Handling the babysitter(!)

Configuration
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Who feels they have a good method for dealing with babysitters/childminders and their presence detection / Home Assistant alarm?

I’ve got a bodge in my config at the moment but feel there must be a better way.

I’m also keen to avoid edge cases which mean my alarm could disarm when the whole family are away on holiday but (for example) our babysitter walks past our house, the UniFi component notices her, the babysitter group is set to ‘home’ and the alarm disarms.

Problems with my current implementation:
For my and my wife, we use a combination of device trackers to achieve reliable presence detection. It’s taken about six months of trial and error, multiple config file automations to deal with or prevent weird edge cases. For babysitters, I don’t want to ask them to carry a bluetooth dongle on their keychains nor do I want to ask them to install the Life360 app. So merely detecting them on the WiFi AP is about the extent of what I can do. The problem is, on its own, that isn’t reliable. The AP sets people to ‘away’ just because the device hasn’t used WiFi for half an hour or so. It’s fine to do that initial “Oh, you’re home!” thing but useless to know about who is STILL home.

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I think I POSSIBLY have found the answer (which isn’t a physical switch or replying to Telegram messages) in the form of this post.

Just need to make sure it wouldn’t interfere with my house alarm, otherwise I’d be shooting myself in the foot.

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I’d also look at monitor for Bluetooth presence detection. I’ve started using it today, and coupled with a sensor on the front door, it’s proving to be much better than HA’s built in Bluetooth tracker. Remember that you can track phones as long as the BT is turned on.

Now, you asked if my approach still works for me, and the answer is yes, but.

I do “presence” detection based upon both device trackers (WiFi and Bluetooth), but also activity. Whether or not I think somebody is home, if the TV is on, then the house is occupied (for example). I’m in the process of switching to monitor, as mentioned above, and have it set to only scan for departure if the front door is opened.

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I use input_booleans as conditions in my automations I can just enable that stops the automations from running. Got the idea from below.

https://github.com/CCOSTAN/Home-AssistantConfig/tree/master/config

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Thanks - I do already use monitor and its great, especially when run via an ethernet dongle - but as I said - I don’t feel like I can impinge on my guests by requiring them to give up their bluetooth mac addresses, make sure their phone has already paired with a bluetooth device once before, and make sure they have bluetooth switched on. It feels like too much of an ask. Besides, asking monitor to track lots of phones which aren’t even the primary occupants’ would lead to a lot of 2.4ghz interference and sadly most of my network is 2.4ghz not 5hz/.

But thank you, I do appreciate the suggestion!! :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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A babysitter is someone you pay for their service. Just ask them to bring a ble beacon when they go to your home and be done with it. If you provide the beacon, it’s a completely reasonable thing to ask.

Any other solution is going to be unreliable unless the habits of your baby sitter are really specific and consistent. (Saw the thread you opened asking for a bayesian sensor).

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