Mobile Presence

General Discussion
1

I am finding that using my phone as a mobile presence device is very unreliable. It rarely signals that I am home or away, which makes for a less than smart SmartThings. Is anyone else having a similar experience?

The tag which came with my kit on the other hand AWESOME … but I only have 1. )=

2

I don’t have an iPhone but I have head from many people that geofencing in general is rather unreliable  It works off triangulating your position off cell towers, which can give fairly inconsistent results. I would prefer to see an option to let it work by if you are connected to your WiFi network or not, as I think that would update far quicker.

3

It uses GPS, which when it pings the GPS works well, it just doesn’t do it when the app is closed it seems. It requires me to open the app everything I am outside of my fence to recognize that I’m away, or open it when I get home.

4

Is there an app to setup geofencing? I dont see anywhere to set it.

5

Hmm, I just assumed it would use geofencing rather than GPS… GPS seems like it would be impossible to do background notifications with.

6

Same experience as James… I’m not sure how to get it to see that I’ve come home or left home thus changing modes.

7

I’m not sure if you have tried this or not, but this fixed it for me:

  1. Go to settings
  2. Select your Hub’s Location
  3. Swipe Down on the map
  4. Tap the pin icon in the bottom right (If you find yourself somewhere in the Atlantic ocean, just push the little arrow icon right next to it)
  5. Press for 3 seconds on the map to set your pin location (this will be the center of your geofence so you probably want to put it close to wherever your hub is)
  6. Tap the pin icon once more
  7. Pinch to resize the geofence to your liking
  8. Tap the checkmark in the upper right
8

Thank’s Classic, those instructions worked for me… Wish it was a bit more intuitive.

9

Note, there is a known (by support) bug where the geofence causes the application to log you out, still not updating your location status. (=

They said once the android beta is out, it was next on their list.

10

Thanks James, I just experienced that situation and was wondering why the app didn’t detect that I was home for over an hour.

11

It only logs you out if you need a code to log onto your phone when it locks. It’s not the perfect solution, but if you turn off your password protected screen lock in iphone it doesn’t log you off of app

12

Thanks for all the useful info. I’ve been trying to figure out the difference between the SmartPresence tags that came with my kit, and the Mobile Presence setting in the app. Reading this thread, it seems like Mobile Presence is supposed to work like a SP tag, but it’s not quite there yet? I definitely won’t be using it if I have to unlock my iPhone in order to stay logged into my hub.

13

Yes, it hasn’t been worth the hassle so far. I cannot figure out how to unpair the mobile presence from the app now though. I was hoping that since presence awareness is such a large part of the platform that they would have addressed that application bug sooner.

1 Like
14

Thanks Classic for the instructions on the geofence. Set mine up when I arrived home this evening. One clarification on step 7 though; pinching doesn’t actually change the size of the geofence. Pinching zooms in/out of the map and the geofence shrinks or expands to maintain it’s original size relative to the zoom-level of the map. Minor point, but I was hoping to be able to adjust the size of the GF and, at least on iPhone, that’s not the case.

15

Dave - if I am understanding what you are saying correctly, are you pinching and expanding when the geofence circle is red? If so this just zooms in and out with map. If you then poke the pin in bottom right corner of screen, the geofence circle changes to green and it can then be expanded or shrunk as needed. I made mine as close to just covering my house as I could, so when I leave and return it locks and unlocks my front door. That parts been working great. Just don’t get the lock status update on my lock app (doesnt change the lock or unlock status on the tile as it should) but this is a bug they are aware of and working on.

P.s. you may have to pick up the location pin and set it down in a few different places to get it in the spot you want it before expanding your circle, since you can only expand in an even circle, as far as I can tell.

16

Also not code locking my phone hasn’t really been an issue for me so far. I mostly did it just so my kids would stay off my phone. However this would not be a good long term solution and they are aware of it and a fix should be coming.

What I am really anxious for is the ability to set up multiple phones as presence tags, so the door unlocks for my wife as well. At this point she’s not that impressed as I’m the only one really getting the benefits. :wink:

17

Thanks Classic. You’re right. I skipped over step 4 which mentions the pin at the bottom right, and I was tapping the pin dropped on the map. Thanks for the clarification. Works great.

18

Looks like the app update today fixed the auto logout issue. When I left my house today the app recognized that and set my system to away!

19

Looks like they’ve also added the ability to remove Mobile Presence, but not yet the ability to add more than one. :frowning:

20

Funny, because now it is logging me out which it never did before.