I’m currently making my own gate controller using ESPHome that will be installed with it’s own separate antenna next to the motor that moves the gate.
I was thinking about using this device also as a BLE tracker to make automation for the cars arriving as I found the zone automation using smartphone trackers very unreliable. Sometimes person gets through the gate, parks the car, enters home and then finally the status changes to “at home”. This is due to conditions of some of the phones that I cannot have them update the location more frequently.
I want to buy some BLE beacons on AliExpress to install them somewhere inside the cars. Is this approach to a problem good? I’d greatly appreciate opinions on that or maybe some other ideas that are much more reliable that what I’m thinking right now.
I use some trackers via wifi. I use routers with openwrt and UBUS integration, it’s very reliable and very fast, but my wife often leaves the Wi-Fi turned off or the phone runs out of battery, so I want to add something for a secondary trigger.
More lowtech may be better. I plan tongo back to the beam detector as a backup.
When phone dies you are out of luck. The beam rings doorbell in house and senda noyification to phone. While we ignore each other the first time. About thr 2nd or third notification we open anyway just in presuming the other person having ttouble getting in. It also lets us know a stranger is present.
I used to have some false triggers due to a flaky network, but I’ve since upgraded my network. One thing I did was to have a condition to check that I’ve been away for a minimum amount of time in order to trigger if I seem to arrive home. I simply trigger using the phone’s location and a geofence slightly larger than my property. My latest addition was to also wait for my doorbell camera’s motion to trigger (it faces the street at the gate), so only once that happens, withing a time limit from breaking the fence, the gate will open.