Specifically I am wanting to find out if they have gotten then routines issues fixed or should I be looking at 3rd party apps to get things done still?
Has the presence with phone issues been resolved or should I start looking to just go ahead and purchase my wife and I a smart things presence sensor?
Thanks guys, this community has always been fantastic.
Hi @chowder007, I haven’t had any issues (except self-inflicted) with either of the ones you’re asking about.
Speaking for myself, I have 2 Routines running based on Android device (Note 5, 2 S6’s, and an S4) presence sensors. One arms SHM when the last person leaves, and the other disarms when anyone returns. These also adjust temps, turn on/off lights and my Blink cameras. I’ve had these running for quite some time now, and I’m very pleased with how they’re working.
I also have Routines set up for when we’re away on vacation or gone for a long periods of time. I was just gone for almost 2 weeks, and these ran perfectly the entire time I was gone. These were set to run based on a specific time vs presence device.
Thanks for the feed back. I’m having a ton of issues at the new place with presence and my phone. Hope are your presence sensors working? Have they been better than using your phone?
Anytime @chowder007. I also have presence/arrival sensors (the original ones) in each car, and they’ve been working great. What was a huge help for those was when I improved my zigbee mesh. I added Iris Smart Plugs in every room to act only as zigbee repeaters, including the garage. The only thing I have to complain about with these devices now is battery life, but I can deal with that.
Regarding your phone and presence issues, have you tried setting the presence time out to something greater than the default? I have mine set to 9 minutes. I also adjusted the geofence to a fairly small radius of my home, and have enabled high accuracy location capabilities on the phones. Aside from low battery and phones being off, my phones have been surprisingly reliable for some time.
Yeah I have all those set with the exception of the time out. Where is that setting changed at?
Part of the problem is i can’t even make phone calls where I’m at.
So you have the original presence sensors in your car and the newer ones on your key chain? Or just the ones in your car?
I keep the SmartThings Arrival Sensor in my glove box and it’s been working perfectly. I park my vehicle about 20’ from the hub, but it detects the presence before I even get into the driveway.
A lot of people report that it drains batteries really fast and the battery level did drop rapidly for the first few weeks, but mine stayed in the 30%-60% range for about 4 months.
Sweet. I can deal with 5 to 6 months of battery life. Even 4 wont be horrible. Thanks for the feedback.
You can change that value, and see what it is, via the IDE by going to your hub, selecting View Utilities (same place where the zwave/zigbee utils are), and then Presence Timeout. Select Get Presence Timeout to see what it is, which I bet is 2 minutes.
Like @krlaframboise, I keep all mine in glove boxes or little storage compartments in the cars, none on keychains or other property. I don’t have any of the news ones, just the original ones.
And what does changing the value do?
I took this from another post, but it explains it best:
You can set the amount of time it takes for a presence tag to be marked absent.
So if you’re having problem with it checking in and out a lot for no reason you can set it to be longer to get rid of false positives. Or if you want it faster you can increase it. I think default is 2 minutes.
Check out this post as well:
Right on man. Thanks for the info. I made the change and unfortunately I am still getting false positives. Im just going to get a sensor and be done with it.