Best setup for Home/Away scenes?

[johansson]

Gents,
Not sure whether which sub-forum would be this right one, so let's try this one.

I've been utilising Domoticz for controlling lights, car heatings, security cameras etc for some time now, but still haven't figured out the most convenient way to setup home/away -status. For instance at the moment I get a Telegram notification each time someone passes my front door camera, which tends to be somewhat annoying on holidays when everybody is at home... I was planning to add some door sensors, but those would also require an away status to be useful.

What would be the easiest solution for setting home/away scenes in terms of hardware and software/scripting? An additional switch next to front door, geofencing (all family members have smartphones), some kind of panel for security or something? The Telegram notification script needs an additional line or two as well, I'd assume.

Any creative ideas would be highly welcome.

[Lebo2d9]

I playing with macrodroid to create somekind off geofence but in is not always working as it should be. For the moment i have 2 mobiles and they have there proper dummy switch in domoticz and i send the json toggle when the mobile is leaving or entering the geofence. But sometime the toggle is missed...

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G920F met Tapatalk

[zicht]

In my case I ended up with geofences can be done many ways , like android domoticz app.

But in addition i had to install tasker and created a wifi near and wifi connected profile.
With tasker http get i set a var in domoticz (see domoticz json api)
The var is set on wifi home connection, or wifi home near. And only reset on disconnection.
This way if eighter wifi var is ok or the geodence is ok the user is home.
(Screen off = wifi turn off but this is not seen as wifi disconnect -> so no problem there)
This works so far 100% .... (if you not forget to take your phone of course lolz)

Why wifi also detection ?
In battery saving mode location gets turned off on some phones. Wifi last longer and users rather have wifi on (4G is more batt consuming)
Due to this the geofence never triggers, i found it even fails if location is set to net detection in stead of high precision.
Dont ask my why....

Geofence worked for me more than 75-80% of the time, but it was to annoying when not working as i would like.
btw tasker has also geofence functionality, but i like the domoticz app very much.

[tottka]

I live in a remote rural area & geofences never worked with any reliability for me.
A cell tower is in my neighborhood and I got readings that I was close when I was miles away, it was very frustrating.

When I got Tasker, AutoLocation & Bluetooth to all play nice I finally had reliability & accuracy.
In my case I only wanted geofences to work when I was in my car so battery drain is nominal.

My suggestion is to think about how you would use it.

[johansson]

Thanks for the thoughts so far and apologies for the late reply (been a bit busy times with school starting and all)

About the actual expected functionality, I'd be satisfied with a quite little: an away status that would switch off the lights in the house, enable Telegram notifications from the front door camera and possible door sensors. Home status would be just disable notifications from cameras or door sensors. Going forward a third (=night) status would be nice to have as well, i.e. outside cameras on but inside cameras off etc.

The question is really two-folded: how to set the status and how to fiddle with the scripts to utilize the set status.

I have no experience on geofencing (or AutoLocation etc), so in first place I was thinking about a simple switch next to front door. Would there be a reliable, automated way to set home/away -status based o e.g. wifi connections of the mobiles (all mobiles not home => set away). I doubt if my kids would use an app to set status when leaving home. If I'd go for Tasker, how to handle several mobiles?

The second option would be a manual switch like Fibaro Button; any experience on those or similar? Wouldn't a simple switch be easy to use for at least two status options, and probably even I could build a LUA-script to use it. Third status would be a bit more challenging with simple switch, though.