[presence] Reliable, Multi-User, Distributed Bluetooth Occupancy/Presence Detection

phileep · August 29, 2018, 1:15am

Perhaps try stopping the montir service first.

sudo systemctl stop monitor.service

daneboom · August 29, 2018, 10:17am

How do you guys deal with guests? I’d quite like to be able to be able to do a push notification to my phone to say “Guest 1” is on the door step. I have their BT Mac address just don’t want to do full tracking of in/out. Looking for ideas I guess and experiences.

Also…unrelated…has anyone else found to their surprise one Pi Zero W covers their entire house?! I was really surprised by this. My house is narrow but very tall. Four floors. Well, I think it’s a lot of floors. Anyway. One Pi placed on any floor seems to cope just fine with…the lot!

@PianSom @eBoon

apt · August 29, 2018, 4:35pm

Hey All,

I grabbed myself some cheap bluetooth ‘Track & Find’ devices from modernhome (https://www.therange.co.uk/electricals-and-technology/gadgets/modern-home-track-and-find-two-pack/) which are detected fine (and named) if I use sudo hciscan lescan in terminal and I can add into presence but the MQTT output seen in MQTT.fx is giving me invalid device:

{"confidence":"0","name":"Invalid device: No such device","scan_duration_ms":"5023","timestamp":"Wed Aug 29 2018 17:34:43 GMT+0100 (BST)"}

Any ideas?

ekkesa · August 29, 2018, 6:16pm

Hi,

I added monitor, and it is running publishing to my mqtt broker. The iphones seems to work 100%, but our Apple watches stays on a confidence of 0.

{
“retained”: “false”,
“version”: “0.1.482”,
“confidence”: “0”,
“name”: "ekke’s iWatch ",
“timestamp”: “Wed Aug 29 2018 20:09:23 GMT+0200 (SAST)”,
“manufacturer”: “Apple, Inc.”,
“type”: “Known Static MAC”
}

I also added the -b switch to monitor, but it doesn’t seem to pick up my Tile devices, however when running hcitool lescan from the command line they do show up.

Any suggestions?

andrewjfreyer · August 29, 2018, 10:22pm

Working on non-iBeacon devices now. I appreciate everyone’s patience with the slowing development pace of this project!

Odianosen25 · August 30, 2018, 6:16am

Hey guys, for those that use AppDaemon and this project, you can check out my project I just shared on how to easily integrate this project into HA Home Presence Appdaemon App.

Regards

apt · August 30, 2018, 4:53pm

Sorry Andrew is that also in relation to my post?

teachingbirds · August 30, 2018, 5:18pm

I feel either stupid or I have missed some docs somewhere. How do i get the debug and log going? And where do I specify the beacon mac address? I have no file named known_static_devices or something like that. Is there documentation about this? All I see is the readme and the first post here and there is nothing there about this?

apt · August 31, 2018, 9:23am

Step 11 in the readme:

github.com

andrewjfreyer/presence/blob/master/README.md

presence
=======

***Note: as of `presence` 0.5.1, triggered scans, guest scanning, and beacon scanning are removed from `presence.sh` for simplification. Please consider using [monitor](http://github.com/andrewjfreyer/monitor) instead for beacon scanning and detection and for generic device detection. It is unlikely that `presence` will receive substantive updates after version 0.5.1.***

____


***TL;DR***: *Bluetooth-based presence detection useful for [mqtt-based](http://mqtt.org) home automation. More granular, responsive, and reliable than device-reported GPS. Cheaper, more reliable, more configurable, and less mqtt-spammy than Happy Bubbles. Does not require any app to be running or installed. Does not require device pairing. Designed to run as service on a [Raspberry Pi Zero W](https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/).*

Note that the more frequently you scan for devices, the more 2.4GHz bandwidth you will use. This script may cause interference with Wi-Fi or other bluetooth devices for particularly short delays between scans. 

<h1>Summary</h1>

A JSON-formatted MQTT message is reported to a broker whenever a specified bluetooth device responds to a **name** query. If the device responds, the JSON message includes the name of the device and a **confidence** of 100. 

After a delay, another **name** query is sent and, if the device does not respond, a verification-of-absence loop begins that queries for the device (on a shorter interval) a set number of times. Each time, the device does not respond, the **confidence** is reduced, eventually to 0. 

A configuration file defines 'owner devices' that contains the mac addresses of the devices you'd like to regularly ping to determine presence.

This file has been truncated. show original

Once you cd into the presence dir (step 10) you can create the required files.

Hope this helps.

teachingbirds · August 31, 2018, 1:07pm

Thanks but I’ve already got that going. Do I put the beacon mac in the same place (owner)? and the -b flag after the mac?

andrewjfreyer · August 31, 2018, 5:50pm

Yes, generic bluetooth LE devices should be added in an upcoming release.

andrewjfreyer · August 31, 2018, 5:52pm

no need to specify an iBeacon mac address. If the device doesn’t conform to the iBeacon protocol, it won’t be reported (yet) by monitor.

apt · August 31, 2018, 6:22pm

Thats great. Whats the upgrade process when its available? just get the script again?

ekkesa · August 31, 2018, 6:36pm

Awesome stuff! Reading through the thread I saw a lot of questions regarding room presence. Even though the RSSI is not a string indicator of distance, cant one use roll out multiple scanners and then use deduction by RSSI which one is closest, thus putting the device in a zone?

teachingbirds · August 31, 2018, 8:22pm

Oh okey, thanks.

R_V · August 31, 2018, 9:14pm

Brand new HA user here…
I’ve been using Hassio on a RPiB+ for a week now and I’m trying to add in your solution.
I’ve configureed a new RPiZero W following your instructions on github.

8.[INSTALL MOSQUITTO] This only installs a client right?

10.[CONFIGURE PRESENCE]
I haven’t installed a broker yet.
Do you recommend running the broker on the RPiZero, on the hassio server via the add-on, or even a third RPi(I have several, Pine64 too)?

daneboom · September 1, 2018, 1:18pm

@R_V also a noob here, but yes, install the broker on the Hass.io Pi via an add-on.

R_V · September 2, 2018, 1:21am

Are you saying they can’t run at the same time or be installed on the same pi?

I’ve installed them both on the same pi and, if I open two putty sessions, they both seem to run fine.

Does monitor run at startup or does it only run when executed at the command line?

daneboom · September 2, 2018, 9:04pm

Won’t they get in each other’s way by tying up the hardware alternately? Meaning you may get the same result eventually but it may take longer? I’m just speculating.

R_V · September 2, 2018, 9:52pm

my questions was more of a “can’t” vs “shouldn’t” question.
I went through the entire thread and had already installed it.
I must have missed any suggestion that the monitor run separately until I hit his comment.