Best way for Homey to know when I'm home

I’m looking for the best way to let Homey know when I’m at home. I found the app Smart Presence but it seems to be only able to be used to register changes? For example, I want to be able to activate flows based on time with the condition that I am at home. So if it´s after sunset and I’m at home, the lights should be turned on. I think the most reliable source for me to be home is if my mobile is connected to wifi. Is there anyone who has solved it in any way?

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There’s

  • Owntracks phone app with the Homey Location & Presence app
  • Homey build-in geofence (but put your location manually on the map, turn the “find my location automatically” off)
  • (android) Macrodroid geofence / gsm location / [your] wifi in sight, using webhooks
  • life360
  • BLE beacons

For me the Homey build-in geofence solution works perfectly.
But this is only possible if you have a very good mobile network at home.

No, that’s not correct:

When the smartphone connects to the WLAN, you are set as “home”. If the Wi-Fi connection is interrupted (this can happen even when you are at home, depending on the manufacturer and settings), you are set as “not at home”.

Btw, registered „changes“ can be stored in variables. So it will be also possible if only changes are registered.

If you have a WLAN router from Netgear or UniFi, then you can also use the related apps from the app store.

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Smart presence and other presence apps (other than Homey’s own geofencing) depend on flows to mark users present. So when smart presence detects you leaving, you should have a flow that sets the corresponding user away (and vice versa). Then you can use Homey’s functionality regarding presence to see who’s home and who’s not, detect last person away and first in, and so on.

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Thanks, then I’ll try to use Homey’s geofencing. Are there any settings for how far from home that counts as “away”? I tried to simulate that I’m not home by turning off GPS in my phone, but maybe Homey requires my phone to send a GPS coordinate that is a certain distance from the house?

I now see that I get options for presence when I create a flow and use the card for “and”. So it can be an option to use Smart presence.

-The distance is fixed afaik.
-Turning off your phone’s GPS “leaves it” at the last known position, so for testing if you are ‘away’ it isn’t of any use
-Using FakeGPS (Android), you can simulate a trip to the next village, from the couch, and view when you’re marked as ‘away’

No.

With 3rd party apps like Locative it’s possible to set the distance. But to get them work with Homey you have to use HTTP-Requests. There are some tutorials in the community.

Why using Homeys geofencing in combination with the Smart Presence app? Don’t understand!?

I understand, but then it will surely work well.

No, I do not intend to use them together. I just meant that I found the options for “presence” if I wanted to use Smart presence for some reason.

Ok, understand.

That is what I said before, with screenshots.

Yes I found it with your help, thanks.

I have completed this task by using netgear router. There is netgear app in homey store, which can connect to router and search for connected devices. You can add your family members phones to that app and app is firing events like device connected/disconnected etc. You can make then simple flows which will be mapping device connected/disconnected to your homey family member presence and then you can use homey events like “presence/The last person leaves home”, “presence/The first person cames home” etc.

You can set, that device has to be offline for example more than 15 minutes and if you want to have it safe (because device can randomly disconnect), you can do it in combination with motion sensors. So all devices has to be offline more than 15 minutes and last zones activity has to be 15 min ago aswell. Then you can deactivate and secure home.


Netgear app: Netgear Router App for Homey | Homey

It seems to be a very good integration with Homey. I have a Tp-link router and unfortunately there does not seem to be anything like it.

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In principle, the Netgear App works in the same way like the Smart Presence app (connecting/disconnecting to the WLAN). The Netgear app just has even some more features.

My personal experience with GPS based home location is that it’s not precise enough for me. There is a street close by my house that I need to take multiple times a day. This regularly triggers homey that I’m home. I also live in an apartement building which is difficult for GPS to be precise when indoors.

Just my 2cents. I use Smart Presence btw.

I´ve made a flow that looks like this, using the built in precense function:
When: I leave home
Then: Turn all lights off

I use iPhone with location services “always on” for the Homey app and I have a GPS coordinate defined for my house. But no lights are turned off when I leave my house. Is there anything more I need to do to make it work?

I’ve found Homeys built in GEO location service works fairly well. I have my carport light programmed to come on when ever I arrive home each day…

95% of the time it’s on when I arrive …

I also never get any false “user left home” notifications while I’m actually at home.

I have my system automatically arm my alarm when ever I leave home. It sends me a notification when ever it arms. Most of the time I consistently get this notification when Ive travelled 500m away from the house…

I’ve found tracking mobiles phones connected to my LAN using Smart Presence doesn’t work very well. It’s not the fault of the app, rather Google and Apple are making it harder to have their phones tracked on a LAN…

I’ve also found many times some mobile phones go into sleep mode when not being used creating a false “user left” notifications when the person was actually home.

I’d set up Homeys location service and field test it for a month or so. Have it turn something on when you get home so you get a sense of how reliable it is …

You can turn that off when your phone is connected to specific WiFi networks (like your home network).

Thx,

What do you mean by turn off ? Is there a setting on the phone . ?

Cheers

Yes, in the WiFi settings you can turn off using a private (randomized) address for any particular WiFi network, at least on iOS.