Room Presence?

I was just thinking how cool it would be if ST knew what room you were in and would pull that up in the app as your current room in the app. I would imagine you would need to leverage beacons and of course the ST mobile app would have to be coded to support this. This could get quote expensive as well.

What does everyone think about this?

It’s definitely an interesting question! A lot of people would like to see this. :sunglasses:

This concept is generally called microlocation, and it turns out to be very tricky to pull off. Most technologies transmit through walls (including I beacons) , Making it very difficult to define a “room” the way humans do. At least unless you include at least three devices per room, which increases the cost considerably.

And then there’s the issue of what is being detected. If you require the person to carry the phone around with them, you really limit its practicality. Smart watches or other wearables may eventually provide this but again there’s that room and wall issue.

Many experts think that we will get to a point in a few years where we have devices that recognize heartbeats, but we’re not there yet.

There are several companies working on this. Logitech has invested in one, but it still requires you to carry your phone with you. :disappointed_relieved:

There’s been quite a bit of discussion in the forums about various microlocation approaches and technologies, and some really creative ideas . The following thread brings together most of them, so I would start there.

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Thought you might find this interesting.

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I believe this wouldnt be any issue at all if you could set the distance value of the presence sensor might tighter … at the moment my system disarms when I am on top of the road which is like 350m away and that is the closest I can set it … another function that might be crippled as otherwise it might be too unreliable …

What happens when many people are in a room, and your ‘smart’ system tries to handle all the individualized settings? Answer: you then have to ‘prioritize’ every person; you have to say, in your systems, “dad is more important than junior, who is more important than aunt Martha, who is more important than uncle Jeb” etc.

Either that, or aunt Martha’s Heat comes on at the same time as Dads air conditioning as Moms TV as your Alice in Chains Pandora station lol

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Different devices have different ranges and different technologies handle arranged differently. There are many options to get a smaller detection area.

If you are depending on The GPS technology used by phones, then it depends on where the cell towers are, and the range can actually vary a lot just depending on the direction you’re driving from.

Many people use a phone with their own at home Wi-Fi. This is what the onhub does with its IFTTT recipes. Other people have done something similar with smart things and their own Wi-Fi.

I use Ibeacons quite a bit because their detection range can be varied from about 2 inches up to about 15 meters. That works well for my use cases but might not work for someone who wanted their garage door to start opening half a block away.

You can also use the two device sequential detection method to specify range more precisely:

So if the only issue you’re having with your presence is that the area covered is too large, that’s fairly easy to fix now. It doesn’t address the other issues discussed with regard to micro location, though, like room definition, having to carry a device with you, and knowing who is who.