This is both "in case anyone else is interested" and "if you've got any ideas how to do this better, please share."
I've been using BLLan and UltraMon to try to track presence, but since the phones (both Android and iPhones) connect and disconnect to conserve energy, it's not as reliable as I'd like.
Bluetooth seems to be always visible without draining battery too much. But with HS running in a VM, adding a BT dongle (for Jon00 plugin) seems questionable and I'm not sure how well it'd cover the whole house. So... now trying to use the five Android tablets that are running HS Touch as BT detection points.
It's currently working in a test case with two phones. I'm using Tasker to set a device to "Home" when the tablet / Tasker sees the phone as "BT Near" (they're paired, but they don't need to connect); and it sets to "Away" when it loses sight of the device. It's pretty simple to have Tasker set to "Home/Away"; but I haven't figured out how best to have five (or more) devices all reporting and overlapping with each other. If they're all using the same Tasker profile, they'll set "Away" when one loses sight but another still has sight.
I've considered having them repeatedly set "Home" and just have a timer in HS set to "Away" if there's no "Home" set in two minutes or so. I've also wondered if I could find a way to know which device sees it and which doesn't. And - as a future idea - even have all devices report the strength of the signal, which could turn into a "which room is the device in" model at some point. That's probably a plugin. Which I don't know how to do. I can hardly do a script.
Anyway... at this point, any input / ideas on how best to do the "multiple detection points" thing? Script? Just timer? In a perfect world, I'd rather not have the tablets re-report - they work very well at just setting when a device shows up and goes away.
Help?
I've been using BLLan and UltraMon to try to track presence, but since the phones (both Android and iPhones) connect and disconnect to conserve energy, it's not as reliable as I'd like.
Bluetooth seems to be always visible without draining battery too much. But with HS running in a VM, adding a BT dongle (for Jon00 plugin) seems questionable and I'm not sure how well it'd cover the whole house. So... now trying to use the five Android tablets that are running HS Touch as BT detection points.
It's currently working in a test case with two phones. I'm using Tasker to set a device to "Home" when the tablet / Tasker sees the phone as "BT Near" (they're paired, but they don't need to connect); and it sets to "Away" when it loses sight of the device. It's pretty simple to have Tasker set to "Home/Away"; but I haven't figured out how best to have five (or more) devices all reporting and overlapping with each other. If they're all using the same Tasker profile, they'll set "Away" when one loses sight but another still has sight.
I've considered having them repeatedly set "Home" and just have a timer in HS set to "Away" if there's no "Home" set in two minutes or so. I've also wondered if I could find a way to know which device sees it and which doesn't. And - as a future idea - even have all devices report the strength of the signal, which could turn into a "which room is the device in" model at some point. That's probably a plugin. Which I don't know how to do. I can hardly do a script.
Anyway... at this point, any input / ideas on how best to do the "multiple detection points" thing? Script? Just timer? In a perfect world, I'd rather not have the tablets re-report - they work very well at just setting when a device shows up and goes away.
Help?