Concentric Zones and Passivity

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I’m trying to use a “nearhome” zone (same coords as home, but a with a larger radius) to trigger/check in some automations. I want to use this zone to trigger an automation as a person arrives home (eg enters nearhome from the “outside”), as well as suppress another automation if someone happens to be in that zone at the time of triggering.

I have questions which I can’t seem to answer with experimentation (testing a moving location is hard):

  1. Are nearhome and home mutually exclusive? That is, if I am in home, will I also be in nearhome?
  2. If not, how can I check/trigger in which direction nearhome was entered (eg leaving home vs arriving)?
  3. As nearhome is just for automations, I’ve marked it as passive. As such, its state is always 0. Can I still check if a specific person is in nearhome during an automation?
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To answer my questions:

  1. Seems they are not (you will be in both), except as Near Home is passive, its count will always be 0.
  2. Not relevant, as you can only enter “from the outside” anyway.
  3. You cannot check if a person is in a passive zone. Which although makes sense, does make it more difficult to use in automations in the way I want. “Passive zones can still be used in automations” therefore seems a bit imprecise. I think what is meant was “Entering and exiting passive zones can still be used as triggers”. At which point I wonder what the benefit of passive zones are apart from hiding them from the map?
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We live in a gated community with only one way in/out, so I set up a gate zone and a home zone which do not touch or overlap. This may be a solution for you depending on how you access your home from ‘away’. If you have just one approach into your community that would be pretty easy. It does get more complicated (more passive zones) if ther are multiple approach routes.

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