Indigo Domotics

First of all, let me thank you for providing this plug-in. It's pretty damn cool and I think will be really useful in my setup.

I have two questions:

1) My iOS devices seem to ping/pong up and down like crazy. I'm not sure how to correct this and/or how to trigger on the current state if there is a way?

2) All of my IP devices were detected except 1, which remains unknown to fingscan after a few weeks of it running. The device is definitely on and reachable on my network. It's a Tivo.

Thanks,
Mike

some thoughts:

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.
2. the plugin has an option to "confirm" a change to down or up with a ping - set in device edit.
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

Just thought about.
On your indigo mac do a ping to the unrecognized device
Then fing should see the reply from the device get the info of it and store it.


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iPhones respond much more frequently to a magic packet (WOL) than from a Ping whilst in power-save mode.

Whilst much better, this is still not a guaranteed method for inactivity timeouts less than 20 minutes for iPhones and 10 minutes for Android.


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that's interesting, have not found anything on the internet about WOL messages and phones,.. will try it out

BUT that would likely increase battery usage on the iPhone.. but up to the user

Karl

this code shows how to send WOL in python

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/env python

import socket
import sys

def sendWOL(MAC, bcIP)
    data = ''.join(['FF' * 6, MAC.replace(':', '') * 16])
    sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    sock.setsockopt(socket.SOL_SOCKET, socket.SO_BROADCAST, 1)
    sock.sendto(data.decode("hex"), (bcIP, 9))
   
broadcastIP = "192.168.1.255"
mac  = "00:11:22:33:44:55"

sendWOL(mac, broadcastIP )

Yes similar code to what I have, although I then follow this with a ping 5 times I. One second intervals to complete the discovery process

Yes that is what I will be adding to fingscan
First wol then ping optional.
Fingscan has the option to do continuous pings every xx secs and if at least one is returned the expiration counter is reset.


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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

try out the new fingscan plugin:

tested with 2 iPhones (X and 7) and they both stayed up > 24 hours with WOL = 2minutes & expiration set to 2 minutes & ping if down (set in device edit)

Karl

Wow that’s actually not bad as the average time between scans would be 1 minute so not a bad resolution. Did the phones batteries last 24 hours without charge being continuously woken up every 2 minutes or were they plugged-in?

Plugged in over night. Battery on my iPhone X was 30% when going to bed. About normal or may be 5% less


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I am very excited about this addition! I will update as well and see if I can lower my up/down/expired transition times.


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Hi All,

I'm trying to get this set up and don't have enough info to go on:
1.) does this need a fingbox
2.) if not, what is the MAC that goes for router password? is this the MAC or Password
3.) it seems to be set up but not getting any IP addresses, I'm sure this is due to me not having it setup right.

Thank you,
Daniel

Got it sorted out - never mind, great plugin