I mentioned this in the other post where you made that comment, but just to put it here as well… I use 'em, and I love 'em. When I leave, my garage door closes by itself. When I come home, my door opens, but side door unlocks.
The app has a variable threshold (you set the number of minutes) where you have to be gone before the app fires upon your return. This prevents the problem of the wandering tag opening my garage in the middle of the night.
Honestly, I didn’t original get any tags… didn’t think I’d have a use for them, but I traded with someone else to get his. I love having them in my cars.
Mine fell apart again. Have the rubber thingy and both sides of the case but he guts are nowhere to be found. Oh well, now I don’t have anything to trade.
I should have looked here. I started having the exact same problem. Mine had worked without issue from the beginning but about 3 weeks ago, I noticed one of my presence tags randomly disappearing and reappearing a few minutes later. The both were hanging on the wall about 20 feet from the hub. And it only appears to be impacting one of them. And it is always the same one.
One thing I have noticed is that the battery on the one experiencing the issue is less than 25% now. The other one (non-malfunctioning) is around 75%.
I had to implement some additional controls because I woke up one morning to my garage door being open and the door to my house being unlocked due to this issue. That was pretty unsettling. Now I have everything set so that the presence tags cannot unlock my doors or open my garage door after 10pm.
I also had the same problem with my presence sensors I emailed customer support and they told me to switch my router to channel 11 but it did not work and then to channel 1 and to put the HUB 3 feet away from the router but it’s been a while now and it is working.
@Solardave1, one could argue the entire HA concept is a solution in search of problem that doesn’t exist. In the end it’s mostly about convenience. heck, some things about the system are actually more inconvenient than before. For example, I could adjust the dim level of a light while casually walking by and flipping the slider up or down before…now I have to sit there and hold the button down, or pull out the app. But, I feel them being connected is a fair tradeoff for messy manual control. I love my presence tags, they don’t work 100% of the time but they work well enough that I can see the concept is very valuable.
Having the door unlock, and entry lights come on is a very nifty feature, and one I use multiple times a day, which is more than I can say about many of my other gadgets.
Yes, they have serious build quality issues. A device designed to go on a keychain needs to be put together much tougher than these. Every time I accidently drop my keys the presence tag explodes and I’m scrambling to find the chip before someone steps on it. I notified support, but I’m pretty sure they are already aware of the issue due to some comments I read on kickstarter from one of the earliest backers, before ours had shipped.
Mine has gone missing anyway. I tossed my keys, the case popped open and the guts are nowhere to be found (although the system tells me the presence tag is here somewhere). For all I know, maybe the cat ate it. If it was rugged and reliable I could see the usefulness but if you look at the various posts, its unreliable - people have had their sensors come and go and go and come while they are sleeping. If my lock was tied to a presence sensor that arbitrarily change state, that would be a very bad thing. Functionality aside, the build quality kills it as a useful product. Build quality aside, the “flakiness” kills it as a useful product. It’s a shame because I’ve been a big fan of NFC and its potential in HA - this would have worked better as a BT device coupled with BT->Z-Wave sensors you could put in each room and/or near a door with a Z-Wave lock. The range is too great to do anything really elegant.
So in your opinion if a beta product doesn’t work perfectly 100% of the time it should just be scrapped instead of improved? You do realize you signed up to be a beta tester…right?
BTW: you can probably find your tag using the “beep” feature in the app.
OK, you’re all right. (No, I didn’t realize I was pledging a KS project that was doing delivered to backers as a beta version of anything - I pledged for a product - show me where in the campaign it says "you will be receiving a Beta version of what we eventually hope will be a working product). It was “sold” as a multi protocol device, Z-wave, Bluetooth, Ethernet and in all fairness, maybe cellular. Bluetooth just never happened. @CS tells me at today’s “office hours” they’ve back burnered native Ethernet. ST tells me they have developed support for dropcam and Foscam cameras and then I get a long email from one of their guys at the CeO asked to help me in getting it running basically saying, meh - not really, not yet, eh… So I have a Z-wave cloud based HA controller that periodically arbitrarily unlocks my doors and disables my security system and turns off a bank of ir illuminators because of a flaky presence sensor that falls apart on a daily basis (like spontaneous combustion) But you’re all right - I’m just a negative guy. I’ll shut up from now on.
Are you just generally this negative in life? Lets take this one thing at a time.
ST tells me they have developed support for dropcam and Foscam cameras
They have developed the infrastructure support to provide the ability to use cameras. Whether they have created devices and apps for them is another story.
So I have a Z-wave cloud based HA controller that periodically arbitrarily unlocks my doors and disables my security system and turns off a bank of ir illuminators because of a flaky presence sensor that falls apart on a daily basis (like spontaneous combustion)
I have had my presence tags on my keychains since the beginning and they have not fallen apart. I am sure if you drop them, they might fall apart. I would also say that I think they could be a little more rugged because I did take one apart to see how it was put together. As far as the malfunctions, yes, i would let to see that get resolved. But there are ways to work around that. We shouldn’t have to but no product is perfect out of the gate.
I am curious on whether you have used any other home automation products? I have, and the API, and development options on smartthings is FAR FAR FAR superior to anything else on the market. What other home automation product has half the amount of community developed programs? None, because smartthings while lacking in certain areas, has tried to make things possible for the home user to create stuff for themselves.
I mean something I REALLY want is keypad support on my kwikset locks but you don’t see me trying to poison every thread like a 2 year old as you have over the past two weeks. You are acting like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum as if that will make anything better.
The 1st amendment (which as stated elsewhere doesn’t apply here) allows you to criticize to your hearts content. It also allows others to criticize your criticizing.
The bottom line is, I’m not sure what your point is other then thinking you should be allowed to exercise your 1st amendment rights while others shouldn’t.
Having said that - I tend to agree with your point:)