SmartThings Community

Any zwave NOT zigbee presence sensor

(Ron) #1

I want to get a presence sensor to put in my Cars so that I can disable my zwave alarm when either car is home.

I don’t want zigbee because I have no zigbee devices so my “mesh” would be weak for zigbee. With zwave I already have a plugged in zwave garage door controller so the signal should be strong.

I can’t find any presence sensor other then the SmartThings Smart Sense. My phone bounces me in and out of my house every few minutes while I am comfortable on my couch :smile: so that doesn’t work at all.

(Gary D) #2

android or ios phone? If it’s android, I might be able to offer a work-around to the built in mobile presence sensor. (I realize this isn’t answering your question… I don’t know of any z-wave presence sensor, or of any z-wave device that can pop in and out of range like that successfully.)

(Ron) #3

Android, think you might have misread I don’t the presence sensor to pop in and out. I just find the android presence randomly has me home and away while I am sitting still at home.

(Gary D) #4

Use tasker (search google’s play store) to configure a profile based on having a certain wifi signal strength to your home AP. Then create a simulated presence sensor in the ST ide. Combine the simulated presence sensor with tasker via “sharptools” (check the play store again.)

I’ve found this to be a much more reliable “presence” sensor than the one built into ST, and you can use multiple simulated presence sensors without the need for multiple ST accounts.

Note: This solution does cost money if you don’t already have the above apps.

(Ron) #5

I was afraid you would suggest wifi. My wife and I often turn wifi off on the phone so this solution will lead to false alarms.

(Gary D) #6

That’s probably what is messing up android’s own location services… it uses cell towers and wifi signals to determine location (if the GPS chip is turned off or isn’t seeing the birds.) Is there anything else in your house that your phone can detect that tasker might be able to use to determine if your “home”?

Here are some ideas:

If my phone is seeing one of the cell towers I know to be near my house AND my phone isn’t connected to my car’s bluetooth, then I must be home.

If my phone is seeing a neighbor’s wifi signal, then I’m close enough to home to say that I’m home.

If my phone is charging, then I must be home. (Just have to make sure you plug in the thing when you’re home - and not when your aren’t.)

(Ron) #7
  1. Cell tower…maybe…it can do that ?
  2. Neighbor’s wifi, if I had wifi on I would see my own signal. We turn off wifi on the phone the the wifi iteself.
  3. Charging…my alarm would be going off when I got home until I ran to my charger…besides I definitely charge at work.

On topic again, I really just want a zwave presence sensor if anyone knows of one that exists. If my phone was 100% reliable I would consider it but it seems this isn’t possible. When I use the android presence on my smart things app, with wifi on, gps on, bluetooth on…everything that presence could use it still randomly has me out and back when I am at home. Others have reported these issues so I know it’s not just me. I also see from the community that the zigbee presence sensor isn’t reliable either. People even report it indicating they are home when they are not. That seems strange because why would it detect something that isn’t there.

Seems there is not a solution just yet.

#8

By summer 2016 I expect to see at least two microlocation technologies in fairly wide deployment: Apple’s iBeacon and Samsung’s Placedge. And probably more based on BLE. Hopefully smartthings will add support for at least one of those.

Zigbee is much better than zwave at dealing with rainy conditions, which is why most of the outdoor stuff you’ll see, with the exception of some sheltered box devices, is zigbee. Not zwave.

Lots of zwave flood detectors for indoor use, for example, but no zwave rain sensors I’m aware of, they’re all zigbee.

And I’m pretty sure all utility company deployed smart meters are Zigbee.

Meanwhile…the ST generation 1 motion sensor when plugged in via
USB cable is a zigbee repeater. Lots of people put those in a garage to catch the presence sensor. (But it’s not a repeater when operated on batteries.) so that’s another option.

(Gary D) #9

[quote=“Ron, post:7, topic:10981”]

  1. Cell tower…maybe…it can do that ?
    [/quote]Yes. You basically walk around your house scanning for cell tower signals so you build up a list of all the tower ID’s “visible” from your house. It then compares that against the current seen tower ID.

[quote=“Ron, post:7, topic:10981”]
Neighbor’s wifi, if I had wifi on I would see my own signal. We turn off wifi on the phone the the wifi iteself.[/quote]That’s actually not a problem. For older versions of android (pre-kitkat), it can turn on wifi, scan, and turn it back off. For newer versions of android, there’s an option in settings that allows it to scan for wifi even if wifi is turned off.

So, based on that, what version of android are you using? If something newer, try to look through the advanced wifi settings for an option such as “scanning always available.” That alone might make the mobile presence sensor itself more reliable.

(Scott Chapman) #10

Could you explain how you created a “simulated presence sensor” I think I would like to take a crack at implementing this…

(Joshua Lyon (SharpTools.io Dashboard)) #11

The first section of this article I wrote on using Tasker for creating a custom presence device explains how to add a Simulated Presence Device:

(Scott Chapman) #12

Awesome. Thanks!

Anyone using the smartthings presence sensor itself for this sort of thing? I assume it is just a z-wave presence sensor or something else?

(Jordan P.) #13

I believe the ST presence sensor is zigbee not z-wave. @scott_chapman

(Scott Chapman) #14

Oh that stinks. z-wave has great distance right? Anyone know of any good z-wave proximity FOBs I can try out?

#15

I am searching to for any device that could be used as a precence sensor other than ST presence sensor.

#16

This might be of interest.

#17

Also, just updating this thread…Leedarson did announce a new patent pending zwave arrival sensor at CES 2017, but it hasn’t come to market yet. And they’re expecting a battery life of about a month.