Indigo Domotics

Hi,

I'm just getting going with Indigo, so this is probably super basic, but I'm wondering how people go about setting a variable to define that the house is empty, when there are multiple people.

I'm using a Geofence via Home Remote that calls an Action Group to toggle a variable for me (e.g. ScottHome). I have a similar setup for my wife. So I have variables for me and for my wife, that track whether each of us are home or away. So I think I'm most of the way there. But I'm not sure the best way to do all the logic required for a variable that tracks if we're both away.

My first thought was a trigger when my variable changes (ScottHome), which checks to see if my wife is also home and then sets an "Everyone Away" variable. But it seems like I'd need a separate trigger for all the possible variations (both away, just me away, just my wife away) for both leaving and arriving, and it feels overly complicated.

I get the sense this could be handled in different ways, and I'm wondering how other people have approached this. Partly to try and figure out the "best" way, and partly to get a better understanding of how all this stuff works.

What you described is more or less what I do as well. I think you're on the right track.

I do some other "belt and suspenders" stuff via the UniFi plugin and with an iBeacon, each of which are able to kick status from away to home if they happen to trigger before Home Remote notices, but Home Remote usually reacts first.

Yeah, Home Remote has failed to trigger on my return a couple times and someone suggested Fing / Fingscan. I'm trying to decipher how to get that working right now, thinking I'd have them both going – or at least see which is more reliable. I'm not familiar with UniFI, but sounds like a similar concept (check for when your phone joins & leaves the network).

As the author of all three I am a bit biased.
Best is pibeacon with a wide margin
Second fingscan
Third UniFi ( you need the wifi aps etc for it )

Biggest hurdle for pibeacon is setting up the raspberry pi. When you have done that every thing else is covered by the plugin.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks for the input @kw123. piBeacon wasn't even on my radar, but it is now. I was hoping I'd be able to get presence detection working with just our phones, since we already have those with us all the time anyway. But I can understand the constraints that make beacons more performant.

For now, a geofence in Home Remote with Fingscan as a backup seems to be working, but I'll need more time to determine if it's consistent and reliable.

Biggest hurdle for pibeacon is setting up the raspberry pi

Yeah, I looked through the piBeacon forum, and skimmed this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=187&t=15482
And it feels a bit daunting. But I'm usually pretty good at copy & pasting in to the terminal, so as long as nothing goes wrong I can probably get it done!

if you want to get started with an RPI let me know. I normally can get you up and running in 10 minutes..

Problems come up when IP number(s) change or the SSD dies.


Karl

Karl,

I appreciate the offer of help with an RPI. I might be able to figure it out on my own but knowing you are willing to help will make it much easier to commit to it. For some reason Fingscan is giving me a lot of false reports, so unless I can get the Home Remote geofence to work more reliably I might be going the RPI route sooner than expected.

I have the Fingscan minimum times to trigger / re-trigger pretty high to try to avoid false reports, and the false reports are decreasing – but the values are getting so high that it is starting to be not very useful. Which just reinforces what you already said about piBeacon being the best method for this by a wide margin.

You might also want to consider that the rPis can be tasked to do other things besides presence detection; Karl keeps adding capabilities; the ones I have set up for presence detection/closest door location are also monitoring the magnetic switches that were installed in the doors and windows of the house I bought since the prior owner never invested in a real security system to utilize them,,, and I'm thinking of getting some of the displays that he's added the capability to drive.

johnpolasek wrote:

You might also want to consider that the rPis can be tasked to do other things besides presence detection

I started researching exactly this yesterday. I'd love to hear about what other sorts of things people are doing with rPis. I'm assuming that anything new I install will be z-wave, but maybe there are some things that would be better to run through the rPi.

How are your magnetic switches communicating with the rPi?