Geofencing?

[Anks329]

What’s the consensus on the best way to geofence with Control4? I’ve got a mix of apple and android phones, so a pure apple solution won’t work. I basically want to open the garage door as I approach and close it if it’s left open. I’ve explored using Unifi to see devices fall off and reappear, but I get a lot of false alerts with it.

 

is there something better out there?

[Amr]

There is a new Geofencing Agent coming out soon for geofencing on both Apple and Android, I believe it’s in the final testing phases, let’s wait as any other option like IFTTT would be hit/miss, I use HomeKit Geofencing and it’s perfect but it’s Apple only!

[Olichops]

Niffty idea, but bad in practice. Unifi geofencing works sometimes so I would not depend on it as too many variable in the chain of phone, cell carrier, ISP, etc. Personally I would never depend on geofence to close the garage as will never know if it worked when you leave the fence. Now to open, pushing the button on the homelink is not that hard and always works! Now gepfence the alarm when all members of the house has left is what I want to see!

[Anks329]

Yeah, the Unifi option doesn’t seem to be the most reliable. I’ve got an alert set up either way to tell me if the door is left open, but wanted to automate it.

 

Any other drivers/options out there?

[booch]

13 hours ago, Anks329 said:

Yeah, the Unifi option doesn’t seem to be the most reliable. I’ve got an alert set up either way to tell me if the door is left open, but wanted to automate it.

 

Any other drivers/options out there?

I use the presence of our phones on the network as a 'geofence,' per se (plus as an input to my occupancy logic, e.g., auto-locking the house).

Given how phones sleep under some circumstances, it just misses the speed for instant garage door open (with a moving car), at least under some circumstances, though mine is consistently fast enough for coming/going on foot (regardless if it's in a pocket or out). If you really want to do the garage door, you could follow the same (network presence approach) and add a more aggressive wifi transceiver to your car that's scanning at a faster interval as a budget approach. Otherwise, I'd think RFID would be the gold standard for this (and is $$$ based on my research).

[DawnGordon]

Not a Control4 solution, but my Android phone looks for my SSID, and then turns on Call forwarding. It's automatically turned off when I leave the house.

Tried to get Apple to do this, but couldn't.

[Anks329]

7 minutes ago, Amr said:

There is a new Geofencing Agent coming out soon for geofencing on both Apple and Android, I believe it’s in the final testing phases, let’s wait as any other option like IFTTT would be hit/miss, I use HomeKit Geofencing and it’s perfect but it’s Apple only!

Good to know! Thanks.

[South Africa C4 user]

On 6/30/2023 at 3:46 AM, Anks329 said:

Good to know! Thanks.

A new agent sounds cool.  I use IFTTT for this and it is a lot more hit than miss.  I have had 2 misses so far in 2023 and it is being used (on average) twice a day.

[South Africa C4 user]

Just now, South Africa C4 user said:

A new agent sounds cool.  I use IFTTT for this and it is a lot more hit than miss.  I have had 2 misses so far in 2023 and it is being used (on average) twice a day.

That said,  the misses do create a real issue for me as the miss is not so much a miss as an 8 hour delay (in my case)…