Presence (aanwezigheid)

JanH

@Fire69 One other theoretical possibility (and it happened to me in the past) is that the phone automatically is switching several times between your own network and a "open" KPN Fon networksignal in the neighbourhood when you are a little bit further away from your router. And then ofcourse  the smartpresence app gives an "away" signal. I cancelled that option.

keverjeroen

I was thinking about using a simple swith in the hallway. Press it when you enter the house and when leaving. Then Homey knows if there is someone hom or not. Even if it's grandma who is babysitting the kids and has no phone, or the wife with a crappy phone that disconnects wifi..

https://www.klikaanklikuit.nl/nl/awst-8800-draadloze-wandschakelaar.html

Fire69

JanH said:

@Fire69 One other theoretical possibility (and it happened to me in the past) is that the phone automatically is switching several times between your own network and a "open" KPN Fon networksignal in the neighbourhood when you are a little bit further away from your router. And then ofcourse  the smartpresence app gives an "away" signal. I cancelled that option.

I hate that Fon crap, so that's not what's happening here, made sure it never connects to one of those

keverjeroen said:

I was thinking about using a simple swith in the hallway. Press it when you enter the house and when leaving. Then Homey knows if there is someone hom or not. Even if it's grandma who is babysitting the kids and has no phone, or the wife with a crappy phone that disconnects wifi..

https://www.klikaanklikuit.nl/nl/awst-8800-draadloze-wandschakelaar.html

I used a keyfob for that in the past to 'arm the alarm', but we regularly forgot to push the button
When the option became available with my previous controller to detect presence by phone I set it up and worked perfectly (albeit more limited that with Homey).  I never had problems with it.
So I really hope we can get it to work like that now also...

viktor

We have 2 Xperia Smartphones, my Z3 and my wife Z5. The Z5 was disconnecting the whole night, now i changed the DHCP Settings in the Developer's Mode to use the old dhcp client and is working almost perfect.

jimmy_zeropm

I'm experimenting for a week now with presence. But there are different outcomes when arriving home. Sometimes it sees the phone between 10-30 seconds but most of the time it will exceed 1 minute or even more. So therefore it doesn't suit my needs as a 'coming home and do some stuff' service. I'm using an up to date router, up to date phone with static IP etc. Could it be done to set or influence the 'network polling' interval on an android phone?

JaapPelt

Accurate presence detection is one of the major challenges for smart homes. There are so many real-life factors which can influence or alter accurate presence detection that the best way to approach it is by using multiple techniques.

With some clever thinking, you might be able to reuse a lot of your existing sensors to improve your presence detection.
For example:

• If someone turns on the TV or the lights via a switch, you can be pretty damn sure that someone is home.
• If Homey thinks you just left the house at 2 in the night, you might as well ignore the event.
• If my girlfriend's laptop is one, I can be pretty sure she is home.

All of these things are not guaranteed, but when combined with other methods such as geolocation or better/smarter presence, the results improve drastically.

Some tips to combine sensors using Homey:

1. It takes some thinking and experimenting. Keep making small incremental improvements.
2. Use plenty of variables to keep track of stuff. (Lights recently changed, TV is on, Someone is home, Jaap is home, etc.) 
3. When something happens (presence changes, motion detected, tv turned on) update your variables based on what you know.

Some examples:
Basic IF-THEN on sensor:
IF motion detected THEN set someone-is-home to true.

Add some constraints to exclude false events:
IF Jaap came home AND someone-is-home = false AND door has recently opened, THEN set someone-is-home to true.

Double check your measurements to ensure best results:
IF Jaap left home THEN set might-have-left to true AND trigger follow-up flow after 5 minutes 
IF motion detected THEN set might-have-left to false
IF follow-up is triggered AND might-have-left = true AND laptop is off AND TV is off THEN set someone-is-home to false.  

To conclude:
The more you track, the more accurate you can determine if someone is home. Using variables to keep track of recent events and double checking your expectations really helps a lot. The fact that you can do this relatively easily with Homey is why I live it so much 

jimmy_zeropm

Thanks for the input. But I don't have additional sensors and I'm living alone. So all those rules won't help much. Just wanted homey to react when I'm coming home. The delay still differs between 5 sec - 5 minutes. A Fibaro motion sensor will bring the right outcome I guess ;-)

Jesper

At the moment I'm using the following procedure for presence detection (+99% accuracy).

- Instal Tasker or MacroDroid on your phone with the RESTask plugin
- Instal the following Homey apps: HTTP request flow cards, Better Logic and Countdown
- Create a macro which sends a HTTP GET request when I disconnect from one of my WiFi networks (xxx) and when I connect to one of my WiFi networks (yyy)
- Once the xxx HTTP GET request is received by Homey the countdown timer "xxx" Starts (I use a value of 90 seconds). This will prevent short disconnections from your WiFi network incorrectly being interpreted as your not being home anymore.
- Once the countdown timer reaches 0 the variable "zz" will change to Away
- Once the yyy HTTP GET request is received by Homey the variable "zz" will change to Home and the countdown timer "xxx" will be stopped (countdown timer is set back to 90 seconds for next time)

For setting the RESTask settings see https://forum.athom.com/discussion/996/tutorial-using-tasker-together-with-homey

It works as fast as your phone connects to your WiFi network and does not drain the battery of your phone.

For one person you will need a total of 3 flows

At the moment I'm also testing this with the phone of my girlfriend (Samsung galaxy S4 mini)

bvdbos

https://apps.athom.com/app/nl.terryhendrix.smartpresence works perfectly for me, connecting to wifi sets me as present, disconnecting as away...

Eternity

@BasVanDenBosch
How do you do that? In Flows I can set an IF card, but I presume I have to link my smartphone somewhere too???

bvdbos

Come home:


leave:


And start all kinds of flows from the boolean-variable...

Jesper

But how does Homey know who connected to the WiFi? The name of the "wie" tag.

TinCup

Jesper said:

But how does Homey know who connected to the WiFi? The name of the "wie" tag.

Just install the Smartpresence App from the App-store and add a device for each person. (see App-page in the App-store for more info)

bvdbos

Jesper said:

But how does Homey know who connected to the WiFi? The name of the "wie" tag.

Its the name of the device in smarterpresence. If you're not sure, just test this flow by dragging the 'who' label to a phone-notification. 

@Eternity : you add an ip-device for better presence and give it a name. That's the name used... You have to make sure your device (phone) always gets the same ip...

Eternity

@BasVanDenBosch

Seems I had already set a static ip :-)
Thanks!

fiek

Has anybody meanwhile solved the home and away status during the night? Both our phones are set to keep the wifi connection alive, still we get away and home messages during the night. I added a condition that during the night i don't get any messages, but then the variables are not always set right

MarcelKuijper

fiek said:

Has anybody meanwhile solved the home and away status during the night? Both our phones are set to keep the wifi connection alive, still we get away and home messages during the night. I added a condition that during the night i don't get any messages, but then the variables are not always set right

I had this also, but just read what @Jesper had done, add a countdown timer to it, if it disconnects for 10 sec it wont be a problem.

havent tryed it yet but defenetly going to make a test flow like this when i got the time.

jeroenbos22

Think the current présence detection is almost fine. Only it missen out sometimes. Think if Athom can find a way to combine it with Bluetooth (use the phone itself as a beacon) it Will be perfect. The beacon can then work as a fallback if geofencing failed. Bt range is about 100m So perfect for the job

fiek

@MarcelKuijper I use the smart presence app and I thought the delay was built in the app. Or am I mistaken?

dhanstede

jeroenbos22 said:

Think the current présence detection is almost fine. Only it missen out sometimes. Think if Athom can find a way to combine it with Bluetooth (use the phone itself as a beacon) it Will be perfect. The beacon can then work as a fallback if geofencing failed. Bt range is about 100m So perfect for the job

I think you have a different homey than i have. Presence detection never worked fine here...

MarcelKuijper

fiek said:

@MarcelKuijper I use the smart presence app and I thought the delay was built in the app. Or am I mistaken?

I do not know this, tonight i will make a test flow with a countdown timer to see if this works propperly.
i did allready try with a ifttt flow but this doesnt always trigger, some times late, and sometimes not at all, on a Sony experia z5 compact.

Edit, smart presence app does have a build in timer, last time i used this i did not see this.
will try without the countdown timer first.

glijie

fiek said:

@MarcelKuijper I use the smart presence app and I thought the delay was built in the app. Or am I mistaken?

you're not mistaken, you can change the delay if you want for each user if you want.

fiek

@glije thnx but unfortunately I still get false positives during the night. I have set both my phones to WiFi always on. I still use an extra condition so I dont get notifications during the night. I have set the delay on 900 in smart presence

dhanstede

Are the presence detection issues only with android devices or also with the iphone?

ThijsDeJong

I have the same issues with a iPhone 7. (Smart) présence Would be beter if it could trigger on MAC -adres.

MarcelKuijper

Made a test flow, i set the timer to 5 min, first false positive just occured, with in 5 hours of the flow being active.

Edit, no false positives during the night. So testing continues.

ThijsDeJong

Any new findings? @MarcelKuijper

MarcelKuijper

Had 3 false positives during last night, got the time-out still at 5 min, will put it at 10 min tonight see what that does.

Erik_van_Schelven

I don't get it. Where can I add my phone/ip adress? In the app settings I see  "applicatie instellingen" and a button "Wijzigingen opslaan" and a log. Thats it.

Please help.

fiek

@MarcelKuijper can you tell more about the final results of your test?