kw123 wrote:1. fing only detects devices that at some point in time send a broadcast. If they never do fing does not know about them. if the device only talks to the router directly and your switch is somewhat intelligent the MAC might never see the device. You can test if the device answers to pings. We could add an option to add a device manually that does not depend on fing, but just uses ping to determine status.
Karl
Firstly thank you and everyone else who responded for your comments.
This one was due to my having replaced a failed switch recently with an old backup switch I had on hand. Apparently the port I plugged the "missing" device in was dead. After I moved it to a new port, Fingscan picked it up right away.
kw123 wrote:3. iPhones etc have sophisticated power savings method. They change withe eg battery level and other circumstances. Very often they do not answer pings when in power save mode
in my experience iPhones are not good for highly effective presence detection. To improve the stability of up/down increase the expiration time (device edit) to > 5 minutes. Then the likelihood for the state going up/down/up/down should decrease significantly. but setting real situational triggers on it I would not do. iBeacons / pibeacon are significantly more stable and reliably
Karl
My goal is something I could use as a reliable "away" or "not away" trigger to do things like, "open the garage door when I ride my motorcycle up so I don't have to take off my gloves, get my phone, and open the garage door manually with Indigo Touch." And to enable/disable my security sensing/reporting when coming and going. For these use cases, I need it to be as reliable as possible, obviously.
Right now I use "Home Remote" (3rd party iOS Indigo client) geo based triggers that rely on more internet fail points than I care for. I was thinking Fingscan could keep the checks on my local LAN for improved reliability over something that needs internet connectivity.
Just based on the category of the plugin and the short description, I understand Fingscan was created for mostly for just sort of thing. In my case, because I'm trying to use the iPhone as the touch point, it's more a limitation of the power saving feature of iOS that prevents it from being used reliable for this with iOS devices.
I'll fiddle with the Fingscan controls to see if I can reach a happy medium and I'll investigate beacons. Haven't delved into that world yet.
Thanks,
Mike