Presence Detection Seems Too Hard

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@Jeffrey_Musacchio

I’m not switching to static IPs

Why?

@Jeffrey_Musacchio

I want to know when specific devices are home.

If you assign static IPs to these devices on the router the problem becomes very simple. You just need the Network binding.

@Jeffrey_Musacchio

I also want to know when other people are present so I can modify behavior.

This is really hard and I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone provide a solution to this beyond motion sensors. You could use something like reelyActive Smart Spaces Revisited and see when any device with BT turned on is present, but you cannot uniquely identify any given device because most will periodically change their BT address as a privacy/anti-tracking feature. And you will have no way to tell whether that someone is supposed to be there or not.

@fmrenan

The GPS tracker with Owntrack or GPS Logger is to me the best choice, and it’s more reliable than the network binding because sometimes the Phone doesn’t answer the ping request and openHab understands as if you were away from home.

I found just the opposite, with up to a 30 second to 1 minute lag between my entering an area and actually being reported in that area. A well tuned Network binding with arping will see any device, whether it is sleeping or not, within 5 seconds.

@rpwong

On Android devices you can use Tasker to trigger via the openHAB app, but I’ve also found Tasker’s geofencing to be mediocre.

Check out AutoLocation which is better, but GPS is still pretty slow to update. But you can use other stuff in Tasker which may work better such as 'WiFi Near or 'Cell Tower Near.

@rpwong

Away Mode isn’t going to suddenly activate and turn off all of the lights.

This is why the Generic Presence Detection tutorial has a flapping timer. Only if the phone is off for five minutes would it count you as away. And there is an override switch that you could flip if you know the phone will be offline for longer. I use that when we have a baby sitter over to stop all the “blah blah happened and no one is home!” alerts.

@mstormi

Also many to use owntracks / gpstracker binding, but I’m not sure how to do it in the context of myopenhab.

I believe it still let’s you define a geofence that triggers a Switch when you enter/leave the geofence. But that was before the new GPS Tracker binding so I don’t know if that is still possible.

@mstormi

My favorite is FIND which is included with openHABian

It’s worth mentioning that FIND doesn’t work with iOS, unless something has changed since the last time I looked. It’s one my list of things to play with at some point, too little time myself.

@kriznik

But by any mean I wouldn’t rely on those informations for any kind of automation. I mean, what if your phone is left in the office or otherway round, it’s home when you are not etc.

That’s what the override switch is for. And the general advice (I figured it was common sense but may it isn’t) that nothing critical should be driven by any presence detection that isn’t 100% solid whether you have a device on your person or not, which is reaching the edge of what is technically feasible frankly. If you don’t have enough time to manually flip the override Switch or manually do something to avoid alarms or something when you arrive home without your phone, you should be relying on presence to drive that automation.