Child with no phone presence detection

I am one of those parent who don’t get there 9 year old kid a phone. So I am trying to figure out how to detect when they get home on the occasion when my wife and I are not there to welcome them. I was looking at ibeacon , but I can’t figure it out.

I have HASS running on a RPI3 down stairs. I also have a 2nd RPI3 in the kitchen that I use for a google calendar. My idea would be to use the built in blue tooth and some program on the RPI3 in the kitchen as a beacon detector. Then put a ibeacon in their book back, when they get home the RPI3 in the kitchen sees it and sends a MQTT message to hass.

I know I can do this with Happy Bubble device. But I should not have to spend $30 on something that my RPI3 should be able to do already. Any idea!

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You could always go the manual route and stick a dash button in the doorway and have your child press it when they get home and when they leave for presence detection.

I do presence detection with wifi and our cellphones but like you mention that doesn’t work with our 9yr old either. I have a sensor that detects garage door open/close state and my doors as well. If I wonder whether he got home or not I just check remotely to make sure the garage door/house door opened. Another idea would be to have a dash button they press when they safely get home. If it’s not pressed within a certain window you could have a pushbullet notification sent. Just a few other ideas. I haven’t jumped into “actual” presence detection yet, mostly because I don’t want my system exposed to the Internet. I’ll be curious to see what you do with this though. Thanks.

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What about motion sensors? Stick one in their room (or another room)? When motion is detected, you know you kid is at home?

Thought of that, but that sort of defeats the purpose of using them for an alarm trigger

Try creating a classifier for…?

I am leaning toward room-assistant as I have a RPI3 running in the kitchen, then I can use beacon in their book bag to detect when they get home.

room-assistant updates the presence via MQTT and HASS MQTT device picks up the change in status.

Buy the right beacon is the key, one with a good range

Try this… https://www.domoticz.com/wiki/Presence_detection_(Bluetooth_4.0_Low_energy_Beacon)
Works perfect…

Tile is the best IMHO (a little pricey about $40 for one) - least complicated method if you don’t want room tracking only location tracking. I use this for my kids - and leave a tile in their backpack. the tile pro has a pretty long range and good battery (pro is the only one where the battery is replaceable). It works well for Alarmo disarming and location tracking.

What do you have detecting BLE in your home for this? And how quickly does it act?

Gift them a fitness tracker and use mqtt room presence to track them.
I am using Mi Band 6 together with ESPresense. Works very reliably
Trick is to get them wear it constantly. We have fitness trackers for the whole family and for few weeks at the start we made it as a challenge to see who gets the most steps.
Once they get used to wearing the fitness tracker and looking at the watch to see the time it will become a habit.
Mi Bands lasts around 2 weeks in one charge.