Set guest virtual presence when ANYONE is connected to my guest WiFi network?

I have my main WiFi network, which all my devices are connected to, then I have my guest network. I’m wondering if there’s a way to tell if any device is connected to the guest network and set SmartThings to a guest mode if so. I’m wanting to do this without having to install software on everyone’s phone (we have multiple different sitters, and I don’t want them to have to deal with intrusion alarms all the time). Is this possible?

Are you using keypads?
The smartapp EchoSistant allows you to create a virtual person device in app, name it babysitter, give it an access code, and when the baby sitter arrives they can type their code in the keypad which can then be used to ruin all kinds of things, including setting a mode.

If you are using Alexa, you can say,

Alexa, tell home the baby sitter has arrived.

They can also check out on the way out. You can configure it to send you texts when they arrived and depart as well.

4 Likes

I would advise against the wifi method as it is fairly easy for Joe Schmo to hack into a wifi network. Additionally most smart phones have power saving features that will shutoff or disconnect from wifi. Perhaps a solution would be a personal code that the baby sitter could send via text to trigger a routene/mode change, I believe there is a thread around here where a community member has similar situation where they gave access to package deliveries using a tracing number as the access code.

I remember there was a thread about this. I have not tried it because my Smartthings presence has been very reliable but it looks like a potential option - or pointer in the right direction:

While this is obviously a concern you should take into consideration, I believe it can be assuaged by carefully limiting the scope of what this event triggers. Obviously having an arbitrary guest present should never disarm security. My intention would only be to automatically transition from Home to Guest mode, wherein lighting automations are modified.

Someone that needs temporary unaccompanied access should have something like a dedicated keypad entry, but this seems like a good way to keep my motion-lights from turning off when I’m sitting by the fireplace in the living room with guests.

Here’s a similar script that could be modified for this purpose fr dd-wrt; it should be fairly easy to change it from checking for known MACs to checking for anything but known MACs.

https://community.smartthings.com/t/presence-detection-using-dd-wrt-router-script/13731