Thank you all for your help. We created our first virtual presence and have done some trouble shooting on our garage door issue. All is good.
I’m really struggling here. I watched a video and installed the T Austin vEdge Creator V2.94. I see this on my laptop on the New IDE and in the ST app.
I’m not finding any videos or literature on how to create a presence sensor (ps) for my iPhone. I have read that I do need a virtual switch for (at home) and (away from home), for each user.
In the ST app under vEdge, Controls I’ve tried 1, presence sensor, presence sensor. Then under Routines, IF: Members Location, Who (iPhone), Where (our home) and When (At our home).
THEN: ???
I’m trying to use a PS as a tool to determine why ST knows when we arrive, and opens the garage door, but doesn’t close the garage door when we leave. Mine is not working.
Is there a video or a procedure on how to create a PS for unknowledge people like myself?
In the New IDE, where and how specifically, can I create a virtual switch for present sensor for my iPhones?
My issue is, I have two routines, one when we leave the house, if the garage door is open, close it. When we arrive home, if the door is closed, open it. It doesn’t always work, on a motorcycle, it would be nice if it Always worked. If what I saw about a virtual switch in another post is correct, it would be helpful to know if ST knows if I’m home or away.
If you are using the location tracking of the ST app and it’s not reliable, then simply adding a virtual switch isn’t going to do anything about that. What some people are doing is using the location tracking of another app such as Alexa or IFTTT and then changing the state of a ST virtual contact sensor in that app to signal their presence/absence. There is a whole topic dedicated to location tracking and presence.
Sure, that will tell you whether the ST App location tracking is triggering your presence/absence correctly. Just create a virtual presence sensor for each person and then create Routines that turn on/off the switch function of the sensor based on the state of the Member’s location.
You can also see the mobile presence state in both the ST Advanced Web App and the community developed ST API Browser+ without needing to create a virtual device.
I’m looking at using a PS as a tool to determine why when we leave the garage door does not close, although it use to. Then when we arrive, the garage door opens.
Smartthings allows you to conditionally trigger a routine based on presence. It can also do that based on multiple family members (in the same home) presence. Why are you not doing that? You can also set a Switch/ contact in Google Home and/or alexa per home member and consolidate those switches status into a parent switch in ST, which is what i do because i have had occasion where one app or another is aware of a presence change way ahead of the others. So if any of the three detect a presence change, i change the parent switch then and use the parent to control geofencing routines in ST
The OP says in the first post that they are doing that, but the routine to close the garage door based on a change in presence is not working reliably, which, unfortunately, is fairly common.
Since under the current architecture you can’t visibly see the status of a member’s presence in the smartthings app, they want to set up a virtual device for troubleshooting, so they have something to look at in the app. That way they would know if the routine to close the garage door failed because smartthings didn’t know the person was away or if it did know the person was away, and the routine to close the garage door was failing for some other reason.
@Diogi
In your first post it shows you have a virtual presence sensor created for Peter and it is being set by Peter’s phone location.
It sounds like the routines to trigger the presence sensor are not consistently running, correct?
This is probably due to the Smartthings location from the phone not triggering timely or reliably.
This has nothing to do with the virtual device and everything to do with the reliablity of the location tracking of the phone.
As @h0ckeysk8er mentioned, do you happen to use google home or alexa or IFTTT? If yes, there are ways you can create a backup routine in any of these apps. I would be happy to explain how.
Since the OP mentioned iPhones, if Apple’s HomeKit presence is reliable and smartthings presence is not, you can also use a physical device visible to both platforms as a proxy, which is what I do.
The point is you might want to have a Virtual presence sensor just as a Troubleshooting Device, so you can easily see what smartthings thinks your current presence is based on its own calculations.
Or a lot of people will use a virtual presence sensor as a proxy so they can take the presence state from a different platform, as @Terri_Baker mentioned, that into smartthings, so they can then trigger routines off it. In that case you might even bypass smartthings presence all together and just turn the virtual device on from the other platform.
So it just depends on why you want to have it. Do you want a virtual presence sensor as a visual indication of what smartthings thinks presence is in this moment based on its own algorithm?
Or do you want a virtual presence sensor so you can let another platform control the state changes based on that platform’s algorithm?
I actually use Smartthings and Google home and Alexa with ST routines that sets the presence home/away only if away/home. That way I can take advantage of whichever platform decides to work first at that time. It’s been very reliable.
If the mobile device is for the account owner who is logged in, it shows you a device that represents the phone and a device that represents the presence sensor for the mobile device.
In Alexa, go to create a routine.
Under when this happens select location.
Select Arrives
Enter your address
Under add action
Select you virtual PS and turn on.
Repeat for Leaves but turn off.
In IFTTT you’ll need 2 routines. With all the recent changes you’ll have to check if location service is included in the free plan. If it is, then select location as your trigger.
For the then part select smartthings (link account if not already done). Then select your virtual PS and turn on or off.
If you want to use ST location as well, edit your original 2 routines to include the PS as a precondition. With this you can use mutiple 3rd party platforms to trigger the PS as well as ST and it only triggers once.
The extra component in the device suggests that a ‘Linked place’ has been defined. Three extra geoplaces can be defined for each Location and presence sensors for them are implemented as components of the mobile presence device. I don’t know if they’ve reached the iOS app yet but they are in the Android app, having long been limited to Galaxy devices.
I´ve been using edgebridge and phonetrack, which tracks when my or my wifes phone MAC address is connected to our home wi-fi and tells this information for SmartThings. It has always worked 100% perfectly and opens our front door when arriving to home and turns video surveillance on/off depending if someone´s home or not.
Only downside is that it needs a separate win/*nix computer to run, but I have a fileserver running anyways.
