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How to use BLLAN as occupancy sensor

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    How to use BLLAN as occupancy sensor

    I was wondering if/how BLLAN can be used to detect if me or my wife are home based on the presence of our iPhones. If I use my router to reserve IP addresses for our iPhones, then I suppose they can be pinged. However, if they go to sleep, then ping won't work. I think BLLAN can use WOL to wake them? But then, they wouldn't go to sleep if polled regularly and would just consume a lot more power?

    #2
    Originally posted by randman View Post
    I was wondering if/how BLLAN can be used to detect if me or my wife are home based on the presence of our iPhones. If I use my router to reserve IP addresses for our iPhones, then I suppose they can be pinged. However, if they go to sleep, then ping won't work. I think BLLAN can use WOL to wake them? But then, they wouldn't go to sleep if polled regularly and would just consume a lot more power?
    My iPhone 5 would go to sleep and it wouldn't work. I think my wife's Android worked. We switched to iPhone 6 plus and they seem to respond to pings as long as they are home. I've been home for the last couple of days and my wife got home from work at 6:33. As you can see from the screenshot, they have continually responded to pings.

    This may be new with iOS 8 or with the iPhone 6, but it didn't work last year with my iPhone 5.
    Attached Files
    HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

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      #3
      My iPhone 5S works very well with BLLAN
      cheeryfool

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        #4
        Originally posted by rprade View Post
        My iPhone 5 would go to sleep and it wouldn't work. I think my wife's Android worked. We switched to iPhone 6 plus and they seem to respond to pings as long as they are home. I've been home for the last couple of days and my wife got home from work at 6:33. As you can see from the screenshot, they have continually responded to pings.

        This may be new with iOS 8 or with the iPhone 6, but it didn't work last year with my iPhone 5.
        I have an iPhone 6 Plus as well. When I turn it off using its right button, I can no longer ping it. Now, the phone really isn't off, since it can still send notifications for emails, text messages, etc. so it's definitely not asleep, although ping stops responding. So, I!m curious that your ping contnues to work even if you haven't used the iPhoone for a long time.

        I haven't tried BLLAN yet but wanted to first see if it can be reliably used for occupancy detection.

        Another option is this:

        http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...ight=Occupancy

        But if BLLAN can be made to work, it's a simpler, possibly more secure option.

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          #5
          Are any of you noticing high cpu usage with BLLAN? Read that on one of the other post, but wasn't sure if it was just a user set up issue or plugin issue.
          Tom
          baby steps...starting again with HS3
          HS3Pro: Z-NET & 80 Z wave Devices,
          HSTouch: 4 Joggler (Android Kitkat), 2 iPhone, 3 iPads
          Whole House Audio: 5 SqueezePlay Jogglers w Bose Speakers
          In The Works: 10 Cameras Geovision, new Adecmo/Envisalink Alarm, Arduinos
          System: XP on Fanless Mini-ITX w/ SSD

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            #6
            Originally posted by cheeryfool View Post
            My iPhone 5S works very well with BLLAN
            Just installed plugin and my iphone 5s -shows offline after the 1 min 20sec after the screen goes off? Any thoughts?
            Tom
            baby steps...starting again with HS3
            HS3Pro: Z-NET & 80 Z wave Devices,
            HSTouch: 4 Joggler (Android Kitkat), 2 iPhone, 3 iPads
            Whole House Audio: 5 SqueezePlay Jogglers w Bose Speakers
            In The Works: 10 Cameras Geovision, new Adecmo/Envisalink Alarm, Arduinos
            System: XP on Fanless Mini-ITX w/ SSD

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by TomTom View Post
              Are any of you noticing high cpu usage with BLLAN? Read that on one of the other post, but wasn't sure if it was just a user set up issue or plugin issue.
              I am not seeing it on my end. There was a user seeing it but I do not think there are a lot of people reporting it.
              What type of machine are you running it on?
              If you want to log a ticket on my web site and capture a debug log of the high CPU and attach the debug log zipped I can have a look
              Cheers,
              Bob
              Web site | Help Desk | Feature Requests | Message Board

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by TomTom View Post
                Just installed plugin and my iphone 5s -shows offline after the 1 min 20sec after the screen goes off? Any thoughts?

                Hmmm. Not sure why it's working for me. I have mine configured with static IP and then the BLLAN device has both that IP and the MAC address defined. I have it configured to ping every 60 secs and report offline after 3 missed pings.

                When I woke up this morning it was showing online for 10h 40m which is correct from when I came home last night. During that time the phone has been in 4 states:
                - In use charging
                - in use not charging
                - screen asleep/locked charging
                - screen asleep/locked not charging

                I just read something about possible differences when connected to an Apple AP vs a non-Apple AP. We use an Apple AP the majority of the time.

                If nobody has figured this out by this evening I will try connecting to my network on a non-Apple AP to prove/disprove that theory

                I will also dig around in the phone settings to see if I can see anything obvious that I may have changed some time in the distant past.
                cheeryfool

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by cheeryfool View Post
                  Hmmm. Not sure why it's working for me. I have mine configured with static IP and then the BLLAN device has both that IP and the MAC address defined. I have it configured to ping every 60 secs and report offline after 3 missed pings.

                  When I woke up this morning it was showing online for 10h 40m which is correct from when I came home last night. During that time the phone has been in 4 states:
                  - In use charging
                  - in use not charging
                  - screen asleep/locked charging
                  - screen asleep/locked not charging

                  I just read something about possible differences when connected to an Apple AP vs a non-Apple AP. We use an Apple AP the majority of the time.

                  If nobody has figured this out by this evening I will try connecting to my network on a non-Apple AP to prove/disprove that theory

                  I will also dig around in the phone settings to see if I can see anything obvious that I may have changed some time
                  in the distant past.
                  I have 3 access points, only 1 of which is Apple, so I'm interested to know if your configuration works with non-Apple access points. Also, is your iPhone's power consumption any different or the same whether using BLLAN or not?

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by randman View Post
                    I have 3 access points, only 1 of which is Apple, so I'm interested to know if your configuration works with non-Apple access points. Also, is your iPhone's power consumption any different or the same whether using BLLAN or not?
                    On the power consumption, I can't really confirm either way at the moment. My phone is 21 months old and gets heavy usage every day, so the battery would already be far below it's original capability. I have also been playing with all sorts of other location solutions, including IFTTT, FollowMee, GeoFancy and GeoFency, although never more than 2 at a time on top of BLLAN. My phone charges all night and if I don't plug it in at some point later in the day, it will die. How much of this is due to location determining solutions vs just the age of the battery I don't know. I will try it sometime with everything turned off to see how much improvement I get.

                    Will test using a Netgear AP instead of the Apple one this evening to see if BLLAN still sees the phone in sleep mode. My IP addresses are assigned by a FiOS router/modem - i.e. I never had the Apple AP handle that, so that's already out of the mix.
                    cheeryfool

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by cheeryfool View Post
                      On the power consumption, I can't really confirm either way at the moment. My phone is 21 months old and gets heavy usage every day, so the battery would already be far below it's original capability. I have also been playing with all sorts of other location solutions, including IFTTT, FollowMee, GeoFancy and GeoFency, although never more than 2 at a time on top of BLLAN. My phone charges all night and if I don't plug it in at some point later in the day, it will die. How much of this is due to location determining solutions vs just the age of the battery I don't know. I will try it sometime with everything turned off to see how much improvement I get.

                      Will test using a Netgear AP instead of the Apple one this evening to see if BLLAN still sees the phone in sleep mode. My IP addresses are assigned by a FiOS router/modem - i.e. I never had the Apple AP handle that, so that's already out of the mix.
                      It's interesting how BLLAN can report the different iPhone states (charging, not charging, etc.). I would consider replacing my access points with all Apple if needed if this were the best occupancy solution.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by randman View Post
                        It's interesting how BLLAN can report the different iPhone states (charging, not charging, etc.). I would consider replacing my access points with all Apple if needed if this were the best occupancy solution.
                        Just to be clear, it's not reporting the different states, but it is reporting the phone as online, no matter which of those 4 states (from my earlier post) the phone is in.

                        So, when I come home my BLLAN device for my phone changes to Online and only when I leave home or the phone completely dies (out of battery) does it report as Offline
                        cheeryfool

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                          #13
                          Originally posted by cheeryfool View Post
                          Just to be clear, it's not reporting the different states, but it is reporting the phone as online, no matter which of those 4 states (from my earlier post) the phone is in.

                          So, when I come home my BLLAN device for my phone changes to Online and only when I leave home or the phone completely dies (out of battery) does it report as Offline
                          Okay. Just online or offline would be good enough for me.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Thanks for the info. I'm using a Apple Airport Extreme. Not sure if there are setting in it that need to be changed?


                            Tom
                            Tom
                            baby steps...starting again with HS3
                            HS3Pro: Z-NET & 80 Z wave Devices,
                            HSTouch: 4 Joggler (Android Kitkat), 2 iPhone, 3 iPads
                            Whole House Audio: 5 SqueezePlay Jogglers w Bose Speakers
                            In The Works: 10 Cameras Geovision, new Adecmo/Envisalink Alarm, Arduinos
                            System: XP on Fanless Mini-ITX w/ SSD

                            Comment


                              #15
                              How to use BLLAN as occupancy sensor

                              So now I am completely confused.



                              I tried two different non-Apple access points and the behaviour was identical. My iPhone 5S still accurately reported online/offline status irrespective of whether it was in sleep/locked mode or not.



                              Switching WiFi off on the phone produced the expected Offline status update after the designated 3 ping fails from BLLAN.



                              At this point I would be interested if Bob can confirm how this works as I have failed entirely in explaining why it works flawlessly on my iPhone but doesn't for others.

                              ------------------------
                              EDITed to remove erroneous info about failed pings from PC to iphone, which appears to be a failure of the PC used. My HS machine was able to ping my iPhone.
                              Last edited by cheeryfool; June 17, 2015, 09:32 PM.
                              cheeryfool

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