Geofency or Btraced - which to choose?

[Freddan101]

Me and my wife are on iOS so Geofency or Btraced seem to be the apps to choose from. Primary use will be to detect when at home and not. I assume both apps together with PHLocation can manage that.

If I understand correctly, with Geofency the fences need to be set on each device and when you enter or exit a fence the app reports to the plugin. With Btraced you set a perimeter in the plugin and the app reports the device's location.

If I have assumed right it would be easier to manage the setup from HS/PHLocation using Btraced, specially if you have several devices. In the same time I guess battery life would be better with Geofency if the app only reports on fence entry/exit.

I would highly appreciate some advice on which app to choose.

[sooty]

Broadly speaking, the plug-in supports 2 types of "location based" data.

Geofencing:
As you have established, this is where the location+radius (geofences) are configured on the mobile devices and whenever the device enters or exits any geofence it sends a message to the plug-in which updates corresponding devices. With geofencing the plug-in is not aware of the device's current location, only that it has entered or exited a given geofence.

Position:
This is where the device's actual current location (and other data depending on the service) is reported to the plug-in. Additionally, known places can be configured to work with position based devices which act in a similar way to geofencing albeit with some more features.

Note 1:
Unlike geofencing apps, when using this method, detection of a device near or not near a known location will only be as fast as the service is updating the device's location.

Note 2:
Fast and accurate location updates = high battery use.

App choices:
If you don't want the time keeping features of Geofency and / or you don't need to work with beacons, then there are other alternatives.
I'm currently using Locative with one of my iOS devices and it works reliably. As with most geofencing apps I've tested battery useage is minimal.

Whilst it is still available for download, Locative is no longer supported, however I notice that since the developer released the source code, at least one fork has appeared on the app store.

It's a few years since I looked at Btraced. I think it was designed for recording trips and as I remember needs some manual configuration at the start and end of a trip. The plug-in doesn't do anything with the trip data but merely uses it to get the last known location.
I can't comment on battery drain for this app because I've never used it.

The plug-in supports the FindMyiPhone service. If you have location services enabled and an active iCloud account, then you can get the device's current location without the need for any 3rd party apps on the device.

This is a polled service, so the plug-in requests the device's current location (and other data) from the iCloud server at a specified interval. The interval is adjustable within the plug-in for each iCloud account.

If you play about with some HS3 events, then you can use a combination of geofencing and iCloud to help with battery life.
e.g when entering the work geofence, pause iCloud polling and when exiting re-start polling.

iCloud support is a little quirky if you have multiple devices on a single account because polling is account, not device based. So, if yours and your wife's phone were on the same account and you stopped polling when you were at work, your wife's location wouldn't get updated until polling was resumed.

Paul..

[Freddan101]

Thanks a lot for the detailed walkthrough. It sounds like a geofence app is probably the way to go for me. Do you happen to know what the forked Locative app is called?

is it possible for Locative to communicate with the plugin without the cloud part (as it has been shutdown)?

I did try out FindMyiPhone before when I was using Vera and the battery got drained quite fast just as you mention. Though the idea about combining it with geofencing is interesting. I did see in another thread that the plugin doesn't play well with 2 factor authentication yet though.

[sooty]

Thanks a lot for the detailed walkthrough. It sounds like a geofence app is probably the way to go for me. Do you happen to know what the forked Locative app is called?

is it possible for Locative to communicate with the plugin without the cloud part (as it has been shutdown)?

I did try out FindMyiPhone before when I was using Vera and the battery got drained quite fast just as you mention. Though the idea about combining it with geofencing is interesting. I did see in another thread that the plugin doesn't play well with 2 factor authentication yet though.

mLocation was one that I spotted in the app store.

Yes. Locative works with the plug-in without the cloud service. I'm using it here without issue.

I'm not aware of any outstanding plug-in issues regarding 2 factor authentication. I have it working here with 2 iCloud accounts both with 2FA (or whatever it likes to be called) enabled.

Paul..

[mda]

I'm not aware of any outstanding plug-in issues regarding 2 factor authentication. I have it working here with 2 iCloud accounts both with 2FA (or whatever it likes to be called) enabled.



Paul..

When I have 2 factor authentication enabled on my iCloud accounts, the PHLocation plugin presents a sign in box constantly and does not work. When I turn 2FA off, it works fine (but my iCloud account is less secure). Hoping for a fix soon

Same problem as here and the suggested fix did not help https://forums.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=189512

[Freddan101]

mLocation was one that I spotted in the app store.

Yes. Locative works with the plug-in without the cloud service. I'm using it here without issue.

I'm not aware of any outstanding plug-in issues regarding 2 factor authentication. I have it working here with 2 iCloud accounts both with 2FA (or whatever it likes to be called) enabled.

Paul..

I tried out mLocation but it crashed on me several times so I turned to Locative and it works great. When testing and reading a bit more I understood that the plugin is not dependent on a cloud service but needs direct access to the HA machine.

I'm not really keen on opening up a port in the firewall with access to my HA system but I guess this is the only way if I want to use geofence. What web server is PHLocation running? Thinking about security vulnerabilities and how to patch them...

[sooty]

I tried out mLocation but it crashed on me several times so I turned to Locative and it works great. When testing and reading a bit more I understood that the plugin is not dependent on a cloud service but needs direct access to the HA machine.

I'm not really keen on opening up a port in the firewall with access to my HA system but I guess this is the only way if I want to use geofence. What web server is PHLocation running? Thinking about security vulnerabilities and how to patch them...

Currently the only method is to have a port open through to your HS machine, although it is planned to support connection via MyHS just as soon as I get the time.

The plug-in currently uses the httplistener class which is built into the exe.

httplistener doesn't allow for an "exe" based firewall rule to be created although I intend to change things the in the future so that users who don't want to use MyHS still have an alternative.

Paul..

[Freddan101]

Thank you for the explanation. I don't use MyHS as I think I'm more secure without. I use Apple Homekit to reach the most common parts of my HS system and VPN for the rest.

[sooty]

I'm not suggesting that a security vulnerability isn't possible but as far as I'm aware there is nothing within the plug-in that would allow something nasty to be initiated via the httplistener. It's configured to only handle specific requests with data in specific formats.

With the current implementation of httplistener not allowing an "exe" based firewall rule, if the plug-in isn't listening, then technically some other service on your HS3 machine could use that port for something unpleasant. As I mentioned, this will be addressed in a future version so a firewall rule can be allowed only for the plug-in's exe.

There is no direct https support within the plug-in because that's not a trivial subject to configure, however it is possible (depending on your IT skills) to use a reverse proxy like nginx etc so that apps like Locative & Geofency can be configured to use https. This is what I do here.

Paul..

[Freddan101]

Thanks a lot for explaining more in detail. Your plans sound great and I look forward to try out any future versions and improvements that you might add.

I will continue to evaluate Locative. My biggest concern is battery time but so far so good. I have set up some events that will take care of Home/Away modes. I will also adjust the voice announcement a bit if only one of us are home.

A donation is coming your way. Thanks for your excellent plugin.