Beacon: a Geohopper/Beecon plugin

[chrisfromthelc]

If you're using the Reflector, it won't work. The service seems to block the ports. Try testing it with your external IP address instead; it should work perfectly. I ran into this issue yesterday.

[evansgo]

No just the IP, the odd thing is I then third it with geohopper and it works fine on wifi or 3g


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[flic]

No just the IP, the odd thing is I then third it with geohopper and it works fine on wifi or 3g


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Geohopper uses a cloud service. The app talks to the Geohopper servers, and they in turn talk to your Indigo installation which means the traffic to your server always comes from the outside.

Geofency talks directly to your server, so if it works over 3G and not Wifi it means that the URL you configured in the app only is accessible from the Internet and not from your home network. If you're using your public IP in the URL (http://1.2.3.4:xx) my guess would be that your home router/firewall won't allow hairpin connections, it won't handle traffic to your own public IP from the inside which would force the firewall to "U-turn" the traffic ( from the inside network - to the outside public IP - back to a server on the inside). Makes sense?

[evansgo]

Thanks, It does, thats a shame, it doesn't work from my office either, think that is the end of geofency for me then - shame. But geohopper seems to be working well so its not so bad.

[evansgo]

Its a real shame as Geofency seems to be quicker and more reliable than Geohopper which has been playing up a little recently (forgetting the connections and giving me multiple entry notifications)

I have had a thought and it seems to work ok, can anyone see a problem with this?

Set up 1 beacon as normal.
Set up same beacon, same name, same settings, but with internal IP of the Mac and same port.

Then when outside of home wifi I should get the "normal" one and when at home I should get the internal one, and by definition of how they are working I should never get both together.

Thoughts? It seems to work perfectly, the single device that was created appears to react to both notifications.....

Thanks
Gareth

[Sleepy81]

Re: Geohopper's new policy, I am of a mixed mind. On the one hand, it feels hinky to have a feature that worked for free and turn it into a pay feature (taking away functionality unless you pay a ransom.) On the other hand, I don't feel it's hinky when a developer charges for a major program update or requests an in-app purchase for a new feature. I wouldn't expect Matt and Jay to build functionality into Indigo Touch to have it work with competitors' products for free, but I think it's understandable to feel disappointed about something like that being "taken away."

For better or worse, I've found Geohopper to be very flaky and inconsistent. I keep it running as a novelty, but I am reluctant to hang anything critical on it. I'm still looking for something reliable that doesn't require me to reduce authentication.

I have nothing agains paying developers for their work. But I think charging for this basic feature now is alienating a lot of potential customers, and a cheap trick to attempt to sell more Blu iBeacons. I guess it would be the same as if the Indigo Devs suddenly said: Oh, we have a new policy now; even if you pay for Indigo Pro, you now have to pay extra if you want to use Z-wave." I think people would rage against this...

Anyways, Ive moved to GeoFency (I wrote I had tried that before, but that was a typo, it was GeoFancy I had tried before, and was not working very good), and that seams to be the most stable so far. So, all is wall in Casa Sleepy again

[Sleepy81]

Can someone offer a little advice please? I have tried setting this up with geofency and if I am on 3G it works perfectly, but if I am on wifi then I get the following error (when using the web hook test buttons) Failed: NSURLErrorDomain error -1004.

Does that mean anything to anyone?

Thanks
Gareth

I have seen this a lot lately to...

I use my external IP and it works both on WIFI and 4G, but sometimes is seams like the Beacon plugin stops listening to the port or something. A restart of Indigo or reloading the Beacon plugin fixes the problem temporarily.

To see if thats your problem, you can do the following the next time it fails:
1. Make sure you are on your home WIFI with your phone.
2. Starte Geofency, go to beacon settings -> Webhook and click on "Test connection Entry"
3. You should get the error: "Failed: NSURLErrorDomain error -1004." as expected.
4. Restart Indigo or reload the Beacon plugin
5. Do step 2 again.
6. This time it should show "Successfull"

At least this has worked for me every time, hence me thinking the plugin stops working after a while...

[DaveL17]

@ Sleepy81: I completely agree with you. Good luck!

[evansgo]

Hi,

No for me it was the hairpin issue that flic mentioned.

See my post a few lines up, if I use an external IP from wifi it will not work, but if I use a local IP then it works perfectly. I'm still using a program called Macbeacon to simulate an iBeacon to test, once my real ones come I will be able to get a better feel for it, but it does seem to be working pretty reliably on both Geohopper and Geofency. I like Geohopper because of the way I can add other people to be notified, but Geofency is working well for the iBeacons, so I may well end up using both - one for geo=fences and one for ibeacons

[flic]

New version 1.2.0

-Found an ugly bug that made the plugin stop working after a while
- Support for new Beecon HTTP PUT format
- Removed HTTP GET functionality
- New plugin events, triggered on any device change

https://furtenbach.se/indigo/

[Mirko]

Hi,

I use Beacon already a while and it seems to work very well.
Today I used in my Indigo Control Pages (CP) a device that was based on the location e.g. CDF99E17-...........-4103-80FA-.......................
The icon I used is a lightbulb. In my browsers this worked well. I could see immediately when my geofency 'entered' of 'exited'. The 'light-bulb' 'glowed' or not being 'present' or 'absent'. But on my iPhone in Indigo-app it does not change at all. So you will never know whether the lamp you switched on is really 'on'. Because the icon worked well as a switch but did not change itself. In my computer browser it changes like all the other icons when switched on or off.

Is this a BUG? Since I am in the middle of a project I really would like to know. And maybe you can help me out!

Regards,

Mirko

[matt (support)]

Hi Mirko,

The problem is probably that the device state values for that particular state are not "on" and "off" (but are true/false?). If that is the case, then try duplicating the images you want to use and name them as suggested in this forum thread.

[Jpaction]

Hi,

I installed the plugin and GeoHopper. I setup the web services but did not get a pop-up for the in app purchase. I did get the notification in the log screen and it setup a new device. When I click on test I get the event in the log file. However, when I go beyond the map geo fence nothing happens. There is no event in Geohopper's timeline. Also, the status of the Indigo Device is "unknown".

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jim

[flic]

Sounds like Geohopper doesn't trigger on you entering or leaving your geofence. Have you given the app permission to access your location and to run in the background?

[Jpaction]

Yes I did. However, I tried Geofence and that is working great. Well worth the $1.99.

Thanks for the response.

Jim