Hey all. Home Assistant is a great app and I’m enjoying using it.
As most of you know, the real fun is with the automation. Automation, to work properly relies a lot on presence unless you just want everything to work with simple timers.
I have tried using nmap. I ran into a couple of issues, for one it won’t detect all of my devices. One of them is my phone, so it rules out using that for me. My girlfriend’s phone it detects but frequently marks it as “away” while it is still on the network. This is an android phone. Wifi doesn’t go to sleep.
I then tried using owntracks. I can get it to work on my phone but updates are unreliable on hers.
I cannot use the router option as I have a OnHub router that will not work with any of the existing components.
I have I think three options:
OnHub router and IFTTT. Right now my router can use IFTTT to send notifications when devices join and leave the network. I cannot figure out how to get this to work in HA. I don’t see any services to change my device’s state to away/home,
Bluetooth. No idea how reliable this is or if the range is far enough to work. Anyone know if multiple Bluetooth receivers are usable in this scenario?
Additional router with DD-WRT. I don’t want to use this as my actual router but if it could somehow see the devices in AP or switch mode, this could work too. It would be a dedicated box to facilitate my presence detection but I am okay with that if i can make it work reliably.
I switched over to Tasker and MQTT updates, as I found owntracks unreliable - this however assumes you’re running Android devices.
I’ve found the router option to be the most reliable however and it also updates more frequently unless you set Tasker to report the location every 1 minute, which can kill the battery.
Hi I started using an ibeacon a couple of weeks ago and it’s working well (in conjunction with Owntracks). There’s a good tutorial on the Google+ page. Part 1 related to fixed location zones.
@rsachoc
I’d like to know more about this as I find Owntracks only semi-reliable myself. And once I’m at certain client sites, I’m cut off because wifi is my only option in the building. It’s working well enough, but I’m always up for something better. If you have a link or two to share, I’d appreciate it as would the others I’m sure.
@LippyAlison
I was going to suggest the same thing; I just got one for the driveway and a USB ibeacon for inside the house. I got excited after reading that article and had some credit at Amazon. UNfortunately I saw @brusc video on RaspberryPi and the AIO installer and got my first Pi. It’s setup, but I still have to bring over my YAML files from my Windows install and modify them a little.
For a phone based GPS solution, I have found Locative to be pretty reliable on 2 iPhones, haven’t tested on Android. Own tracks and other solutions not so much.
I came over from SmartThings and their presence was pretty good, I actually wrote a bridge to HA I used for a while which worked well, but Locative has been just as reliable.
I followed this guide to get Tasker sending a message to my MQTT installation, which in turns updates HASS. I’ve set it up to report every 10 minutes at the moment, which won’t work for those that need per minute updates, but experiment with the update frequency and see how you get on.
Thanks very much for the pointers and the link! I’ll definitely look into this. I’m thinking of maybe moving off Owntracks onto a combo of this and iBecaons. This will be a big help and makes sense since I’m running Tasker anyway.
For now I have settled on OwnTracks and also Tasker triggering an MQTT update when I leave my car. However, there’s still some times when HASS doesn’t detect I am home, and it looks like the payload Tasker is sending is not making it or is invalid (I wrote that reddit post, but I haven’t yet tracked down the cause of the bug I am mentioning here).
I tried a iBeacon with OwnTracks for a while, and found that Bluetooth would absolutely murder my battery when OT was configured to look for it (e.g. battery at 20% at 11PM instead of 50%). That was a $30 experiment gone wrong.
For those having issues with owntracks; I was having those as well. There are a few things that you need to be aware of (not assuming your are not) that can cause issues. Especially on newer android devices.
Application Power Management
** Usually under battery [Aka Application Power Saving]
Keep Alive
Location
** What signals do you get where you are having the issue. **
Power Savings
** Some phones turn WiFi and other things off during power savings or sleep modes **
After adjusting all these; I was able to get it pretty reliable. Also, Zigbee has a sensor I would like to try, its a “Presence Sensor”, that goes on your key-chain. Its battery powered.
The only other thing I could think of was a bluetooth proximity sensor in every room/door. So you could tell where people are in the house, in relation to the strongest signal. Of course this would require some significant design, but I like that you can see what room they are in.