I’m looking for tips/suggestions on the best way to set this up. It’s just my wife and I that I’m wanting to ST to automate based off us coming/going.
I want to be the only one to receive notifications. I’d like 5 scenarios to automate. 1 for when I leave and she’s still home, 1 for when she leaves and I’m still home, 1 for when I get home and she’s not home yet, 1 for when she gets home and I’m not home yet, and 1 for when we both leave/arrive. I hope that makes sense.
Basically, when I leave and she’s home I don’t want it turning all the lights off and the temp down. But when we leave together I do want it doing all of that.
I figured I could have both iPhones as presence sensors and then make routines for “I’m Away” and then another for “All Away” - is that the best route? If she’s added to the hub under her own account does she receive notifications? Is that going to KILL our phone battery?
Yes she will. Even though I only use my iphone number my wife will receive all the notifications that I get. I am not sure how to accomplish what you are trying to do,
On thinking about this a little more I use custom rules to detect who is home and who is away. I have one rule that notifies me when I leave another rule for when I arrive. Another rule for when my wife leaves and another rule for when she arrives. One more rule for when we both leave and another one for when we both arrive. 6 rules in total. I suppose you could turn lights on and off with these rules. I have found presence sensing to be too unreliable and I surely would never use it for security purposes. Sometimes I get the notification 30 minutes after arrival/departure and once ST showed her phone present when she had left for work. Stayed that way all day until she arrived home. Her phone was on as I was able to track her using her ipad’s “find my Phome” feature.
I use both Life360 and the phone presence. I have a Webcore piston that looks at both for each of my wife and me. It says if either of them change to away (or home) then turn on/off a simulated presence sensor. If both simulated sensors are away or home they do certain things in another piston. And with contacts enabled I can control who gets the notifications from the piston.
I have been using this method for about 6 months and it has been 99.9% reliable. If either of the phone or Life360 doesn’t see the location for some reason the other one usually does. and they catch up to each other sooner or later.
I suggest using webCoRE presence sensor with the new webcore app. Then pistons to drive each “scene”. Of course this requires getting familiar with webcore, but I found the webcore presence sensor to be most reliable.
I haven’t had a need for webCORE yet, but it is probably the better way to go. But if you don’t want to use it go to your Dashboard and click on “Everything is OK.” From that screen you will see at the top right of the screen a gear icon. Click on it and there will be a list of Pre installed Rules such as: Security, Smoke, Leaks, Custom, etc. Press on Custom and then Press on New Monitoring Rule.
From here select the devices you wish to monitor and set up whatever actions you want, text notifications and Rule Name.
Yes, both phones are being used as presence sensors in all modes, but I repeat, I only use them for notification purposes, but not for security purposes. I have another use for using her phone as a presence sensor - I added her work as a second location, although her work has no ST hubs or devices. I set up two more Custom Rules that notify me when her phone arrives or leaves work. That way if she doesn’t arrive at work or at home within a reasonable I use her ipad to track where she is in case she is in an accident, etc.
I suppose you could turn off the ST notifications on her phone, but I see a lot of scenarios where that would not be good. Suppose she thinks you are home when you are away and walks in on intruders unawares. Secondly, how would she be notified of a home break-in if you happened to be out of phone service areas, such as in the mountains and no phone service available. Many stores have so much electronic interference that while you are in the store neither you nor her would receive notifications if a fire, water leak or burglary happened at home.
This goes to my second point - my wife almost walked in on a burglary happening at my house before I had any security systems. As she was walking in the back door, they escaped out the front door. So, even if you don’t have any valuables at your home, surely your life and hers is valuable. Purchase a professional security system with 24/7 monitoring and cellular communications and who can phone the Police or Fire Department if you are out of phone range… ST is a great tool as a backup but never rely on it as your primary security system.
I really appreciate your (& everyone’s) replies and input!
I’m not so much using it for home security as it’s more for home automation. I am interested as to how to set up another location (for wife’s work) with no hubs or smart devices there. I’ll see if I can get that figured out as that would be handy.
If I remember correctly I went to the last page on my app that shows my location. I added a second location, dragged the geofence circle on the provided map and named it. Then I added 2 custom routines to text me, one for when she arrives at work and one when she leaves work.
Instead of going this route, you should begin to dabble with WebCoRE. After you have webCoRE installed, then you can install webCoRE Presence sensor and add multiple locations for the people you want to track with mobile presence.
As for your original question, you could turn off notifications for the SmartThings app only on her phone and then if there are certain messages you DO want your wife to receive, you can have your Pistons send an SMS message to your wife’s phone number.
