Other presence methods for WAF/ SAF-- other half doesn't like "battery drain" from Android HA App

Hello all,

Can I get your all’s help with coming up with a solution for the subject?

I have a few options which have already been determined as a no go by the other half.

  1. Doesn’t like the battery drain created by using location services with HA App—> Whether this is truly the case or not is neither here nor there, the disagreement has already occurred so looking for another method.

  2. Looking for the phone connected to wifi is also a no go because half of the time, it is turned off.

Can anyone give me some other ideas?

Currently, the alarm/ door on/off is handled by scanning a hidden NFC tag so this handles the majority of the issues that could arise but still wouldn’t mind having some type of method to determine who is home-- passively if possible.

Thank you all for any thoughts!!

use your routers integration, once her phone is on wifi youll get an update…also you can turn off location sensors and just use wifi connection sensor…that one only updates when wifi status changes

I use a Tile BLE tag. There’s one that is about the size of a thick credit card - tucks inside the phone case very neatly.

She’s really spotty on having her wifi on also (no go #2 from my initial post).

Ahhh, thank you for this idea and link. I will look into this one more. Thank you so much!!

Do you know if this works with other BLE style trackers like the apple ones?

You say her phone is off - like off, off or just not in use? I bet you could use BLE Presence tracking if it’s not actually powered down.

Don’t know anything about the Apple ones, I’m afraid. I use the Theengs Gateway add-on and they just pop up as MQTT devices.

Yeah, just wifi turned off. Not the whole phone. I will look into that also. Thank you for the idea!!

Thank you for the link @jackjourneyman