How well do beacons work? (2018)

[JDRoberts]

Sorry, I’m confused by the question. The iBeacon itself is always on.

When Using beacons for presence, most people create a virtual presence sensor (abbreviated VPS) which also has the “switch” capability so you can turn it on and off in SmartThings.

So you turn the VPS on when you are in range of the beacon and off when you leave the region. This causes the VPS to register to ST as “Home” or “away.” But the beacon itself is always on.

This is covered in the presence FAQ. See post 5 for a link to the VPS code.

FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence (2020)

Great point! SmartThings is somewhat unusual in that it allows customers to create “virtual” devices. This is just a software entry in your account, but once you have it set up the system will treat it just like a physical switch. It will appear in the list of all your switches, smartapps and routines can turn it on and off, etc. These can be particularly useful as an interface between SmartThings and another system, including IFTTT. By having activity on the other system (including echo, harmony, IFTTT, Tasker, etc.) turn on the virtual switch, you can then have that switch coming on trigger other events under SmartThings control. This can be very useful for presence. Not only can you have an outside system turn presence “on”, you can just tap the device tile in the mobile app to …