I have some automations based on ST Arrival Sensor, one of them for example:
When arrival sensor is not present and the door is open to send me a notification
Now the problem that I face is the fact that when I’m arriving home, the notification is triggered as the arrival sensor appears to be away and after I enter the arrival sensor will switch to arrived, basically the arrival sensor will switch to arrived after I enter in the home
Is there any way to detect outside the door presence sensor, or any other solution?
I have a similiar setup but after testing I selected to use the Life360 integration. Has worked flawlessly for me and detects that i (or anyone in the household) am arriving about 200m before i reach my home.
Yes, your arrival sensors are zigbee, you can extend your zigbee mesh to the edges of your home for faster, more consistent detection. Zigbee outlets are the easyiest option, but hardwired switches will work too. Battery operated devices will not extend your mesh and most zigbee lightbulbs will not either.
As @sidjohn1 has suggested, you may well be able to improve the range of your Zigbee mesh to make the arrival sensors work better for you. I happen to have outlets on the inside surface of my exterior walls and I find the arrival sensors work up to about fifty yards away from my property in the open, and also work from passing buses and inside cars about thirty yards away.
However improving the range may not solve the problem as what counts is how the range interacts with the 20 second (latest sensors) or 30 second (older sensors) intervals at which the sensors attempt to contact the hub.
If you find the sensors are never detected until you are inside then improving the mesh might help. However the bottom line remains that if you find out how far away the sensors can be detected and it doesn’t take more than 20 or 30 seconds to get to the door from there then you arguably have the wrong tool for the job. Any less than that and you can’t rely on being detected on time.
Thank you very much guys for the solutions offered , I will try to improve the mesh, eventually to add the ST hub near the door (as for the moment all my zigbee devices are on batteries) and see how that will work.
IKEA Tradfri bulbs and the plug in pocket socket are both good Zigbee repeaters for smartthings and are quite inexpensive. ( The handheld buttons and remotes have only a partial integration with SmartThings, but the bulbs and the pocket socket work well.)
You can use a bulb inside the house near a clear glass window on the side of the house that you approach from and it will probably help. Or try the pocket socket on the interior side of an exterior wall.
The product description may say they need the IKEA gateway, but you can use the smartthings hub instead.
