Can I use the Homey app on my iPhone and my iPad while using only the iPhone for personal presence detection?

Can I use the Homey app on my iPhone and my iPad(s) while using only the iPhone for personal presence detection?
To be on the safe side - I am not referring to a situation with different people with different phones.
I have installed the app on my iPad and removed the iPad from Homey afterwards. I could still use the app in this test, but I could not easily test whether presence detection still worked correctly.
Can anybody explain what is known, what does and does not work and what has been tested?

Let’s see first what is known already.

I am not trying to be negative, but I do not need the solution very urgently. And I do not want to waste time testing something that I believe is already known / tested and should be part of the standard information on Homey.

Have already read this infoAutomatische aanwezigheid ?
You can also take a look at Smart Presence

@Rob_Janssen One way to achieve this would be to create a new user for your iPad (and of course seperate users for people in your household and their smartphones). This way you can target your Flows to any smart device/user.

@HansieNL recommendation of the the Smart Presence App is a good solution too (and more reliable than geo-fencing in my opinion) - worth checking it out.

By the way, you will not find the Athom Homey App on the App store for your iPad - two good alternatives are HomeyDash and Apple HomeKit (using the HomeyKit App).

I hope this helps :slight_smile:

Thank you for your response. I have read ‘Automatische aanwezigheid’. The text does not answer my question, unless I am missing something. Using the smart presence app takes too much extra work. For now, I will wait and see whether anybody knows anything about my small test.

Thank you for your response. In my current setup, I do not have to use tags for presence detection based flows. Creating an extra user for the iPad, would mean that I would have to program tags in all these flows. To prevent unnecessary extra work, I will wait and see whether anybody knows anything about my initial solution / test. And if not, I will test it more elaborately myself at some point. It seems like a simple and elegant solution, if it would work.

@All, I have asked the Homey Support desk for advice. The answer was that my idea does work. Do you only want to use your phone for presence detection and your iPad(s) just for operating your system? Install the app on iPhone and iPad(s) and remove the iPad(s) from the ‘My phones’ list in Homey afterwards. I tested it myself and it did work indeed as expected. Great.

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Can you explain where the “my phones list” is found?
I logged on to homey, searched in the settings area, but do not see it (I do see users but thats the user account list)

https://my.athom.com/#/phones

On the home screen, before clicking on your Homey, go to the upper right corner. You will find your account there, including ‘My phones’.

Why not just disable ‘Use home detection’ on the device you don’t want to use for presence?

That may work. However, I assumed that that could be less reliable, because the iPad still seen by homey. Do you use that solution?

Yes.

But it’s not Homey that ‘sees’ your device. It’s the Homey app on an iPhone or iPad that sets a Geofence on the iDevice.
So, the app tells your iDevice a location (taken from Homey’s location) and a radius (set in the app) and the iDevice will tell the app when the Geofence is crossed. The app will then decide (based on the ‘Use home detection’ setting) if it needs to send a message to your Homey.

(Don’t know how this works for Android, I expect the same)

Thanks for the information. Good to know.

Many people complain that geofencing is not reliable. So I assumed that it would be better if my iPads would not interfere with the system at all.