SmartThings Community

Android Presence sensors vs Smartthings sensors

(Rolph Muller) #1

I think I’m giving up on the Android sensors. They used to work fine, but my wife’s hasn’t worked for couple of weeks or so (she’s always present☺). Half an hour ago it seems I left the house. The info issued on the website does imply that they are unreliable. Are the Samsung ones any more reliable and what is the effective range?

(Eric Bergan) #2

I got a couple of the Samsung sensors, one for a bike, one for a car, so that they open the garage door when they arrive. The Samsung sensors always seem to work, where our Android phones seem to depend on whether they SmartThings app has been used in the last few days.

Subjectively, the Android app works from a lot farther away, the Samsung sensors seem to have to be within a hundred feet or so. But its hard to really tell with either, because polling rates seem to be different - Android when working, seems to be faster. For the bike or car Samsung sensors, it’s typically 15-30 seconds, but can be over a minute, sitting in the driveway, before the hub notices and raises the garage door.

All of the above is for arrival. For departure, it can be 4-5 minutes before the system realizes a Samsung sensor has left. No auto-closing the garage door on departure - garage would be open for too long. Android isn’t very quick, either.

(Isaac) #3

Newer versions of Android along with some Samsung phones implement a power saving feature called “Doze mode” by removing unused apps from memory. There are several methods Android uses to determine if an app should be put in power save mode, one of those being if the app hasn’t been used in X number of days remove it from memory to save power. Based on the symptoms you described, this may be the culprit.

Try excluding the SmartThings app from power saving. You can find instructions here:

#4

For me disabling Doze and other power saving features didn’t help with the Android mobile presence reliability.

I’ve tried on both Samsung S7 edge and Note 7, both are very unreliable even with all Doze/power saving turned off using the ST app.

Life360 app as the ST mobile presence (with Doze/power saving off) has been working much better for me than ST own app. Not too difficult to add so it may be worth testing to see if it works better for you.

(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart) #5

This is the same setup I have, note 7 and life360. It works great for me and I’m using it on 8 devices.

There’s a glitch every once in a while, but overall it’s been great.

The stock ST presence just really didn’t work at all for me.

(Rolph Muller) #6

OK guys, very helpful advice. I’ll probably buy a couple of ST sensors since they work at about the range I need them. My wife’s phone is still on KitKat but it certainly makes sense to turn off Doze on mine for the ST app.

(Rolph Muller) #7

I don’t know how I missed this post. FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence.
Thank you JD! I used the Tasker option http://sharptools.boshdirect.com/examples/smartthings-custom-presence , and so far it is working fine.

#8

I’ve been trying to get Samsung Smart Arrival Sensor going with the Ridiculous Garage Door opener. Never worked… I am way inside the house before the sensor recognizes… Iphone geofencing works better, but inconsistent in it’s opening radius. I think the only real advantage is that IF you forget to close the garage door, it will do so. When I leave the garage door open, it takes about 3 minutes of driving before it knows the iPhone is gone… So in a dense neighborhood or in winter, that is way to long for my taste.