Clarification of Privacy Geofence Upgrade Task

[bradleyward]

First of all, many thanks for sharing the upgrade task list on Trello. I appreciate that!

I have just started using HSBuddy geofencing to trigger events that set my Ecobee thermostats to Home or Away based on when my wife and my iPhone is inside or outside of various geofences.

I have noticed that there is a great deal of movement logging generated into the log file (the GPS coordinates of each phone). In general I don't like that as I just feel its a little too "big brotherish". So I came to this forum to see if I could find any comments on how to control the level of logging.

I see in the task list on Trello the following comment:

"Add privacy section in geolocation options to enable/disable sharing location data via native HS device".

I'm not quite sure what this means. What I would like to have is a checkbox on the HSBuddy Geofence or Clients configuration screens that allow me to disable the constant logging of movement (GPS coordinate changes) and also the maps that let one look and see the current location of each mobile phone client on a map. When this privacy is enabled, the only info I would expect to see logged or available on a screen would be (a) the last time a geofence was crossed, (b) whether the crossing was entering or leaving the geofence, and (c) the device that crossed the geofence. IMHO, this would allow HSBuddy to generate geofence transition events that can be used for things like home/away device control, but would not setup constant monitoring and tracking of all movement of all clients. I figure the NSA is already doing that and that is enough! LOL.

Is this the sort of capability you intend with the upcoming task that adds privacy settings to geofencing?

[avargaskun]

Is this the sort of capability you intend with the upcoming task that adds privacy settings to geofencing?

That's precisely it 🙂 the idea is to add a privacy control in the app settings (as part of the flow to enable geolocation) where the user selects whether to make its exact location visible or only trigger geofence based automation.

[legato]

The development for the HSBuddy Geofence/Geolocation seems to come exactly in time! ;-)
As I'm looking for an easy, but stable working home/away function in HomeSeer for my familymembers, HSBuddy seems to provide all the answers for this!

Currently I'm trying to setup Home/Away with BLLAN and detecting phones by 'pinging' them.
This only works now and then, as iPhone powersaving prevents the phones from being pinged, and thus giving false 'Away' status, while being at home.

Maybe I should wait a little longer before jumping into the deep with HSBuddy Geofende/geolocation, so the new features as explained on Trello are implemented in a new version?
Especially the easy home/away option and better battery saving part by using local geofence fullfills my needs, as phone battery saving is critical with my family members.

[avargaskun]

Especially the easy home/away option and better battery saving part by using local geofence fullfills my needs, as phone battery saving is critical with my family members.

I'd certainly give the feature a try as it is now. It does optimize battery use by listening to motion and activity changes before getting GPS location. I have it running with the default settings in a couple phones and not seeing any noticeable battery drop during the day. You can also turn on "significant changes only" which may lower battery usage even further by sending fewer location updates to the server.

Local geofence monitoring is definitely going to help reduce battery use even further but it may take me a bit longer to get started on that feature 🙂