Geofence sporadically not working

Posted on
Wed Apr 05, 2017 10:05 pm
benish offline
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Posts: 15
Joined: Jan 22, 2017
Location: Portland, OR

Geofence sporadically not working

I've recently setup Home Remote to trigger actions when I enter and exit a geofence. It works great most of the time, but twice in the last week it hasn't worked when I have entered the geofence. Any ideas? Anything I can do to troubleshoot?

Posted on
Thu Apr 06, 2017 1:47 am
PeteVis offline
Posts: 180
Joined: Jun 19, 2015

Re: Geofence sporadically not working

I've given up on iOS geofencing (location and beacons).

From what I understand, this has nothing to do with Home Remote, or any other similar app such as Locative, but the underlying Apple frameworks.
The Apple frameworks need to report your GPS data, but it does so at various intervals. Apple does not guarantee instantaneous reports due to battery issues, and reporting of GPS location to the app requesting it can even take up to 15 mins when the app is backgrounded.

The same is true for bluetooth detection of iBeacons.

The fastest way to ensure that Home Remote receives your data from the location framework is to have your iPhone unlocked and Home Remote open on screen... but this is impractical.

GPS navigation or tracking apps work different, they keep the app and location requests alive, even when they are backgrounded, but this severely impacts battery life.

Location and beacon features for home automation are limited by these constraints, and this is the reason why people implement alternative methods (search this forum for fing, Karl's ibeacon plugin with a raspberry, proxydine....)

Posted on
Mon Jan 15, 2018 7:52 pm
midd offline
Posts: 372
Joined: Apr 18, 2010

Re: Geofence sporadically not working

Decided to rekindle this thread. I have 4 iPhones that I was using with Home Remote. I setup the same Geofence on all of them. When all of the phones were gone and the last one gone for more than 20 minutes, my Thermostat would shut off. When at least one reenters, then my schedule resumes. Lately I have been going crazy because Home Remote and Indigo are saying phones are gone when they are home and vice versa.

But with my ecobee3 I can setup Geofencing with HomeKit. Will my results be better?

Indigo 7, Monterey (12.1) on a 2009 Mac Pro..

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