Deleted <20 characters>
1 Like
There’s some existing solutions posted that do this via watching for wifi MAC addresses connecting to your home router/AP… But Bluetooth is good alternative if folks have it enabled.
Search for the WiFi based presence solution and you could copy most of the code.
This seems like a really awesome idea. Now that I am placing tablets around my house, it would be REALLY cool to use this as sort of a reverse-iBeacon way. I hate the idea that I need extra apps on my phone, and friends or family. I want it to be seamless, and easy.
1 Like
So the V2 hub has Bluetooth but it cannot take action based on whether a specific device is connected via bluetooth or not? I am very disappointed and surprised this is the case.
I have tried using the Geo-fencing option with my mobile phone but that option is not even close to something I would use. I have the setting for my location set to the smallest area you can select and I still have to drive 3-4 blocks away from home before it will detect I have left the area. I am not sure if this is a delay of the GPS location to update or if the smallest area is really that large, my guess is the first one because the map shows the area as only about a block on every direction around my location marker. It would definitely be much better to be able to base this on Bluetooth connectivity as that has a much shorter range.
It has the hardware. The software will eventually be a feature.
It’s probably a big deal because as soon as one Bluetooth device is supported, hundreds of rats will come out of the walls demanding their favorite device be officially supported with local execution immediately.
I’m serious about everything but the term “rat”. I dropped a “b”. 
The Bluetooth antenna in the V2 hub has not yet been enabled. You can’t do anything with it as yet.
As for " detecting" Bluetooth devices, it doesn’t really work that way. Ibeacons broadcast a repeated “I am here” Bluetooth signal, but phones generally do not unless in pairing mode or virtual beacon mode. If you’ve individually paired the devices you can work with that, which may fit your use case.
If these are android devices, you may be able to work with SharpTools. @joshua_lyon would know.
At our house we do use reverse iBeacon detection. A permanently situated tablet serves as the home automation control center, and it has the iBeacon detection software. Then when we want to, we carry an IBeacon. We can set the detection range to be quite narrow. (I use a wheelchair, so we have set it to detect my iBeacon as I arrive at the base of the ramp to the front door.)
If you have an iOS device, it’s very easy to use the $9 third-party app, smartrules, to work with I beacons.
The following thread discusses a number of different iBeacon options.
So there are several different options depending on the Phone/tablet OS that you use.
For yet another alternative, you can use a two device method to set a narrower detection radius. That doesn’t fit all use cases, but it can be a good choice for some households.
1 Like
I do use Android devices for the most part. I was hoping that you could pair your Bluetooth device (Android phone in my case) with he hub and the hub would detect when that paired device is actually connected or not and base the presence on that. I have read about the some of the options like what you mentioned and will look at the other that I have not read but I don’t have an extra tablet to use for this purpose and I just feel that is the Hub’s job, be the central piece of the home automation. After all this is one of the reasons I purchased the V2 hub, prior to purchasing the hub I had several different pieces of hardware (mostly Raspberry Pis) performing different functions and was hoping to consolidate that down to a single hub. When I read that the hub had Z-wave, ZigBee, and Bluetooth support I was excited to see if this is the case but at least for now it seems that is not going to happen.
Here’s to hoping we can do useful things with the Bluetooth in the near future. I have seen how far I need to be to connect to other Bluetooth devices and that range seems like it would work much better for my case than the Geo-fencing option currently available.
1 Like
Sorry to raise an old thread, but…
Is there any way of using Android devices for what iBeacons are for?
I already have a few wall-mounted Android tablets and phones running SmartTiles.
I wonder if the Bluetooth radios in them could be used as iBeacons of some sort.
Ideas? Links to other threads?
See the link in my post above where the thread title has 2015 in it. It discusses android options. 
1 Like