Detecting when someone home

[jfh]

How are folks doing “Person x is home” detection?  I though using “is the cell phone detected?” would be a good enough indicator but don’t see a so,ution that works for both Android and IOS devices.  

[eggzlot]

1 hour ago, jfh said:

How are folks doing “Person x is home” detection?  I though using “is the cell phone detected?” would be a good enough indicator but don’t see a so,ution that works for both Android and IOS devices.  

do you have an alarm or lock?  Can give out a unique code and when its entered you get a text that someone arrived.  that is how I have it programmed and even went further to notify me when they left - people like housekeeper, dog walker, etc.  just so i know they left, locked up, etc.

If you want to go the cell phone route I am sure IFTTT has iOS and Android options and tie it in with the IFTTT driver?    

[rea]

I do this with the Chowmain IFTTT driver and our phones running the IFTTT app. There may be a workaround that I'm not aware of, but I have a separate instance of the IFTTT driver for me and my wife and then each user would need a separate IFTTT account. 

[eggzlot]

15 minutes ago, rea said:

I do this with the Chowmain IFTTT driver and our phones running the IFTTT app. There may be a workaround that I'm not aware of, but I have a separate instance of the IFTTT driver for me and my wife and then each user would need a separate IFTTT account. 

if you have a Fingbox it is possible too with IFTTT and cell phones now that I think about it.  I was testing it for a while and it mostly worked fine but I turned it off.  did not require an app on the phones, just their IP address and fing would send an alert to IFTTT which at the time just sent me a text message but you could tie it into C4

[jfh]

18 minutes ago, eggzlot said:

if you have a Fingbox it is possible too with IFTTT and cell phones now that I think about it.  I was testing it for a while and it mostly worked fine but I turned it off.  did not require an app on the phones, just their IP address and fing would send an alert to IFTTT which at the time just sent me a text message but you could tie it into C4

I do have a Fing box.  Didn’t realize I could IFTTT it.  That sounds easy enough.

[eggzlot]

 

On 12/20/2019 at 1:59 PM, jfh said:

I do have a Fing box.  Didn’t realize I could IFTTT it.  That sounds easy enough.

yep 2nd option

 

 

 

[c44me]

fing is a good app.  never realized there is/was a box?!

[zaphod]

I believe you can also do this with the new Unifi C4 drivers if you have Unifi WAPs in your house.

[eggzlot]

1 hour ago, c44me said:

fing is a good app.  never realized there is/was a box?!

yep fingbox is an appliance - plugs into your network so while you are off network you can still view your network.  I am sitting at my office now 15 miles from my home and on Mobile Data I can see my network, what is up, what is down, do an speed test, etc.  With just the Fing app, it will only connect to whatever wifi network you connected to at that time I believe.  And then you can set up alerts, so when I lose internet service I'll get a ping from Fing about losing internet/being offline.  Stuff like that.

https://www.fing.com/products/fingbox

heck of  a lot more features that I do not use.

[ILoveControl]

42 minutes ago, zaphod said:

I believe you can also do this with the new Unifi C4 drivers if you have Unifi WAPs in your house.

Oh really? Is this using the Unifi Beacon feature? Which driver is the Unifi C4 driver who makes it wasn't aware of it  

Would love to check it out

[zaphod]

I had the driver installed but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.  I am assuming that you can trigger events when a client joins you network.  Hopefully you can program off of a specific client, as in "when MAC 11:22:33:44:55:66 joins the LAN announce "Bobby is home".  Or base it off of IP address or something else that is a unique ID for a person's phone.

[ILoveControl]

So there are currently two main ways to do this programmatically. I have been doing a bu ch of work (because I am OCD) filtering in data into Grafana for pretty graphs :-) (but really cool info)

1. Device layer - ssh the device and use the shell commands on the device. If you running latest firmware a decent amount of commands there.

2. Controller level- There is a api they have which is well documented and has rece tly become quite detailed.

I use SSH when I need low level access like running tcpdump to see what my cheap Chinese cameras are doing and where they sending some traffic to ( it's actually horiffic what you find from these Chinese cameras) all of mine are blocked at my USG and front line Firewall appliance.

I use the api to get stats and stuff from the contoller as the controller ultimately is the "director" if you had to use C4 terms.

The thing about the api last time I checked they do not have a method to encrypt I.e. The communication securely. You can use the self signed cert that comes with the controller but that's pointless as you can pull the cert using a simple browser and then use it in Wireshark to decrypt the traffic.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[ILoveControl]

I had the driver installed but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.  I am assuming that you can trigger events when a client joins you network.  Hopefully you can program off of a specific client, as in "when MAC 11:22:33:44:55:66 joins the LAN announce "Bobby is home".  Or base it off of IP address or something else that is a unique ID for a person's phone.

Just rereading your post I wouldn't use client join as an accurate indication - use case as to why not:

You go for a run and you use your phone / device as your music device while running you leave your house lose connectivity, say your route takes you past your house and you have good signal and device picks up temporarily - you would get a notification you at home but you not your running past :-)

I would look at the AP Beacon feature that unifi have been promising need to check if this was finally released. It was also suppose to help for location awareness around the house (so which room are you in...)


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[JSTRONG]

4 hours ago, eggzlot said:

do you have an alarm or lock?  Can give out a unique code and when its entered you get a text that someone arrived.  that is how I have it programmed and even went further to notify me when they left - people like housekeeper, dog walker, etc.  just so i know they left, locked up, etc.

 

Yep. That’s what I do here. C4 Lock on the front door and the garage door. Everyone has their own code. So i program off who is home. 

[jfh]

2 hours ago, Cartnj said:

Yep. That’s what I do here. C4 Lock on the front door and the garage door. Everyone has their own code. So i program off who is home. 

Useful if everyone uses a code to enter/exit each time.  Not so much otherwise.

[JSTRONG]

I have the locks set to auto lock after 3 minutes so they are always locked 

[Amr]

I use Fing with IFTTT to Push notification via Pushover ...

[Baubas Cat]

On 12/21/2019 at 12:44 AM, Amr said:

I use Fing with IFTTT to Push notification via Pushover ...

I ordered a Fing after reading this topic thinking it would be better than just the ifttt tracking that is awful on my Android phone. My current issue with Fing, that hopefully someone that is using it has a solution for, is the timed delay. Fing waits a set time before sending the alert. The shortest time in the settings is 5 minutes. When I pull up to my home I don't want to wait 5 minutes for my lights to come on and my door to unlock. Is there a way to make the time shorter?

[eggzlot]

1 hour ago, Baubas Cat said:

I ordered a Fing after reading this topic thinking it would be better than just the ifttt tracking that is awful on my Android phone. My current issue with Fing, that hopefully someone that is using it has a solution for, is the timed delay. Fing waits a set time before sending the alert. The shortest time in the settings is 5 minutes. When I pull up to my home I don't want to wait 5 minutes for my lights to come on and my door to unlock. Is there a way to make the time shorter?

I recall it telling me when I was in my garage, usually after I parked/shut off car that I was home.  I turned it off back in January, I was just testing it for fun getting the push notifications so I did it for 3-4 days and shut it down.  I just turned it back on and I’ll give you some reports on how quick it responds on my end.

[eggzlot]

Definitely under 60 seconds for me.  I forgot to even look when I just got home and I can see my garage opened and I got the text both 9 minutes ago.  Right now it is just a simple text message I get.......

[Amr]

On 12/22/2019 at 11:37 PM, Baubas Cat said:

I ordered a Fing after reading this topic thinking it would be better than just the ifttt tracking that is awful on my Android phone. My current issue with Fing, that hopefully someone that is using it has a solution for, is the timed delay. Fing waits a set time before sending the alert. The shortest time in the settings is 5 minutes. When I pull up to my home I don't want to wait 5 minutes for my lights to come on and my door to unlock. Is there a way to make the time shorter?

I don’t use Fing for geoactions at all only use it for people presence and it’s random, it instantly tells when some one arrives but lag when some one leaves ... Its native issue and has nothing to do with IFTTT!

[lippavisual]

That’s a routing issue.  What’s the dhcp lease time set to?  If you shorten that you may get a better experience as to when devices leave your network. 

[eggzlot]

I've only used fing for detection of arrival (and again just for fun)

in the app there is an "alert when state changes" and my default is set for 5 minutes, but you can lower that to automatic or 1 minute, etc.  Would that help trigger a faster "left" response for geofencing purposes?

[turls]

On 12/24/2019 at 9:07 AM, lippavisual said:

That’s a routing issue.  What’s the dhcp lease time set to?  If you shorten that you may get a better experience as to when devices leave your network. 

I don't think Fing cares about the lease time...