If you want to be very precise location detection (e.g. just the distance of your dirveway) you may want to search this forum for “beacon”. I use this method to determine if I (not anyone - this just works for me!) am in a certain room in my home.
We’ve released another iOS app called BeaconThings ! This app allows you to easily integrate iBeacons into your SmartThings smart home. Here’s how it works:
You place iBeacons throughout your home/office/wherever (we like these beacons from Radius Networks )
Use BeaconThings to register these beacons with SmartThings. They work just like presence sensors.
The app sends updates to SmartThings when it enters/leaves the range of those beacons. Everything happens in the background. Once the beacons are registered, you never open BeaconThings again!
Create SmartApps or SmartRules to make your home take actions based on these beacons.
The first version of the app is available now on the App Store. This version searches for beacons with a pre-defined UUID. After discussions with early users, we …
This, or variations of what you describe, is clearly the right path for instant presence detection. I saw hints in hub v2 threads that it’s being looked at. But why wait since most of our phones already support BLE. Would be awesome if this was built into the app so we didn’t have to do 3rd party apps and hacks. There is already a variety of battery powered BLE beacons available or launching soon.
The v2 Hub integration potential is also exciting. Would like to have the battery powered BLE beacons in my car and backpack etc and have hub know when I or other family members arrive. And tie in with phone app integration as you suggest, and my phone could tell the hub which room was occupied if I put beacons in each room. Can’t wait until this gets mainstream. Won’t be long now.
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