Okay, that helps me a lot. Your original post read broadly as “here’s an approach that fixes the flaws of other methods of presence detection”, which you may or may not have intended. However, the effectiveness of presence detection is very dependent on individual circumstances. As Rich noted, the number of entryways is a major factor.
Assuming that you only have one entryway, I’m interpreting that you’re looking for the following lock states:
- Locked by keypad (assumed to be “leaving the house”)
- Locked manually (assumed to be “staying in the house”)
- Unlocked by keypad or manually (meaning that someone is home)
My Schlage Connect lock sends different notifications based on manual or keypad locking/unlocking, so it will do this for you (assuming nothing has changed since I bought it a few years ago). The question now is, are there scenarios when someone will leave and lock the door while others are still home? I can think of a few:
- Someone leaves while occupants are sleeping, sick in bed, in the bath, etc.
- Someone leaves and doesn’t realize that others are still home
- Someone accidentally presses the button
- A child plays with the keypad
- A guest leaves and thinks they should lock the door
In the first two cases, you’re asking the humans to realize that they need to pull out their keys and manually lock the door instead of using the keypad. That’s your likely friction point, because you’re now asking for different behaviour that is inconvenient for users (particularly if they’re in a hurry). So now you need to determine how frequently this will happen in order to determine if the risk is acceptable. Some families are in the habit of always locking the door, while others leave their houses unlocked whenever someone’s home.
The only thing you can do for cases 3-5 is accept that they’ll probably happen every once in awhile. But if you want to manage/minimize the risk, you combine multiple inputs. Per wasp-in-a-box, it’s about confidence levels.
Every time your lock is triggered by keypad, you could have your rule wait a few minutes and then check if specific devices are still connected to WiFi. When you combine “locked by keypad” and “no devices on WiFi”, the confidence level is higher than for each of these individually. With each sensor you add, the confidence (and complexity) theoretically go up.
I live on my own in a single-entry condo, so presence detection is easy. I tell Google that I’m leaving, and OH pre-emptively unlocks my door while turning off the lights and TV. After five minutes (in case I forget something and have to come back inside) it goes into Away Mode. If the door is unlocked while Away Mode is on, the lights turn on automatically.
I could have OH detect when I’ve locked my door using the keypad (I do that 99.9% of the time), but I prefer to know that everything has been turned off before I leave the house. That’s just a personal comfort level. If/when I live with someone else again, I’ll likely change my approach.
I hope this helps! Here are a couple of threads that were very helpful for setting up my lock.