Presence sensor based on wifi connection

[lauzca]

Hi, is there a way to make my phone connection to wifi act as a sensor? I saw on the IFTTT that I could use in the if side of things the android device funtion, but what I would like to do is have it do a then when two devices are connected to wifi, not just one and the if statement only lets me do one. Any solutions?

[Bry (Bryan)]

Do you really need the wifi connection to be the sensor, as opposed to using Smarthings capability to use a phone as a sensor?

If you wanted to do it with WiFi, you could program it using IFTTT and webCore. In IFTTT, you’d have to have each phone turn on or off a virtual switch, one for each phone. Then in webCore, you would use the virtual switches to trigger the piston and do what you want.

I have tried IFTTT in the past to use the wifi connection capability as a presence sensor and found that it didn’t work as well as I liked. An Android phone will power down wifi and not connect until it has a reason to. So if I arrived home and had not used the phone for a bit, the phone would not connect to the router until I used it for something, defeating the purpose of a touchless presence sensor.

If you use the ST/phone presence sensor capability, then you can do what you want in webCore, with both of the presence sensors being present or away as a trigger. Much cleaner IMO. However, not everyone gets the ST/phone presence sensor capability to work seamlessly. In my case, it does.

[JDRoberts]

Hi, is there a way to make my phone connection to wifi act as a sensor? I saw on the IFTTT that I could use in the if side of things the android device funtion, but what I would like to do is have it do a then when two devices are connected to wifi, not just one and the if statement only lets me do one. Any solutions?

See the FAQ (this is a clickable link)

FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence

Presence, regardless of the device you use, is one of those features that works great for some people, not at all for other people, and is randomly flaky for still others. It’s very much affected by local conditions. So some people will find that phone presence works much better than the SmartThings-branded presence sensor. Other people will find the reverse. Still other people, myself included, find that they have to use a combination of two devices in order to get reliable presence indication. So if this feature tends to work differently for different people, where do you start? Using a Smart Phone as a Presence Indicator [image] Well, since most people who have SmartThings have a smart phone, it’s worth starting there. The following FAQ runs through the the usual troubleshooting…

[TN_Oldman (Don)]

Yes, you can do this. @JDRoberts link has lots of information.

I have this set up in my account. I use several detection methods combined through an app called reliable presence.

You will have to force your Android phone to not turn off WiFi when it sleeps for it to work. I use a key FOB, life360 and when my phone connects.

I also have used Tasker and sharptools to set a virtual presence depending on phone connection and disconnect from WiFi.

You can combine your presence sensors in Webcore or several other methods to control actions in your smarthings environment.

I believe there has been progress in Webcore to create a more reliable presence. I haven’t tried it myself yet. I believe there is also an apple version of detection in Webcore too.

[emma_smith]

I use WiFi for my husband phone as he’s always running out of data so it makes it so unreliable.
What I do is use Web Core to do a http. Get from my routers status page . Then it searches for the Mac address and if there it sets a virtual presence sensor to present and away if not. If I was face any issue with my wifi I always visitNetgear Support team.