Location-based triggers

[trevorsmith]

What do people use to trigger stuff when they (or their phone, at least) is inside or outside some radius of the home? I have Tasker on my Android phone, so can I use that to talk to Indigo in some way?

Thanks.

[ryanbuckner]

I only use the trigger to tell Indigo that I'm either in the house or not in the house. That way I can use my location as input into the business rules that drive whether the house is occupied or not.

[trevorsmith]

Yes, but HOW do you triger that, is what I'm after.

[johnpolasek]

Not exactly location, but I use PiBeacons (i.e. tiles) and Karl's PiBeacon plugin to detect when we are within about 20 yards of the house; the plugin itself has triggers when the number of detected beacons changes, meaning that when the number of "family" beacons becomes 0, it checks for unlocked doors and arms the security system and when any family beacon enters the detection radius of the rPi's it disarms itself. Other people use the Fingscan or IFindStuff plugins to detect when smartphones link to the wifi at the house or report their location within some radius of the house, but those seem to drain the battery on my (admittedly 2 year old, so weak battery) IPhone... Tiles (a wide variety are listed that work with PiBeacon) can be had for $10 to $15 apiece and are easy to hang on a keyring, or a lot of smart devices (my fitbit, for example) are also detected.

[trevorsmith]

Thanks.

I'm a bit surprised this task is so tricky in Indigo - I'd have hoped for easier options built in....though I do think Indigo is brilliant already

[johnpolasek]

Thanks.

I'm a bit surprised this task is so tricky in Indigo

I think that the problem is that there are soooo many ways of doing it, each with their own strong and weak points that Jay and Matt didn't want to put people into a fixed mindset (like providing a password or keypad interface, which used to be the only way any security system worked). Instead, they allowed all the third party folks to go crazy so the rest of us could choose.

[jay (support)]

I think that the problem is that there are soooo many ways of doing it, each with their own strong and weak points that Jay and Matt didn't want to put people into a fixed mindset (like providing a password or keypad interface, which used to be the only way any security system worked). Instead, they allowed all the third party folks to go crazy so the rest of us could choose.

That and we haven't yet gotten around to adding location to Indigo Touch...

[ryanbuckner]

That and we haven't yet gotten around to adding location to Indigo Touch...

Is this coming!! ?

[ryanbuckner]

Yes, but HOW do you triger that, is what I'm after.

I have a few triggers for this:

1) Any time someone physically presses an Insteon switch in the house - a trigger sets the house mode to "occupied"
2) FING works to check the presence of mac/ip addresses on your network. Based on those rules I trigger variables to indicate my phone or wife's phone to be home, indicating we are home
3) Any time motion in sensed in my garage , a trigger assumes I'm either coming or going. It checks for the presence of my phone or my wife's phone
4) I have a script that runs to get the lat/long of my car. If my car is in my garage I assume I'm home, unless my phone is not there. (then I took a different car)
5) BMW LAbs widgets allow for emails to be sent through IFTTT based on your configured geofences. This has proven to be pretty slow and unreliable based on the number of hops required to check (car fires recipe which sends email that Indigo checks and then does something with. I only check email in Indigo every 5 minutes so it's a long time before this fires)

[colinpartridge]

What do people use to trigger stuff when they (or their phone, at least) is inside or outside some radius of the home? I have Tasker on my Android phone, so can I use that to talk to Indigo in some way?
.

The last person leaving the house sets the alarm, which is detected by a Fibaro Universal sensor.

[ryanbuckner]

how many examples are you looking for? You might want to check the Success Stories & Kudos forum


When the temperature is forecasted to be below 30 degrees my daughter's heater turns on 15 minutes before bedtime