Use PHLocation to open garage door on arrival?

[BrettS]

I just discovered this plug in and so far I'm really enjoying it. I just spent the last 30 minutes driving to and from my house trying to tweak the settings to get it to recognize the fact that I'm near home as close to the house as possible, but still before I actually arrive home. So far it seems to be working pretty well... and for the most part it triggers as I drive down my street.

I'd like to use it to turn on some lights as I approach the house at night, but I also got thinking that I could use it to open the garage door as well. Of course this makes me a little nervous because I don't want homeseer randomly opening the garage door if I'm not on my way home if it gets a bad location reading or something.

Right now I just have it configured to turn on lights at night and email me when it thinks I'm arriving or leaving so I can keep track and see how well it does, but for those of you who have been using this for a while, does it seen to be reasonably accurate? Would you trust it to open the garage door as you arrive home?

If it makes a difference I'm getting my location through icloud.

Thanks

[randy]

I use GeoFency as a fence for the house and to detect iBeacons in each vehicle. I also have dual mode (PIR + microwave) motion detectors at a sharp downward angle at the garage door. In order for the door to open, there has to be an iBeacon detected from a particular vehicle, we must be inside the home fence for less than 2 minutes and there must be motion in the driveway. It always opens right when or within a few seconds of our arrival in either car or on a motorcycle. If I arrive in someone else's vehicle or the one of ours that parks outside the door doesn't open. The events that open the door are disabled when the occupancy mode of the house is "Vacation".

I also use native iCloud support, but GeoFency is faster and supports iBeacons.

[waynehead99]

+1 on the geofency vs iCloud. It's much more responsive.

[BrettS]

Thanks for the input guys. I'll look into GeoFency as well as iBeacons

[JohnMeek]

For the garage to automatically open

I use a combination of BT in the Car and then GPS near the house with tasker and IFTTT. The logic works something like this:

Car:
1- BT Car connects (set CAR=1) check if home wifi is close (HOME=1), if so set GARAGE variable to 0
2- BT Car connects (set CAR=1) check if home wifi is not close (HOME=0), if so set GARAGE variable to 1


GPS/Cell Tower for local proximity
Originally I set this up w/ GPS w/ a zone around the house of 20m and it works perfectly but is an amazing battery sink so I am trying to rework it so the check comes on only when I am driving (CAR=1).

So when GPS area around house is in area, set HOMETrigger=1

A rule exists that if GARAGE=1 and HOMETrigger=1 then send a html action through IFTTT to HS to open the garage device. It then sets GARAGE=0 so it only fires one time.

In essence I check each time I start the car/connect BT where I am. If I am at home do not set the GARAGE trigger, if I am away from home set the trigger. Then when I enter the GPS area set the HOMETrigger which fires the IFTTT/HS event that open the garage. Usually the door is starting to open as I enter the alleyway to the house since the garage trigger device has a 10sec safety delay before opening and closing.

Unfortunately I am struggling to rework the GPS check to only enable if I am away from home and in the car since that is the only time I need it so it wastes battery all day otherwise. I need to be able to automatically enable/disable the profile but all I see so far is to be able to call tasks. Maybe I will figure out a task that loops to emulate that profile check when I start the car/connect to BT (CAR=1). That said I have only spent about 10 minutes on "fixing" it so it can't be all that important to me lately.

Hope this helps!

[jumper4000]

What device do you guys use for iBeacon? Does PHLocation support iBeacon or would I need a different plugin for that?

[waynehead99]

What device do you guys use for iBeacon? Does PHLocation support iBeacon or would I need a different plugin for that?

PHLocation Directly does not support iBeacons, but I am using Geofency which does support it and then sends it back to HS. The idea came from Randy that I have in place and it seems to work pretty well.

I am using the April USB iBeacons. You can find them really cheap on eBay. The nice thing about my cars/motorcycles, is that the cig lighter port shuts off when the car is off so its an easy way to see if the vehicle is running.

My bigger plan is to use a Pi3 to "look" for the beacons and send JSON commands to HS to control a virtual device... but that project has been back burnered for now because of time constraints.

[claude]

EgiGeoZone (Android) also supports iBeacons and interfaces with PHLocation.