Tracking multiple users locations.

[samrwalker]

Ive been using a mix of Life360 and IFTTT to track my wife and I leaving the house to trigger scenes, but it appears Life360 is ending their support for that platform. Any other recommendations for doing that? 

[cdepaola]

I just use our iPhones and IFTTT for geofencing, works perfect

[Dueport]

3 hours ago, samrwalker said:

Ive been using a mix of Life360 and IFTTT to track my wife and I leaving the house to trigger scenes, but it appears Life360 is ending their support for that platform. Any other recommendations for doing that? 

My plan is to use geo fencing in Vera to trigger virtual switches integrated into C4. Those switches will represent presence and program off those. Have been testing reliability and accuracy for a couple months before using and so far excellent. Frustrating to not have this native in C4 app. 

[Dueport]

8 minutes ago, cdepaola said:

I just use our iPhones and IFTTT for geofencing, works perfect

Interesting. No delay?  Was hesitant about using cloud. I had delays with IFTTT events in past. One thing I like about Vera is setting the fence size very handy also multiple fences  - I’ve used other services that don’t do those things (don’t know if ifttt can just saying generally). 

[cdepaola]

On 11/2/2020 at 6:44 PM, Dueport said:

Interesting. No delay?  Was hesitant about using cloud. I had delays with IFTTT events in past. One thing I like about Vera is setting the fence size very handy also multiple fences  - I’ve used other services that don’t do those things (don’t know if ifttt can just saying generally). 

Yup, you make a fence and use the IFTTT c4 driver.  Works great, garage door is always open as I pull into my drive 

[samrwalker]

On 11/2/2020 at 7:33 PM, cdepaola said:

I just use our iPhones and IFTTT for geofencing, works perfect

Do you have a variable for both of you separately? That’s what I loved most about Life360, was not having to track each of us separately. 

[cdepaola]

14 hours ago, samrwalker said:

Do you have a variable for both of you separately? That’s what I loved most about Life360, was not having to track each of us separately. 

We each have our own ifttt account.... Wasn't difficult to set up and is very clean... 

[Singularity]

Chowmain has created a IFTTT driver that works just fine. The only thing I didnt really like was that you had to connect IFTTT to pushover that forwarded the "command".

IFTTT only allowes you to make a few actions yourself. Then you have to pay a monthly fee. Pushover has a one-time-sum that you have to pay.

Besides that. It works pretty good, and you enable feedback from a lot fo other things that is not currently integrated in Control4.

You might already know that this is available at drivercentral.

[tmj4]

@cdepaola--were you required to get an IFTTT pro account? Trying to setup both my pushover account and keep getting the error: 

 

ERROR: Most likely cause is Control4_IFTTT device on pushover already exists.  Please delete this device on the pushover website and re-enter username and password in properties page

in the lua output. 

 

 

[cdepaola]

14 hours ago, tmj4 said:

@cdepaola--were you required to get an IFTTT pro account? Trying to setup both my pushover account and keep getting the error: 

 

ERROR: Most likely cause is Control4_IFTTT device on pushover already exists.  Please delete this device on the pushover website and re-enter username and password in properties page

in the lua output. 

 

 

Do you have one or two pushover accounts?  In my set-up each of us have our own, the error makes me think thats your issue. 

[tmj4]

9 hours ago, cdepaola said:

Do you have one or two pushover accounts?  In my set-up each of us have our own, the error makes me think thats your issue. 

Only one. 

Was your pushover username and pw in the setup the values you log in with or was it an app-specific API key as the password and your user key as the username? 

I've tried both with no luck. 

Perhaps something my dealer didn't get set up all the way is causing this? I'm doing this in Composer HE, FWIW.

 

[tmj4]

Finally got this figured out. It's a bug within the driver: it can't parse email addresses/usernames with pluses in them; assuming it breaks some string manipulation being done and they're not sanitizing the inputs well enough. I tend to use "different" gmail addresses for various sorts of accounts by adding "+pushover_wife" on the end of it. When I updated the email addressed in pushover, all worked in this drive. 

Now happy to report I have multiple user geofencing in C4 using the IFTTT Maker from Chowmain and have programmed for things such as first person home and last person to leave on top of the normal activities. 

[cdepaola]

On 1/4/2021 at 12:03 PM, tmj4 said:

Finally got this figured out. It's a bug within the driver: it can't parse email addresses/usernames with pluses in them; assuming it breaks some string manipulation being done and they're not sanitizing the inputs well enough. I tend to use "different" gmail addresses for various sorts of accounts by adding "+pushover_wife" on the end of it. When I updated the email addressed in pushover, all worked in this drive. 

Now happy to report I have multiple user geofencing in C4 using the IFTTT Maker from Chowmain and have programmed for things such as first person home and last person to leave on top of the normal activities. 

Would love to hear more about the programing you've done.

Currently we're only using a variable to track if one of us have gone far enough away, not just on a walk, to start tracking for opening the garage door or not. 

[tmj4]

57 minutes ago, cdepaola said:

Would love to hear more about the programing you've done.

Nothing too fancy right now. The biggest for us is the thermostat (Aprilaire 8840) and setting the away temp based on HVAC mode when the last person leaves and then removing that away hold when the first person arrives home. 

Others:

• Closing garage door if open and nobody is home. 
• Turning off certain lights if left on and nobody is home (this includes internal Christmas lights right now)
• Turning on laundry room light from 5 minutes if anybody comes home at anytime of day. Key is to restart the counter if someone else comes home after that but also kill the timer if the light is turned back off so if it's turned off and then back on w/in that 5 minute window it doesn't randomly turn off on someone when they've manually turned it back on. 

[samrwalker]

19 hours ago, cdepaola said:

Would love to hear more about the programing you've done.

Currently we're only using a variable to track if one of us have gone far enough away, not just on a walk, to start tracking for opening the garage door or not. 

I use mine to do several things. 

• When the last person leaves home, it checks to see if my "guests" variable is active. If it is, none of the below happens.
• Powers down all TVs and lights during the day, sets certain lamps on during the evening/night.
• If the Roomba hasn't run yet on that day, it starts up and cleans certain rooms. while cleaning, it turns lights on and off so it can see better. 
• while we're away, certain push notifications get enabled, such as motion on the front porch.

Also, I changed the way I'm tracking us after the life 360 nonsense went away. I now use Apple HomeKit to track us. Through a HomeKit automation, it triggers a web hook in IFTTT and that pushes the change to C4. Seems to be working really well. 

[tmj4]

52 minutes ago, samrwalker said:

I now use Apple HomeKit to track us. Through a HomeKit automation, it triggers a web hook in IFTTT and that pushes the change to C4. Seems to be working really well. 

Apple's HomeKit does seem to have some of the best simple geofence actions available, and I used to have everything in there but have moved onto C4. It's what I modeled my C4 geofencing with IFTTT after. For me, IFTTT only handles pushing information to C4 if someone goes in or outside of the geofence halo. House occupancy count, if someone is home or away, and tracking any arrival, any departure, first arrival, last departure are all handled w/in C4 and updated in real time with no delay. The 4 types of movement (arrival and departure) are macros and I add or remove other macros to them for events to happen based upon the situation. 

[Neo1738]

Might have to look into this. 

[tmj4]

16 hours ago, Neo1738 said:

Might have to look into this. 

Will gladly provide any guidance you may want. 

[ERDrPC]

If only for Android users as well

[tmj4]

12 hours ago, ERDrPC said:

If only for Android users as well

How I've implemented geofencing with IFTTT,  pushover, and C4 should work with any platform/phone that has an IFTTT appl and supports GPS.

[Rob21]

I’m looking into using IFTTT and pushover but I am also open to other ideas. Does anyone any experience with other alternatives or is the IFTTT pushover way best? Any other information is greatly appreciated!

[Heisler1]

On 1/6/2021 at 11:35 AM, tmj4 said:

Apple's HomeKit does seem to have some of the best simple geofence actions available, and I used to have everything in there but have moved onto C4. It's what I modeled my C4 geofencing with IFTTT after. For me, IFTTT only handles pushing information to C4 if someone goes in or outside of the geofence halo. House occupancy count, if someone is home or away, and tracking any arrival, any departure, first arrival, last departure are all handled w/in C4 and updated in real time with no delay. The 4 types of movement (arrival and departure) are macros and I add or remove other macros to them for events to happen based upon the situation. 

Looking for help with IFTTT and C4 with multiple phones.   I am new to this and got push to work on one phone but need to figure out how to do with multiple.  if you could provide sampe of script on how you have C4 knowing all phone have left and how c4 occupancy count.  

[tmj4]

3 minutes ago, Heisler1 said:

Looking for help with IFTTT and C4 with multiple phones.   I am new to this and got push to work on one phone but need to figure out how to do with multiple.  if you could provide sampe of script on how you have C4 knowing all phone have left and how c4 occupancy count.  

Sure thing. I'll see how I can present it as cleanly here as I can. I should be able to conjure something up here still this morning for you.

[Heisler1]

On 1/6/2021 at 11:35 AM, tmj4 said:

Apple's HomeKit does seem to have some of the best simple geofence actions available, and I used to have everything in there but have moved onto C4. It's what I modeled my C4 geofencing with IFTTT after. For me, IFTTT only handles pushing information to C4 if someone goes in or outside of the geofence halo. House occupancy count, if someone is home or away, and tracking any arrival, any departure, first arrival, last departure are all handled w/in C4 and updated in real time with no delay. The 4 types of movement (arrival and departure) are macros and I add or remove other macros to them for events to happen based upon the situation. 

Looking for help with IFTTT and C4 with multiple phones.   I am new to this and got push to work on one phone but need to figure out how to do with multiple.  if you could provide sampe of script on how you have C4 knowing all phone have left and how c4 occupancy count.  

[Heisler1]

Thanks much appreciated.