to see that the geozone did not trigger.
Now, if I can only make it work 100% (or even 80%) of the time.[/quote]
I manually unlock my garage door using the RF remote (sometimes Vera, but it is still a manual trigger). About 20% of the time, Vera does not detect my presence until I enter the house (garage camera detects motion, garage man door trips, dining room camera detects motion) and then sets Vera to Home mode.
About 20% of the time, I get notifications from Vera I am home and house mode is set to Home while I am on the driveway and just before before I open the garage door. If I used PLEG to trigger the garage door to open when one of us is home, this would be the ideal time.
The rest of the time, it can be a little premature (I just entered my 0.1 mile radius but maybe I am getting mail from the mailbox) or I could be in the garage when Home mode is set (usually garage camera detects motion is the only security “alarm” I get).
I think it is a combination of Vera and iCloud. My expectations is if I get a Vera Secure, Vera will perform more consistently (due to the faster processor and more memory) but iCloud will always be inconsistent in reporting my location at the right time for Vera to respond as I would expect. There are so many moving parts between the iPhone and Vera to get the timing exactly right every time.
I’ve found that part of the issue is how often phone updates location and then update this data online, especially if in “stand-by” mode.
I usually don’t have problems when entering home, as I stop for a moment to manually open the gate, then to close it. This is enough for the phone to update location.
But I have a scene based on location on the way home, and this is a hit or miss. It works most of the time, as I usually pass this location relatively slow due to traffic. But if the road is empty and I don’t remember to slow-down in this area, there are times when location is simply missed.
Thanks for the ideas, but your body is virtually transparent to the frequencies used by cell phones. If the car was such a good faraday cage, then I wouldn’t get text messages, push notifications, phone calls and GPS apps wouldn’t be able to download maps, or get a GPS fix.
[quote=“kwieto, post:7, topic:198422”]I’ve found that part of the issue is how often phone updates location and then update this data online, especially if in “stand-by” mode.
I usually don’t have problems when entering home, as I stop for a moment to manually open the gate, then to close it. This is enough for the phone to update location.[/quote]
This may be part of the issue, but I can be at work eating my lunch, and geofencing still hasn’t figured out that I’ve been gone for 4 hours. IPhone locator also relies on icloud position data, and so far it seems more reliable. My gps apps know where I am, as does the iphones location services.
I’m pretty sure this is an API implementation or coding issue. It may be a multitasking issue, because on a few occasions I’ve noticed the geofence alerts fire when I open the Vera app hours after leaving, when I’m checking whether or not my house modes have changed.
[quote=“w1ngz, post:9, topic:198422”][quote=“kwieto, post:7, topic:198422”]I’ve found that part of the issue is how often phone updates location and then update this data online, especially if in “stand-by” mode.
I usually don’t have problems when entering home, as I stop for a moment to manually open the gate, then to close it. This is enough for the phone to update location.[/quote]
This may be part of the issue, but I can be at work eating my lunch, and geofencing still hasn’t figured out that I’ve been gone for 4 hours. IPhone locator also relies on icloud position data, and so far it seems more reliable. My gps apps know where I am, as does the iphones location services.
I’m pretty sure this is an API implementation or coding issue. It may be a multitasking issue, because on a few occasions I’ve noticed the geofence alerts fire when I open the Vera app hours after leaving, when I’m checking whether or not my house modes have changed.[/quote]
I only stated what I found to be a pattern?
Vehicles are faraday cages, but with holes that let signals pass. I have found my 2015 F150 to be a very complete cage and proper cellphone placement is critical for communication. My Ranger had plenty of holes.
Check to be sure that your Location Services are set to “Always” for the Vera app via the settings. Newer iOS has defaulted to “only while using the app” even if you say “Always” when setting it up.
[quote=“w1ngz, post:1, topic:198422”]Running geofencing on an iphone (IOS 11.2.2), with the native Vera app, more often than not it doesn’t trip when I’ve left the geofence, so my house modes don’t change. I get no exit notification, and my scene notifications don’t alert me to a house mode change because there was never an exit sent.
It seems to work more often when I walk the dog than when I get in the car and drive away, but it’s not consistent.
I’ve tried iphone locator app, but it’s garbage, none of the settings stick, so I can’t set it up.
What special incantation do I need to utter for geofencing to be reliable?[/quote]
It’s not just you. I’ve been emailing back and forth with Vera Support for a couple of months now. They keep telling me that its’ because I have basic users on my account. I fail to understand why I need to give a user admin rights for this to work properly. Furthermore, their claim is that my wife’s basic account doesn’t have enough rights to use geofencing. So why is her lack of presence in a geofenced area affecting me? The feature is seriously buggy and they won’t address the issue.
I’d also like to know why I just can’t simply change the user permission level. They want me to delete the geofence, delete the account, re-add the account with admin rights, then re-add the geofence. I’ve never used an OS that you have to delete the account to change permission level.
I have had very good luck with my old Galaxy S5 and my new LG XVenture for Geofencing. The LG isnt as fast on response as the S5 was, but within about 15 seconds of it. My wife is on an iPhone 7S and it has worked for the most part for her. Every few months something in her phone, or in the Vera app updates and Geofencing does not work for 3 days and then begins working again. It’s always 3 days… It makes no sense to my why it’s 3 days… but we know that it is now and adjust accordingly.
Now I have the porch light come on when the house changes to home mode no matter if it is day or night. She knows that if that light is not on when she comes home that Vera didnt pick up her return, and wont for 3 days, and she needs to trigger the home mode by another means. Punching in her code on the front door will do it, or tapping the Imperihome modes button will do it.
I’d given her an Aeon Labs keyfob so she could hit a button that would always change the mode, unlock the door, adjust lights levels, etc… she loved it other than continually knocking the battery cover off. She’s stopped carrying it because of the battery cover.
Then the problem might be in communication between Vera and your phone.
Or the Vera app itself, I’ve had some applications which were for example showing “no location” error from time to time, while GPS was working fine and delivering correct data to other apps.
I don’t know how the algorithm of entering/leaving geofence works. For example what happens if phone is within geofence, then it is turned off and again on but outside geofence (similar case to described by you)? I’ve never did such experiment, but I can imagine that in some circumstances (like: long period without location updates from your phone) the “exit” may be ignored. But this is just guessing, as I said, I’ve never did such test.
Apparently, he is right. Your body IS NOT “transparent” to radiowaves and if this is not a big problem in good conditions, it might be a real trouble in bad ones.
Especially if you use normal GPS, not its substitute realized by positioning to GSM towers.
Most of GPS satellites are located near the equator and if you are on the northern hemisphere, going north and having GPS in front of you (pointing north and shielded by your body from south) can dramatically change accuracy of your device.
The same for cars: having the GPS under windshield and going north (still, on northern hemisphere) can result even with completely loosing signal in some circumstances, as your device is shielded from most of GPS satellites by the roof of your car.
Go to some tourist GPS forums, there are plenty threads about “why my GPS is loosing signal” or “have poor accuracy”.
For A-GPS (based on triangulation from GSM towers) the problem is lesser, but still, in some conditions (i.e. in the woods) can have a really big impact.
This is how I diagnose on Android.
Open Vera’s app and go to the geofencing section and edit your geofence.
Click save and in Android it will keep the map open with you at the center of your geofence.
Leave your house and watch your location leave your geofence. Make sure it keeps a consistent, accurate location of yourself when leaving your fence.
If it does, it is a communication problem. if not, it is probably a GPS problem.
I would also make sure your fence is at least 150 meters or more.
After recreating my geozone and scene and studying the results for a few weeks. I have found that the geozone is triggering my geozone scene 80%+ of the time. Another 20% of door unlock failures are due to the time lag related to evaluating time constraints within the PLEG (< 1 minute). I basically park the car and get to the door before the unlock scene is triggered. Is there a way to force the evaluation of a statement immediately based on one event taking place? i.e. the garage door opened; evaluate the expression. Below is my PLEG statement. The time limitations were added base on experiences to eliminated the door (and entry light) from unlocking/turning on when I am leaving.
(InsideGZone1; NOW < 4:00) AND ( Garage_Door_Open ; NOW < 4:00) and Garage_Door_Open and (FrontDoorLocked; NOW > 5:00) and FrontDoorLocked
I do not use geofencing but iPhone Locator and PLEG. When I open the garage door, the trigger refreshes iPhone Locator, and refreshes again every minute for 5 minutes. I do the multiple refreshes to check to see if we are gone to set the house mode to Away.
[quote=“ckohouse, post:17, topic:198422”]After recreating my geozone and scene and studying the results for a few weeks. I have found that the geozone is triggering my geozone scene 80%+ of the time. Another 20% of door unlock failures are due to the time lag related to evaluating time constraints within the PLEG (< 1 minute). I basically park the car and get to the door before the unlock scene is triggered. Is there a way to force the evaluation of a statement immediately based on one event taking place? i.e. the garage door opened; evaluate the expression. Below is my PLEG statement. The time limitations were added base on experiences to eliminated the door (and entry light) from unlocking/turning on when I am leaving.
(InsideGZone1; NOW < 4:00) AND ( Garage_Door_Open ; NOW < 4:00) and Garage_Door_Open and (FrontDoorLocked; NOW > 5:00) and FrontDoorLocked[/quote]
I use a virtual switch per user as a trigger when entering or exiting a geofence zone. VS is turned on when entering and off when exiting.
For what it’s worth…after today’s server upgrade my geofence stopped working. It would report me leaving and entering along with a message it could not communicate with the Vera Server.
Calling tech report confirmed that this is a known issue after this morning’s “hardware upgrade.” (Or what some would more appropriately call a downgrade. ;))
Trying to get geofence working with this new information may prove futile. It would be nice if there was some sort of official announcement of known issues as they are discovered.
EDIT: Not that I doubted Vera but I deleted cache, settings via app interface. Force stop on the app. Restarted phone, logged in. Geofence is working. Perhaps something to do with the new hardware upgrade? Not sure, but a little dismayed vera tech support could not figure this out. They are usually very good.