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    Your GeoFence / Tracking methodology?

    How are you guys doing this?

    Seems like there are multiple ways to accomplish the same things when using PHlocation & EgiGeoZone (maybe others too). Common Places, Known Locations (User>Place), and inside EgiGeoZone.

    I'm not sure I completely understand when to use each one.

    Looking for recommendations on the most efficient (least # of HS devices) way to have many Common Places with multiple people (phone devices).


    My situation:

    - 2 People (2 more to be added soon = kids)

    - multiple common locations: home, work, gym, park, elementary school, preschool, etc + kids activities will add many more soon


    Roadblock (?) : PHL only allows 5 Common Places... I need 10 right now and likely more like 15 to 20 in the next year for this work completely

    Currently: Several put into EgiGeoZone on each phone. This works but is kinda messy in HS3 and also is also ugly for maintenance since I now have to manually config/change/etc each device separately.

    I thought the best would be to have Many Common Places but need many more than 5 to do this.

    thx for your help!

    #2
    Originally posted by Ltek View Post
    How are you guys doing this?

    Seems like there are multiple ways to accomplish the same things when using PHlocation & EgiGeoZone (maybe others too). Common Places, Known Locations (User>Place), and inside EgiGeoZone.

    I'm not sure I completely understand when to use each one.

    Looking for recommendations on the most efficient (least # of HS devices) way to have many Common Places with multiple people (phone devices).


    My situation:

    - 2 People (2 more to be added soon = kids)

    - multiple common locations: home, work, gym, park, elementary school, preschool, etc + kids activities will add many more soon


    Roadblock (?) : PHL only allows 5 Common Places... I need 10 right now and likely more like 15 to 20 in the next year for this work completely

    Currently: Several put into EgiGeoZone on each phone. This works but is kinda messy in HS3 and also is also ugly for maintenance since I now have to manually config/change/etc each device separately.

    I thought the best would be to have Many Common Places but need many more than 5 to do this.

    thx for your help!
    The subject of common places vs known places has been discussed a fair few times in the past and I deliberated over it extensively when first creating the plug-in.

    Initially it only supported known places which I'm sure you are aware require a place / user pair to be created which can be a pain if you have a single location that you want to associate with multiple users but at the time users wanted the extra devices showing driving time etc to known places and it would have been extremely messy having 4 or 5 extra child devices for each place.

    For example if you had 15 known places, it would result in 105 child devices for each user. I could have made it so that you could choose which child devices you wanted for each known place which would have made it slightly better but still I believe it would have been a lot of device clutter.

    Common places were added some time after the initial release following user demand and as you will have seen they only have the near / not near child device.

    If you are only interested if a user is near a known place then you can use known places and delete all the extra child devices that you don't need.
    There is a copy function to allow a known place to be quickly duplicated for another user.

    Paul..

    Comment


      #3
      What are you wanting the system to do when people arrive at certain places like school, playground, etc...?

      Phlocation is great if you want homeseer to control something at the house for those arrivals or exits. But if you just want notifications, you might be better off using an app like life360. You can also connect life360 to homeseer through ifttt.

      Comment


        #4
        Currently I use two systems for different purposes.

        1. Life360
        This gives easy access to all mobile phone locations if I need it and I can setup those common places like school, work, mall, etc for all of us. I did use it a few months ago for doing geofence type automations but the lag of updates didn't prove reliable enough for the automations I wanted. Currently there isn't a plugin for this. I had to write my own script that queries the information and then toggles a virtual switch on/off for home/away. I'm thinking of making this a plugin once I learn more .NET and the HS plugin framework. It's really not all that complex but I'm having issues with it in .NET (works in Python and Bash shell!!!)

        2. Egigeofence
        I use this on 2 phones and more to be added soon. This I connect with the PHLocation plugin for geofencing. I only need the geofence feature and I use this for automations. When we come home, open the garage door, turn on the lights, etc. This so far has worked very well except for the few occasions when Myhs has had issues.

        Comment


          #5
          I use Near/Not to trigger events and notifications for a few things.

          All notifications are Homeseer + PushOver which works perfectly.

          I have no desire to use IFTT, Life360, or anything else which requires more apps to manage and doesnt provide substantially more benefits for geolocation use cases. Right now I cant see any benefits with those apps for this.


          Originally posted by sooty View Post
          Common places were added some time after the
          initial release following user demand and as you will have seen they only have the near / not near child device.
          Paul - Would you be able to add more Common Places in the plugin? Its nice having Common Places all under a single/same user device vs having separate devices for each Known Place.


          thx for the input guys!

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Ltek View Post
            I use Near/Not to trigger events and notifications for a few things.

            All notifications are Homeseer + PushOver which works perfectly.

            I have no desire to use IFTT, Life360, or anything else which requires more apps to manage and doesnt provide substantially more benefits for geolocation use cases. Right now I cant see any benefits with those apps for this.




            Paul - Would you be able to add more Common Places in the plugin? Its nice having Common Places all under a single/same user device vs having separate devices for each Known Place.


            thx for the input guys!
            I'm in the middle of a major re-write of many parts of the plug-in but I will look at increasing the number of common places on the next update.

            Paul..

            Comment


              #7
              Paul. Any idea why when I create a known place, when I select Enabled, the tick dissappears within a second or two? It looks like the known place is created, but I added a second known place and rebuilt the child devices but the second known place doesn't show. Will it just change in the Nearest Known Place device?

              Scott

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by ScottRennie View Post
                Paul. Any idea why when I create a known place, when I select Enabled, the tick dissappears within a second or two? It looks like the known place is created, but I added a second known place and rebuilt the child devices but the second known place doesn't show. Will it just change in the Nearest Known Place device?

                Scott
                I assume you are referring to Common Places as opposed to Known Places?

                There were some issues with common places which should only have been experienced when upgrading to the latest version if you had previously deleted one or more places.

                Can you email me the following file from your system and I will check if this is the problem
                \HS3\Data\PHLocation\Config.phd

                I'm almost there with a new release of the plug-in but some real work has got in the way over the last week, so I expect to have it ready some time this week.

                Paul..

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by sooty View Post

                  I assume you are referring to Common Places as opposed to Known Places?

                  There were some issues with common places which should only have been experienced when upgrading to the latest version if you had previously deleted one or more places.

                  Can you email me the following file from your system and I will check if this is the problem
                  \HS3\Data\PHLocation\Config.phd

                  I'm almost there with a new release of the plug-in but some real work has got in the way over the last week, so I expect to have it ready some time this week.

                  Paul..
                  Sorry Paul, Yes, I do mean Common Places. I'll drop you an email tonight when I get home.
                  Cheers
                  Scott

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Paul. I have emailed it to your normal email address. Cheers

                    Comment

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