Presence with "WiFi Only" phones

[JDRoberts]

I’m not sure about the new “smartthings (Samsung connect)” app, because it handles presence differently, but as far is “SmartThings things classic”, you can definitely do this, but it’s more work on your part. It doesn’t “just work.” You have to have something which recognizes that your phone has connected to your Wi-Fi and then turns on a virtual presence sensor.

Some routers like one of the Google on hub models can do this automatically, but otherwise you have to do some coding.

See the presence FAQ: there’s discussion of a couple of WiFi methods there.

FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence (2020)

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? 1. 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. This method has changed significantly in the change fro…