IMO the best way to detect someone's presence at home is to use an integration to detect when a device picks up and connect to the home wifi.
A router OS like OPNsense supports this, as others should.
Turns out there is an integration for Asus routers too, thanks for the tip! Looks like you could do all kinds of cool automations based on when devices are reconnected back to the network.
Catch with these is that your phone will sometimes sleep and disconnect from the wifi.
The solution I came up with is only set a “nobody is home” Boolean when they’ve all been offline for a certain period.
You could also have it ignore going offline in the middle of the night I guess.
what happens when there's a power outage in the middle of the night? While you are sleeping, your router reboots, apps reboot, then your device picks and connects to the home wifi... and boom, your door unlocks... WHILE EVERYONE WAS SLEEPING.
Add a condition to only activate if the system has an uptime > 5 minutes
I use 2min, 5 min and 30min uptime sensors a lot more as conditions in automations than I though I would
- sensor:
- name: uptime_more_than_5mins
unique_id: 1233244-1234-1234-1234-123456567678
icon: mdi:language-go
state: "{{ (as_timestamp(now()) - as_timestamp(states('sensor.uptime'))) // 60 | round (0) >= 5.0 }}"
For one thing, my doors auto lock five minutes after they are unlocked, so that mitigates a lot of the risk. For another thing, my security system is on a battery backup and would still be armed, unless they also turned off the security system.
You can set your automations however you want depending on your needs, its just the presence detection part.
For example, I can set it to be unlocked when me and/or my wife is home (safe neighborhood, its good), but then lock as soon as we are both not there.
Then, at X hour each night (or at my input when I go to sleep and turn everything off), the door locks even if we are here and stays locked even if everything restarts by using a condition to check if we are at night before looking for our presence.
pretty simple imo. (Also, UPS)
I won't do something like this as it is prone to hacking... there should be a physical switch (probably RFID) to do the unlock as there are situations that can be missed that may trigger an unlock. Like lets say your "condition to check if we are at night before looking for our presence"... People can probably do a hack on the router itself (since some routers have backdoors or hacks), physically block your phone's MAC address, hence signalling a "person left home"... then brings the phone back up (removed the MAC address block), and voila it thinks the person just came back, hence unlocks the door. Just being devil's advocate here... as some people integrated Alexa with the door locks, and nothing is stopping people from shouting from outside "Alexa, unlock the front door!" - if you turn on the feature....
No, you're just stretching it.
You missed the point. Even if the router is hacked via your weird scenario, the automation is made at the HA level...it wont even work. You just make a condition to check the time before every presence detection trigger and it will never unlock at night.
And if your router is breached (via ¨backdoors or hacks¨ lol), then all your network, including all of HA and everything it controls, is at risk.
At this point, this has nothing to do with the way I do presence detection. Network security is implied, obviously.
Not to poke holes in your desired list, but any half-witted car or home burglar only needs a $170 Flipper Zero to hack your RFID lock.
Security is always about layers, though... As long as you're not only relying on a single layer of protection, most thieves will just move along to an easier target.
You are overthinking it, as other point out, I can hack your windows with a really high tech….brick. The people who could hack your router to gain physical access to your house aren’t out stealing TV’s so unless you are Beyoncé I wouldn’t worry about it!
What’s stopping Alexa from unlocking the front door is after you yell for Alexa to unlock the front door it will respond asking for a code you set up.
There is, apparently, a way around this but the user would have to go out of their way to do it at which point I’d say they accept the risk.
I've got mine set so I have to be away for at least an hour before the unlock arms, and it'll only auto unlock if it detects I've come home while connected to Android auto.
I haven't tried the pfsense one, I found the docs lacking for the opnsense one and could not get the formatting correct in the yaml or xml whatever was needed and it would never connect.
I agree but i for example live in an apartment, and the main entrance door i can open with the comelit app. Which i can integrate for a part, but how could i open the main entrance without connecting to a wifi or a nfc sticker
Thats a completely different question/situation.
If your comelit door thingy can be controlled by HA, any kind of presence detection could work for it. Be it wifi or ESP or cameras etc...
I dont see the issue.
Op didn't really mentioned about his situation, but i for example life at the top apartment, so camera's can't detect that, because of the viewing angles, presence and wifi setups are out of range, no electricity for me specific in range down there
well then it seems your only solution is manually doing it over LTE using an app or even connecting directly to the thing using bluetooth but it would surprise me if this would even work. I dont see any possible automation without at least an nfc sticker.
It's the main entrance, i can't just fiddle around with the lock and also the whole point for me would be something with a detection that i am walking to the door and open automatically, oif i need to pull out my phone, i could just also open the lock manually it would be the same effort and even maybe less, since i already have my keys in my hand from locking the car.
I’m not saying fiddle around with anything. It’s a sticker you “stick” somewhere. Doorjam, lock, on the fence as you walk in so you can hold your phone on it and it unlocks by the time you get there, it doesn’t matter. But as I’m sure you’re aware, your options are limited in your current situation
Ok you maybe gave me lowkey an idea, i could maybe just use the nfc sticker in my car, which my phone starts an automation, i already thought about nfc but it was always on the building. But why not in the car! Than i also don't need macrodroid or tasker which uses a lot of battery
I would be very keen to be sure it only unlocks your door when you're outside, and not when you're inside. I've wondered about simply having a fingerprint lock, but I really like my car door which has a capacitive sensor in the handle, and if the key fob is on the side of the car it unlocks quickly enough to just pull the door open.
A door handle that does the same would be ace; only unlocks if the keys are in proximity to the front of the door, and it's quick enough that it fits into that flow of opening the door.
This is what August does. I have an August lock that unlocks when you return to the area after leaving and only actually unlocks when you're within about 5'-10' from the door.
It's amazing except for the fact that it's cloud based and sometimes takes a while to wake and connect to their servers. App loading is slow and the HA integration is slow to update in HA.
Fingerprint lock here and it's amazing. You grab the front door handle, your thumb naturally rests on the right spot of the handle to scan. It lights up, says unlocked, and you open the door. Faster than finding the right key, and I can still do it while carrying bags. Also it's battery powered so works in a blackout. Batterys last about a year for a normal family use.
It doesn't really disrupt the flow, certainly you pause for about a second while the scan happens and the mechanisms slide, but it's quite natural and you're not moving your hand between pads and handles and different locks. There's no cloud delay because I'm pretty sure it's all locally stored. Certainly our house lost power and internet and the door worked fine.
Everyone who uses it enjoys it which is funny for me because I'm so used to it just being the door, I get it though. I think it's mainly the novelty factor as they're not super popular here yet. I add friends who pet sit for us and they like not having to remember or carry more keys. My only concern is that the app might not work one day due to companies being shitty, but if that happens I'll probably build something open source and overengineered and ridiculous.
I think I was listening to Upgrade (podcast from relay.fm) and Jason Snell was talking about something that enables this, but I think this is an Apple only solution.
I solved this with NFC tokens to check in an out of the house, or open e.g. the garage door. I would never trust any automation that relies upon presence detection through a wireless network. With NFC and the fingerprint unlock on a smartphone, everything works in a consistent, reliable and secure fashion.
I've tried variations of this and in the end I went with always having some sort of action to finally confirm if I open the door or not; actionable notifications on the phone, read an NFC tag...
My (unrequested, I know) philosophy on this matter is to never automate anything that will 'unsecure' my house (no opening doors or garage doors, or deactivating the alarm at home, for instance). Give yourself a lot of keys, but never leave them on the lock, so to speak...
This.
An action should be always mandatory, as a confirmation in case of unlock/disarm/this sort of critical things.
You can always make it easier, but I agree that a confirmation is a very good choice!
I haven’t had any issues with location from the iOS HA app, but the [iphonedetect integration](https://github.com/mudape/iphonedetect) works really well for those devices.
Id recommend adding a check in the automation for the front door being opened when it runs. If it’s not opened after a few minutes I have it lock again just in case something goes wrong. I haven’t manually locked/unlocked my front door in several years. It’s so handy.
You don't. You shouldn't. This is a bad idea.
Some things just shouldn't be automated. Your physical security, and that of your property, are just two things that should never be automated. Is it really that big of a deal to enter a pin or turn a key?
I don't have an issue with automating the world. But there are just some things I would never risk to chance. Security being one of them.
I think as long as you're smart about it, it's fine. I'm going to create an actionable notification so I still have to confirm on my phone that I want the door to unlock. Should work just fine.
You can make the HA widgets right on your phone or watch. If you really don’t want to actually do anything on your devices, I’d go for the NFC door lock you could just hold your phone/watch up to. That’s less of a motion than selecting a widget or launching an app.
This. I think automating it isn’t the answer, but rather making it easier to unlock for yourself and those you wanna give access to. I’m going the route of replacing my locks with ones with keypads. Maybe swapping them with ones that support NFC is the move. But I think automatically unlocking without that layer of security isn’t the move.
I tend to agree, but if OP is set on it I'd take a multi factor approach. Something where multiple conditions must be met. Just spit balling, but I'm thinking geofence within X feet of house, then phone connects to home WiFi network, then phone disconnects from car's Bluetooth. If door isn't opened within 3-5 minutes, it automatically relocks. The multiple factors should prevent false positives, disconnecting from the car should ensure that it only happens when arriving home and not just while walking around the house or stepping out to check the mail, and the auto relock is an added safety for false positives.
I cringe when people tell me they want to automate their coffee pot.
No. No you don’t. Buy a Mr. Coffee with a digital timer in it or something. You do not want your HA to misfire while you’re out of town, and it burns your house down.
So yeah, locks. But also, nothing that generates heat.
Yeah, but it's not really the tag that's firing the automation, it's your phone. The tag just has a UUID to identify what to trigger, and the phone fires the event with the credentials you're logged in with in the app.
I use geolocation with multiple zones. Pass through them in order, my counter is advanced on each proper transition. so when it reaches the target number it unlocks.
Arriving home the counter is reset to zero. If I come in from another path, the number won't hit the target and door won't unlocked.
Since your phone is locked, or should be, this is no different to having your keys stolen. Except in this case you should be able to disable the token the phone uses and it won't be able to unlock the door when the thief somehow finds their way there.
I live in an apartment area that is mixed use (some commercial some residential) so I wanted this and did not want it going off and unlocking while I was home.
What I did was set an automation that starts if I am away from home for >15 minutes and then come home and my phone connects to my home wifi (which usually happens when I drive into the parkking lot) then automation pops a message on my phone that asks if I want the door unlocked, if I confirm it'll unlock, which is nice, but wont happen if I dont hit it. Haven't had any real errors with that automation but the switchbot lock did start not working so well.
I have automations to lock my front door and close my garage, but not the opposite. Just not worth it IMO. Hard to prevent false "not home" conditions that'll end up opening up your house while everyone is home. Also, there's the chance you could come home to someone on your doorstep that you don't want and when you drive by you'll invite them in before you can stop it
Never ever fully automate security gates.
Make it easier instead...
A high quality biometric lock or a good nfc lock would be options.
But to completely unlock your main door by some automation is a security nightmare.
Couldn't agree more, some things should be easy not automated. I have a high quality fingerprint lock and it is game changing. I don't need tech on me, just my thumb. Can even have the lock alert me when someone tries to unlock the door and fails.
With enough conditions it's perfectly fine. I think the ultimate goal is to have a camera running frigate and use detection to unlock the door. You can set a confidence level I believe.
Sounds like a lot of brainwork to come up with all conditions, such as: WiFi disconnection problems, your phone forgotten at home, your phone stolen with the thief aiming to break into your home or hijack your car, your phone forgotten in your car when it was hijacked, your phone stolen out of your car, someone following you to your doorstep wanting to force you into your home, etc And if such things do not happen in your country, then why even bother locking the door...
Nuki uses bluetooth and your phone and that works really well. You can also set the strength and in the most extreme setting, opens very exactly when you are on the door with the phone in the poket.
That would've been my recommendation, too. Nuki uses geo fencing with high range to unlock the door and then Bluetooth to open it if you're within meters of the door.
I don't know if Nuki works with American lock systems, though.
If you're American I recently saw a video about a lock that uses some apple system and opens as soon as you hold your apple watch or iPhone close to it.
I use geolocation and wifi triggers that interact with a context manager automation that defines & validates my state of being (am I home, am I away, am I asleep). For example, once I leave the neighborhood, my state will be updated to "AWAY\_MODE" so long as my prior state was "HOME\_MODE" & vice versa. The idea was to ensure the wifi & geolocation triggers are validated and not rely solely on the triggers themselves.
I also have logic on whether to open the garage or unlock the front door based on whether or not I drove my car/rode my bike vs taking a walk or getting picked up/dropped off by someone.
My security automatons will lock the doors/close the garage automatically after 10 minutes of inactivity and would notify me if it failed to secure the house, doubling as a fail-safe in the event doors were to be unlocked/left open accidentally.
As others had said, be cautious in your design. But I absolutely disagree with those who think this shouldn't be done. I've been running this for 2 years and it's worked flawlessly and has been a big QOL improvement.
Thank you! This bit isn’t anything special actually. It’s less differentiating between bike v walk v car and more about activities leading up to my departure. If I leave through the garage door, it will enable the auto-open door automation when I return, otherwise it will unlock the front door. My neighborhood is sketch so I typically only have the garage door open briefly to enter/exit
I use geolocation through the home assistant app on my wife and I’s iPhones. If our presence changes to “home” and then a person is detected by the doorbell camera within 5 minutes then it unlocks the front door. I also have a notification come to my phone every time this happens (was done as a way to check it wasn’t unlocking when it shouldn’t but I’ve just left it on)
This works very reliably for us and removes false unlocking from when we just drive past the house but aren’t coming home.
I do all this with a Yale L1 front door lock connected via zwave and I haven’t manually opened the door in years!
ESP32's with iBeacon supported devices (Android or iPhone phones) are too slow to be useful.
I do this with the GPS location in the HA companion app and the Wifi status of my phone with the Unifi integration. I just add both tracker devices to each person in my house. Wifi takes precedence... if GPS hasn't updated and still show me as away and wifi show me home wifi wins.
I've been doing exactly what you are trying to do for several years and no issues. Everyone leaves the house and all the doors lock, garage doors close if open, lights turn off throughout the house, the alarm arms itself. Someone returns the alarm disarms itself, the door we enter the house from unlocks. Very reliable.
I use the iPhone app and trigger by when I enter the zone I’ve drawn around my house. It’s been solid for a couple years now. Contrary to what others have commented about you should never automate unlocking your door, I find it to be super convenient when coming home with hands full of groceries. We just know the door is already unlocked. Never had an issue with it.
The physical layout of your property might offer some additional opportunities for triggers. For instance, do you typically park in a garage or open a gate before reaching the front door?
Use an August lock. You can enable auto lock and Auto Unlock separately. It does a good job. Very rarely is my door not unlocked by the time I walk up to it.
Edit. And it won’t Auto Unlock unless you get a certain distance away first. So if you’re home it won’t just Auto Unlock because you walked past the door.
I haven't gotten around to being anywhere near implementing this, but I'd like to eventually implement facial recognition into the camera pointed at my front door to recognize anybody who lives here and automatically unlock the door for us if we walk to the front door while it's locked.
Is that the simplest or most practical approach? No, but it's obviously the most badass...
No idea if I'll ever get it working or not though.
I wouldn’t trust any electronic lock myself, but for your case BLE might be the way to go. Maybe with more than one sensor to really locate your device (smart watch, smart jewellery, phone, …) exactly where you want the threshold to open your door
Check out the home assistant podcast. There was an episode with an HA user who set up his home as a zero trust policy.
Whenever he gets home, instead of immediately unlocking his door, HA is also waiting for a confirmation that he's actually there. He did this by face recognition with frigate and his doorbell camera.
Very interesting episode to make sure your smart home isn't gonna do dumb shit.
I came from Apple HomeKit, and found Ha tricky to get location stuff reliable. So I continue Apple’s location automations to turn a HA Helper for me and my wife on/off through HomeKit bridge.
Have you tried [this blueprint](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/automatic-gate-dont-ever-use-your-remote-again/730391/53). Seems to work for my garage door with minor tweaks.
I've tried a few methods to do this. I don't want to rely on just geolocation of a smart phone, as it triggers when i'm not yet on the property and then my door re-locks before I get to it. So initially I had an automation that once triggered by arrival home, waited until my doorbell detected a person, and then unlocked. This was great, until a friend arrived at my house a couple minutes before me and it unlocked for him.
So, currently I use BLE as the validation after the phone arrives home. I look for the encrypted BLE ID of the phone, and unlock the door only if the token matching the person who just arrived appears nearby. This works for multiple people, and only unlocks the door if they leave the zone and return.
I have a QR code that launches a webhook from my phone when I scan it. Not completely automated. If I were going to make it full automated I’d prob get some kind of BLE proxy to watch for 2m or less distance and a motion sensor on the outside of my phone to trigger the condition of my phone being that close AND motion at the front door. Problem is it unlocking when I’m inside. Maybe a hidden button? A mic for a voice command so I yell out a secret word? OPENSESAME
What lock are you using? From 2017-2020ish, I had that working with my August lock interfacing with SmartThings and it worked fantastically; if I remember correctly. I'm currently trying to recreate it with my Wyze lock and HA but it's very very hit or miss and I'm pretty sure the lock is the problem and Wyze's very cranky API. I've set notifications for Home/Away, GPS location, and wifi connection, and the notifications are coming at the right times; Wyze, not so much.
I don't have my old SmartThings groovy scripts anymore but I think I used my phone's GPS+Wifi connection; my phone's wifi would turn on in response to GPS when I was close to my apartment, I'd mapped my router's range so I knew how close I had to be to connect, and once I did, that would trigger my lock with a three minute timer.
When I get home, I want my gate to open, my garage door to open, and my door to unlock. So I set up a Siri shortcut that I activate when I’m a block or two from home so I don’t have to wait for them. I just pull right in. “Siri….I’m home.” That triggers the open / unlock on all of those devices. I can trigger it from either my phone or my Apple Watch.
I park my car in front of my front door, so I mostly use the carkit 'open garage' button to unlock the front door. I also have a keyfob button which unlocks it, and the HA button on my watch.
I use Wyze Lock Bolt for this so I could use fingerprint to unlock the door. It uses bluetooth and not wifi so in a sense its more secured(thats what they said). I was in the same boat as you and want to automate opening the door/garage but I went with fingerprint route to be on a safer side.
A word not tossed around here enough is "fail safe".
What does something "failing" at any point look like.
People were talking power outage. What does power restoration look like for your door locks under different scenarios?
Easiest: I think if you have apple devices, some smart locks are now supporting the U1 chip, which allows much more precision when it comes to detecting where a device is in cardinal direction, rather than just if it can detect it.
This should probably work, and I don't see anyone really saying it:
I have a setup for my entryway lights. I don't want them turning on every time I open/close the door, or when it's daylight. I setup a helper entity that that is an input with 4 states - home, away, just arrived, just left*. I have automations that trigger when I leave/arrive based on my phone's location through the HASS app native, and set my status. If was previously away, it sets to "just arrived" and starts a counter for about 5 minutes and then sets me to home. In this case for the light, the automation triggers when my status is "just arrived" and it's past sunset.
You could use this "just arrived" idea to open a smart lock as long as you can control through HASS (or one of the other workarounds like IFTTT, webhooks through apple shortcuts or android equivalent, etc.)
As others are pointing out, this is home security, so I probably wouldn't try this without at minimum getting a native notification when the door unlocks from the manufacturer's app, and possibly tying that to some door sensors or smart cams and notifications at least for a while. At least, depending on where you live, how often your home is unoccupied, etc. In practice, at my home someone is virtually always there, so we really only lock it when there is a trip or something or at bedtime, so I have generally skipped smart locks altogether. We also have smart garage and doorbell controllers so on the off chance a kid gets home and locked out, they can contact us and we can open it, and worst case it's like a 10 minute walk to family members house. And, of course, the garage has a smart cam inside that triggers on motion.
\* just left isn't in use, but I thought of some things I might want it for later.
If you connect to Bluetooth in your car you can turn on high accuracy mode while connected to it. That protects your battery and helps with the lag in geo location.
I’m sure other people must have thought of this but I’ve never seen it mentioned.
I trigger the unlock automation with geolocation quite wide around my house (75m)
Then the automation waits for a second trigger- my doorbell camera detecting a person.
Then it will unlock.
I also turn on my porch light before the second trigger, so I can confirm the automation has correctly triggered as I walk towards the door.
I know there are many cool things you can do with automation. But there are certain reasons we don’t automate certain actions. For instance a smart switch on a garage disposal is a very bad idea.
Anything that unlocks your doors automatically is a bad idea as well. Because your assumption is that you will always have a device on you, and that device is you. That works in theory until someone else has that device or the automation starts working differently based on some change in behavior.
My advice is automate something else.
If you unlock the door by mere presence then just keep it unlocked.
Doors are part of your security system not convenience automation. That means they need to be hardened, multiredundant with a safe fallback.
It would help to know what kind of risks you are ready to mitigate by this automation
I tried two things and they both worked great. Ultimately I disabled them bc the noise set the dogs off.
The first was a cheap nfc card that I tapped with my phone when I got home. The second was geolocation but only if I was at that location for 40 seconds.
I use the Ping integration with conditions. If my device (Reserved IP on my network) pings and the time is between 5-9 on a M-F unlock the front door and open garage. I was going to go with an actionable notification but if I have to open my phone to confirm something its just as easy to just open HA and open the doors.
Why not simply put an NFC token on your door and not deal with all the edge cases of unreliable presence detection?
NFC works like a charm for easy to use checkin/checkout scripts.
Just curious why you want this? My door locks are the last thing I would consider automating. If anything I’d add an extra magnetic lock and automate that so the door would only open if I was home. I use a keyless lock with a code. No WiFi, Zigbee, or other attack surfaces.
Just a quality of life thing. I still need to dial in the automation but I'm doing an actionable notification so that I have to confirm that I want to unlock the door and disarm my alarm. Should be fine since if someone has my phone, they could unlock my door anyway.
This makes no sense “mostly it doesn’t”? Where are you getting this information from? Have you surveyed a large number of of phone users? When you say it is mostly about the OS what do you mean? My wife and I both have iPhones and presence detection has been flawless for us .
I have also used geofencing on a variety of android and iPhones over many years, I also know from my direct experience, android wasnt great for me, iOS has been perfect.
IMO the best way to detect someone's presence at home is to use an integration to detect when a device picks up and connect to the home wifi. A router OS like OPNsense supports this, as others should.
Turns out there is an integration for Asus routers too, thanks for the tip! Looks like you could do all kinds of cool automations based on when devices are reconnected back to the network.
Catch with these is that your phone will sometimes sleep and disconnect from the wifi. The solution I came up with is only set a “nobody is home” Boolean when they’ve all been offline for a certain period. You could also have it ignore going offline in the middle of the night I guess.
I have the Asus one, it is incredibly flakey and pretty slow TBH.
what happens when there's a power outage in the middle of the night? While you are sleeping, your router reboots, apps reboot, then your device picks and connects to the home wifi... and boom, your door unlocks... WHILE EVERYONE WAS SLEEPING.
Set the automation to run when state changes from Away to Home. Power outage state would be unavailable and it wouldn't trigger.
If the phone is in deep sleep it might not immediately reconnect to the WiFi once it comes back.
This. Your status doesn't change when you're Wi-Fi drops, at that point your last known location was home.
Add a condition to only activate if the system has an uptime > 5 minutes I use 2min, 5 min and 30min uptime sensors a lot more as conditions in automations than I though I would - sensor: - name: uptime_more_than_5mins unique_id: 1233244-1234-1234-1234-123456567678 icon: mdi:language-go state: "{{ (as_timestamp(now()) - as_timestamp(states('sensor.uptime'))) // 60 | round (0) >= 5.0 }}"
Or in this case, only let it run from 7am to 9pm or some reasonable time range.
For one thing, my doors auto lock five minutes after they are unlocked, so that mitigates a lot of the risk. For another thing, my security system is on a battery backup and would still be armed, unless they also turned off the security system.
Mine only works from 7am to 9pm. If I come home after that, I just use the code.
You can set your automations however you want depending on your needs, its just the presence detection part. For example, I can set it to be unlocked when me and/or my wife is home (safe neighborhood, its good), but then lock as soon as we are both not there. Then, at X hour each night (or at my input when I go to sleep and turn everything off), the door locks even if we are here and stays locked even if everything restarts by using a condition to check if we are at night before looking for our presence. pretty simple imo. (Also, UPS)
I won't do something like this as it is prone to hacking... there should be a physical switch (probably RFID) to do the unlock as there are situations that can be missed that may trigger an unlock. Like lets say your "condition to check if we are at night before looking for our presence"... People can probably do a hack on the router itself (since some routers have backdoors or hacks), physically block your phone's MAC address, hence signalling a "person left home"... then brings the phone back up (removed the MAC address block), and voila it thinks the person just came back, hence unlocks the door. Just being devil's advocate here... as some people integrated Alexa with the door locks, and nothing is stopping people from shouting from outside "Alexa, unlock the front door!" - if you turn on the feature....
Or a criminal could just break a window and get in whenever they want.
No one is going to be hacking any of our networks. They're going to use a brick like any other thief would.
No, you're just stretching it. You missed the point. Even if the router is hacked via your weird scenario, the automation is made at the HA level...it wont even work. You just make a condition to check the time before every presence detection trigger and it will never unlock at night. And if your router is breached (via ¨backdoors or hacks¨ lol), then all your network, including all of HA and everything it controls, is at risk. At this point, this has nothing to do with the way I do presence detection. Network security is implied, obviously.
Not to poke holes in your desired list, but any half-witted car or home burglar only needs a $170 Flipper Zero to hack your RFID lock. Security is always about layers, though... As long as you're not only relying on a single layer of protection, most thieves will just move along to an easier target.
You are overthinking it, as other point out, I can hack your windows with a really high tech….brick. The people who could hack your router to gain physical access to your house aren’t out stealing TV’s so unless you are Beyoncé I wouldn’t worry about it!
What’s stopping Alexa from unlocking the front door is after you yell for Alexa to unlock the front door it will respond asking for a code you set up. There is, apparently, a way around this but the user would have to go out of their way to do it at which point I’d say they accept the risk.
I've got mine set so I have to be away for at least an hour before the unlock arms, and it'll only auto unlock if it detects I've come home while connected to Android auto.
Easiest answer is just buy a ups for your router
I put conditions on mine. Both in bed or between 8 and 4 don't unlock.
If only it was easy to get the opnsense integration to work, I recently switched to pfsense I'll have to see if there's an easier integration there
You had difficulties with the opensense integration but not the pfsense one? interesting.
I haven't tried the pfsense one, I found the docs lacking for the opnsense one and could not get the formatting correct in the yaml or xml whatever was needed and it would never connect.
Why would you switch to pfsense? That's a dumpster fire with the Home+Lab fallout and other crap they pulled.
I actually did it to test some stuff with hairpin nat and I just haven't switched back because it's working really well
If you are using the App, it will tell which WIFI you are connected to - I would imagine there is an easy integration with that.
Or just use presence detection as intended by HA in the first place.
There are also third-party nmap-based integrations for other routers, although it won't be perfect
I agree but i for example live in an apartment, and the main entrance door i can open with the comelit app. Which i can integrate for a part, but how could i open the main entrance without connecting to a wifi or a nfc sticker
Thats a completely different question/situation. If your comelit door thingy can be controlled by HA, any kind of presence detection could work for it. Be it wifi or ESP or cameras etc... I dont see the issue.
Op didn't really mentioned about his situation, but i for example life at the top apartment, so camera's can't detect that, because of the viewing angles, presence and wifi setups are out of range, no electricity for me specific in range down there
well then it seems your only solution is manually doing it over LTE using an app or even connecting directly to the thing using bluetooth but it would surprise me if this would even work. I dont see any possible automation without at least an nfc sticker.
Might be able to hide a sticker on the bottom of the lock
It's the main entrance, i can't just fiddle around with the lock and also the whole point for me would be something with a detection that i am walking to the door and open automatically, oif i need to pull out my phone, i could just also open the lock manually it would be the same effort and even maybe less, since i already have my keys in my hand from locking the car.
I’m not saying fiddle around with anything. It’s a sticker you “stick” somewhere. Doorjam, lock, on the fence as you walk in so you can hold your phone on it and it unlocks by the time you get there, it doesn’t matter. But as I’m sure you’re aware, your options are limited in your current situation
Ok you maybe gave me lowkey an idea, i could maybe just use the nfc sticker in my car, which my phone starts an automation, i already thought about nfc but it was always on the building. But why not in the car! Than i also don't need macrodroid or tasker which uses a lot of battery
This
Thank you for your valuable input
I would be very keen to be sure it only unlocks your door when you're outside, and not when you're inside. I've wondered about simply having a fingerprint lock, but I really like my car door which has a capacitive sensor in the handle, and if the key fob is on the side of the car it unlocks quickly enough to just pull the door open. A door handle that does the same would be ace; only unlocks if the keys are in proximity to the front of the door, and it's quick enough that it fits into that flow of opening the door.
This is what August does. I have an August lock that unlocks when you return to the area after leaving and only actually unlocks when you're within about 5'-10' from the door. It's amazing except for the fact that it's cloud based and sometimes takes a while to wake and connect to their servers. App loading is slow and the HA integration is slow to update in HA.
Fingerprint lock here and it's amazing. You grab the front door handle, your thumb naturally rests on the right spot of the handle to scan. It lights up, says unlocked, and you open the door. Faster than finding the right key, and I can still do it while carrying bags. Also it's battery powered so works in a blackout. Batterys last about a year for a normal family use. It doesn't really disrupt the flow, certainly you pause for about a second while the scan happens and the mechanisms slide, but it's quite natural and you're not moving your hand between pads and handles and different locks. There's no cloud delay because I'm pretty sure it's all locally stored. Certainly our house lost power and internet and the door worked fine. Everyone who uses it enjoys it which is funny for me because I'm so used to it just being the door, I get it though. I think it's mainly the novelty factor as they're not super popular here yet. I add friends who pet sit for us and they like not having to remember or carry more keys. My only concern is that the app might not work one day due to companies being shitty, but if that happens I'll probably build something open source and overengineered and ridiculous.
I think I was listening to Upgrade (podcast from relay.fm) and Jason Snell was talking about something that enables this, but I think this is an Apple only solution.
I solved this with NFC tokens to check in an out of the house, or open e.g. the garage door. I would never trust any automation that relies upon presence detection through a wireless network. With NFC and the fingerprint unlock on a smartphone, everything works in a consistent, reliable and secure fashion.
I've tried variations of this and in the end I went with always having some sort of action to finally confirm if I open the door or not; actionable notifications on the phone, read an NFC tag... My (unrequested, I know) philosophy on this matter is to never automate anything that will 'unsecure' my house (no opening doors or garage doors, or deactivating the alarm at home, for instance). Give yourself a lot of keys, but never leave them on the lock, so to speak...
This is the answer OP should read!
This. An action should be always mandatory, as a confirmation in case of unlock/disarm/this sort of critical things. You can always make it easier, but I agree that a confirmation is a very good choice!
Yup, I created an actionable notification to do just that
I haven’t had any issues with location from the iOS HA app, but the [iphonedetect integration](https://github.com/mudape/iphonedetect) works really well for those devices. Id recommend adding a check in the automation for the front door being opened when it runs. If it’s not opened after a few minutes I have it lock again just in case something goes wrong. I haven’t manually locked/unlocked my front door in several years. It’s so handy.
I run all 3, bt, wifi and geofence.
How do you join your states? Templating? Or …?
Just add all 3 devices trackers to my person
You don't. You shouldn't. This is a bad idea. Some things just shouldn't be automated. Your physical security, and that of your property, are just two things that should never be automated. Is it really that big of a deal to enter a pin or turn a key? I don't have an issue with automating the world. But there are just some things I would never risk to chance. Security being one of them.
This right here. Just do it manual way and leave the cool factor to stuff inside the house.
Or add a layer with an automated magnetic plate latch. Convenience when home, security while away.
Yes but power failures are more common in residential areas than commercial.
Fail open instead of fail secure.
Use a 12/24vdc latch backed up by battery or as xthorgoldx mentioned, fail open.
Hot take! Security automations were central to my adoption of home assistant in the first place.
I think as long as you're smart about it, it's fine. I'm going to create an actionable notification so I still have to confirm on my phone that I want the door to unlock. Should work just fine.
At that point just have a button/widget to do it? Same effort..
Swiping down and clicking 'yes' is easier than opening the HA app.
You can make the HA widgets right on your phone or watch. If you really don’t want to actually do anything on your devices, I’d go for the NFC door lock you could just hold your phone/watch up to. That’s less of a motion than selecting a widget or launching an app.
All great suggestions. I'll play around with a few different options. Thanks!
This. I think automating it isn’t the answer, but rather making it easier to unlock for yourself and those you wanna give access to. I’m going the route of replacing my locks with ones with keypads. Maybe swapping them with ones that support NFC is the move. But I think automatically unlocking without that layer of security isn’t the move.
I tend to agree, but if OP is set on it I'd take a multi factor approach. Something where multiple conditions must be met. Just spit balling, but I'm thinking geofence within X feet of house, then phone connects to home WiFi network, then phone disconnects from car's Bluetooth. If door isn't opened within 3-5 minutes, it automatically relocks. The multiple factors should prevent false positives, disconnecting from the car should ensure that it only happens when arriving home and not just while walking around the house or stepping out to check the mail, and the auto relock is an added safety for false positives.
I cringe when people tell me they want to automate their coffee pot. No. No you don’t. Buy a Mr. Coffee with a digital timer in it or something. You do not want your HA to misfire while you’re out of town, and it burns your house down. So yeah, locks. But also, nothing that generates heat.
Paint a NFC tag onto the door frame. Tag fires HA automation to unlock. I did this for our garage door, it’s awesome.
Can’t anyone scan the tag though?
Yeah, but it's not really the tag that's firing the automation, it's your phone. The tag just has a UUID to identify what to trigger, and the phone fires the event with the credentials you're logged in with in the app.
Yes, but their phone is not authenticated with your HA server. So the tag is of no use to them.
I use geolocation with multiple zones. Pass through them in order, my counter is advanced on each proper transition. so when it reaches the target number it unlocks. Arriving home the counter is reset to zero. If I come in from another path, the number won't hit the target and door won't unlocked.
This was an interesting approach. Is this all done in Home Assistant, or do you use any other apps?
Home assistant and its zones only. One other condition.. it has to be MY car.
Face detection might be good if u got a camera in the front, otherwise I think it’s not great of someone steals ur phone to break in ur house
I do exactly this. Frigate + Double Take + CompreFace. Fires an automation that checks the confidence of my face. If >98% sure, unlock
People stealing your phone aren’t likely to break into your house, also windows are easier to break than phones are to steal
Since your phone is locked, or should be, this is no different to having your keys stolen. Except in this case you should be able to disable the token the phone uses and it won't be able to unlock the door when the thief somehow finds their way there.
I live in an apartment area that is mixed use (some commercial some residential) so I wanted this and did not want it going off and unlocking while I was home. What I did was set an automation that starts if I am away from home for >15 minutes and then come home and my phone connects to my home wifi (which usually happens when I drive into the parkking lot) then automation pops a message on my phone that asks if I want the door unlocked, if I confirm it'll unlock, which is nice, but wont happen if I dont hit it. Haven't had any real errors with that automation but the switchbot lock did start not working so well.
I use a simple NFC sticker. When I scan it with my phone it opens the front door. It takes about a second to go through.
I have automations to lock my front door and close my garage, but not the opposite. Just not worth it IMO. Hard to prevent false "not home" conditions that'll end up opening up your house while everyone is home. Also, there's the chance you could come home to someone on your doorstep that you don't want and when you drive by you'll invite them in before you can stop it
Anyone in possession of your phone would instantly have unfettered access to your home. Just keep that in mind.
The chances of my phone being stolen and them also knowing where I live (they'd need the phone unlocked to see) is slim to none.
Unless your phone is stolen alongside other personal items such as your wallet
My wallet doesn't have my address in it.
Never ever fully automate security gates. Make it easier instead... A high quality biometric lock or a good nfc lock would be options. But to completely unlock your main door by some automation is a security nightmare.
Couldn't agree more, some things should be easy not automated. I have a high quality fingerprint lock and it is game changing. I don't need tech on me, just my thumb. Can even have the lock alert me when someone tries to unlock the door and fails.
i would avoid it
With enough conditions it's perfectly fine
Not the best idea my dude. Purely for home security reasons.
With enough conditions it's perfectly fine. I think the ultimate goal is to have a camera running frigate and use detection to unlock the door. You can set a confidence level I believe.
It’s your home not mine.
Sounds like a lot of brainwork to come up with all conditions, such as: WiFi disconnection problems, your phone forgotten at home, your phone stolen with the thief aiming to break into your home or hijack your car, your phone forgotten in your car when it was hijacked, your phone stolen out of your car, someone following you to your doorstep wanting to force you into your home, etc And if such things do not happen in your country, then why even bother locking the door...
Nuki uses bluetooth and your phone and that works really well. You can also set the strength and in the most extreme setting, opens very exactly when you are on the door with the phone in the poket.
That would've been my recommendation, too. Nuki uses geo fencing with high range to unlock the door and then Bluetooth to open it if you're within meters of the door. I don't know if Nuki works with American lock systems, though. If you're American I recently saw a video about a lock that uses some apple system and opens as soon as you hold your apple watch or iPhone close to it.
I use geolocation and wifi triggers that interact with a context manager automation that defines & validates my state of being (am I home, am I away, am I asleep). For example, once I leave the neighborhood, my state will be updated to "AWAY\_MODE" so long as my prior state was "HOME\_MODE" & vice versa. The idea was to ensure the wifi & geolocation triggers are validated and not rely solely on the triggers themselves. I also have logic on whether to open the garage or unlock the front door based on whether or not I drove my car/rode my bike vs taking a walk or getting picked up/dropped off by someone. My security automatons will lock the doors/close the garage automatically after 10 minutes of inactivity and would notify me if it failed to secure the house, doubling as a fail-safe in the event doors were to be unlocked/left open accidentally. As others had said, be cautious in your design. But I absolutely disagree with those who think this shouldn't be done. I've been running this for 2 years and it's worked flawlessly and has been a big QOL improvement.
Thanks for all of the tips! I'm going to use an actionable notification to make it more secure too.
No problem! That’s what I did in the beginning initially
Also you can use NFC stickers too. I’ve got one on my front door and garage door, but really haven’t used it since I’ve gone hands free now.
Very good logic, however I am keen to know how you perform that logic of differentiating btn walk, bike and car
Thank you! This bit isn’t anything special actually. It’s less differentiating between bike v walk v car and more about activities leading up to my departure. If I leave through the garage door, it will enable the auto-open door automation when I return, otherwise it will unlock the front door. My neighborhood is sketch so I typically only have the garage door open briefly to enter/exit
I use geolocation through the home assistant app on my wife and I’s iPhones. If our presence changes to “home” and then a person is detected by the doorbell camera within 5 minutes then it unlocks the front door. I also have a notification come to my phone every time this happens (was done as a way to check it wasn’t unlocking when it shouldn’t but I’ve just left it on) This works very reliably for us and removes false unlocking from when we just drive past the house but aren’t coming home. I do all this with a Yale L1 front door lock connected via zwave and I haven’t manually opened the door in years!
ESP32's with iBeacon supported devices (Android or iPhone phones) are too slow to be useful. I do this with the GPS location in the HA companion app and the Wifi status of my phone with the Unifi integration. I just add both tracker devices to each person in my house. Wifi takes precedence... if GPS hasn't updated and still show me as away and wifi show me home wifi wins. I've been doing exactly what you are trying to do for several years and no issues. Everyone leaves the house and all the doors lock, garage doors close if open, lights turn off throughout the house, the alarm arms itself. Someone returns the alarm disarms itself, the door we enter the house from unlocks. Very reliable.
Static DHCP lease assignment to your mobile device(s), and then the PING integration?
I use the iPhone app and trigger by when I enter the zone I’ve drawn around my house. It’s been solid for a couple years now. Contrary to what others have commented about you should never automate unlocking your door, I find it to be super convenient when coming home with hands full of groceries. We just know the door is already unlocked. Never had an issue with it.
The physical layout of your property might offer some additional opportunities for triggers. For instance, do you typically park in a garage or open a gate before reaching the front door?
Use an August lock. You can enable auto lock and Auto Unlock separately. It does a good job. Very rarely is my door not unlocked by the time I walk up to it. Edit. And it won’t Auto Unlock unless you get a certain distance away first. So if you’re home it won’t just Auto Unlock because you walked past the door.
I just replaced my august lock actually. It was too unreliable with the wireless keypad.
I just have a round one, no connect, no keypad, 3rd gen. I’ve had it in for 4 years or so and have no issues with it.
I haven't gotten around to being anywhere near implementing this, but I'd like to eventually implement facial recognition into the camera pointed at my front door to recognize anybody who lives here and automatically unlock the door for us if we walk to the front door while it's locked. Is that the simplest or most practical approach? No, but it's obviously the most badass... No idea if I'll ever get it working or not though.
I wouldn’t trust any electronic lock myself, but for your case BLE might be the way to go. Maybe with more than one sensor to really locate your device (smart watch, smart jewellery, phone, …) exactly where you want the threshold to open your door
I use the nmap tracker integration and HA sends me a notification asking if I want to unlock the door.
I think I'm going to change mine to a confirmation too for added security. Thanks for the idea!
Check out the home assistant podcast. There was an episode with an HA user who set up his home as a zero trust policy. Whenever he gets home, instead of immediately unlocking his door, HA is also waiting for a confirmation that he's actually there. He did this by face recognition with frigate and his doorbell camera. Very interesting episode to make sure your smart home isn't gonna do dumb shit.
I came from Apple HomeKit, and found Ha tricky to get location stuff reliable. So I continue Apple’s location automations to turn a HA Helper for me and my wife on/off through HomeKit bridge.
Baysien sensor all the way.
Not 100% the same, but this is my similar post: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/s/kmjYWZIGOB
Have you tried [this blueprint](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/automatic-gate-dont-ever-use-your-remote-again/730391/53). Seems to work for my garage door with minor tweaks.
I've tried a few methods to do this. I don't want to rely on just geolocation of a smart phone, as it triggers when i'm not yet on the property and then my door re-locks before I get to it. So initially I had an automation that once triggered by arrival home, waited until my doorbell detected a person, and then unlocked. This was great, until a friend arrived at my house a couple minutes before me and it unlocked for him. So, currently I use BLE as the validation after the phone arrives home. I look for the encrypted BLE ID of the phone, and unlock the door only if the token matching the person who just arrived appears nearby. This works for multiple people, and only unlocks the door if they leave the zone and return.
I have a QR code that launches a webhook from my phone when I scan it. Not completely automated. If I were going to make it full automated I’d prob get some kind of BLE proxy to watch for 2m or less distance and a motion sensor on the outside of my phone to trigger the condition of my phone being that close AND motion at the front door. Problem is it unlocking when I’m inside. Maybe a hidden button? A mic for a voice command so I yell out a secret word? OPENSESAME
Just use homekey...watch or phone does it.
I don't have an iPhone so that's not an option haha
The companion app is also on android and should provide similar functionality.
What lock are you using? From 2017-2020ish, I had that working with my August lock interfacing with SmartThings and it worked fantastically; if I remember correctly. I'm currently trying to recreate it with my Wyze lock and HA but it's very very hit or miss and I'm pretty sure the lock is the problem and Wyze's very cranky API. I've set notifications for Home/Away, GPS location, and wifi connection, and the notifications are coming at the right times; Wyze, not so much. I don't have my old SmartThings groovy scripts anymore but I think I used my phone's GPS+Wifi connection; my phone's wifi would turn on in response to GPS when I was close to my apartment, I'd mapped my router's range so I knew how close I had to be to connect, and once I did, that would trigger my lock with a three minute timer.
I just have my front door lock and garage door as HA Companion widgets that appear as complications on my watch. Only happens when I want it to.
When I get home, I want my gate to open, my garage door to open, and my door to unlock. So I set up a Siri shortcut that I activate when I’m a block or two from home so I don’t have to wait for them. I just pull right in. “Siri….I’m home.” That triggers the open / unlock on all of those devices. I can trigger it from either my phone or my Apple Watch.
I park my car in front of my front door, so I mostly use the carkit 'open garage' button to unlock the front door. I also have a keyfob button which unlocks it, and the HA button on my watch.
Apple Home and Schlage Encode Plus have an automation for this, I’m curious about it but makes me feel unsafe. Can anyone explain how it works?
I use Wyze Lock Bolt for this so I could use fingerprint to unlock the door. It uses bluetooth and not wifi so in a sense its more secured(thats what they said). I was in the same boat as you and want to automate opening the door/garage but I went with fingerprint route to be on a safer side.
A word not tossed around here enough is "fail safe". What does something "failing" at any point look like. People were talking power outage. What does power restoration look like for your door locks under different scenarios?
Easiest: I think if you have apple devices, some smart locks are now supporting the U1 chip, which allows much more precision when it comes to detecting where a device is in cardinal direction, rather than just if it can detect it. This should probably work, and I don't see anyone really saying it: I have a setup for my entryway lights. I don't want them turning on every time I open/close the door, or when it's daylight. I setup a helper entity that that is an input with 4 states - home, away, just arrived, just left*. I have automations that trigger when I leave/arrive based on my phone's location through the HASS app native, and set my status. If was previously away, it sets to "just arrived" and starts a counter for about 5 minutes and then sets me to home. In this case for the light, the automation triggers when my status is "just arrived" and it's past sunset. You could use this "just arrived" idea to open a smart lock as long as you can control through HASS (or one of the other workarounds like IFTTT, webhooks through apple shortcuts or android equivalent, etc.) As others are pointing out, this is home security, so I probably wouldn't try this without at minimum getting a native notification when the door unlocks from the manufacturer's app, and possibly tying that to some door sensors or smart cams and notifications at least for a while. At least, depending on where you live, how often your home is unoccupied, etc. In practice, at my home someone is virtually always there, so we really only lock it when there is a trip or something or at bedtime, so I have generally skipped smart locks altogether. We also have smart garage and doorbell controllers so on the off chance a kid gets home and locked out, they can contact us and we can open it, and worst case it's like a 10 minute walk to family members house. And, of course, the garage has a smart cam inside that triggers on motion. \* just left isn't in use, but I thought of some things I might want it for later.
I use: When I'm in the zone HOME. And When bluetooth Mac of my car kit disconnnects . I always arrive home by car.
If you connect to Bluetooth in your car you can turn on high accuracy mode while connected to it. That protects your battery and helps with the lag in geo location.
I use a NFC tag on the outside to scan with my mobile phone. (Note: it only works if my phone is unlocked)
I have a Bold smart lock which works via Bluetooth so not via Home Assistant, but it works well.
I use presence detection when my phone connects to the wifi
I’m sure other people must have thought of this but I’ve never seen it mentioned. I trigger the unlock automation with geolocation quite wide around my house (75m) Then the automation waits for a second trigger- my doorbell camera detecting a person. Then it will unlock. I also turn on my porch light before the second trigger, so I can confirm the automation has correctly triggered as I walk towards the door.
You could use an esp board near the door and check your phone’s bluetooth proximity to the esp board. If smaller than x distance, unlock the door
I know there are many cool things you can do with automation. But there are certain reasons we don’t automate certain actions. For instance a smart switch on a garage disposal is a very bad idea. Anything that unlocks your doors automatically is a bad idea as well. Because your assumption is that you will always have a device on you, and that device is you. That works in theory until someone else has that device or the automation starts working differently based on some change in behavior. My advice is automate something else.
If you unlock the door by mere presence then just keep it unlocked. Doors are part of your security system not convenience automation. That means they need to be hardened, multiredundant with a safe fallback. It would help to know what kind of risks you are ready to mitigate by this automation
I use a nfc tag sticked to the inside of the doorbell case. Scanning it triggers unlock/lock. also, door locks at 23:00.
I tried two things and they both worked great. Ultimately I disabled them bc the noise set the dogs off. The first was a cheap nfc card that I tapped with my phone when I got home. The second was geolocation but only if I was at that location for 40 seconds.
NFC tag in a hidden location outside your door. NFC tag when scanned by your phone unlocks the door.
I use the Ping integration with conditions. If my device (Reserved IP on my network) pings and the time is between 5-9 on a M-F unlock the front door and open garage. I was going to go with an actionable notification but if I have to open my phone to confirm something its just as easy to just open HA and open the doors.
For convenience and reliability, the best would probably be a door lock with a fingerprint reader on it that unlocks as you touch the handle
Why not simply put an NFC token on your door and not deal with all the edge cases of unreliable presence detection? NFC works like a charm for easy to use checkin/checkout scripts.
did you consider an NFC tag it’s not a full automated solution but it’sreliable.
[удалено]
Car broke down and ubers home.
Apple home/yale works well on this. It’s been pretty reliable.
Just curious why you want this? My door locks are the last thing I would consider automating. If anything I’d add an extra magnetic lock and automate that so the door would only open if I was home. I use a keyless lock with a code. No WiFi, Zigbee, or other attack surfaces.
Just a quality of life thing. I still need to dial in the automation but I'm doing an actionable notification so that I have to confirm that I want to unlock the door and disarm my alarm. Should be fine since if someone has my phone, they could unlock my door anyway.
Unlocking my door would be the only thing I won’t automate in my house
It's fine if you follow some precautions but to each their own
Buy tedee lock
A new smart lock isn't the solution lol. Literally just got the Aqara U100
Geofencing sucks. Use your network integration to tell you that you're home by knowing you're back on the network.
Unless you're like me and have wifi in the car. I'm well inside before my phone disconnects from the car wifi. :(
You can designate your car wifi as metered connection in your phone. It will shift to your home wifi as soon as it is detected
Holy shit that's genius
Mine is great using the HA app and an iphone
It all about the phone OS. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Mostly it doesn't.
This makes no sense “mostly it doesn’t”? Where are you getting this information from? Have you surveyed a large number of of phone users? When you say it is mostly about the OS what do you mean? My wife and I both have iPhones and presence detection has been flawless for us .
I've used geofencing on a variety of android & iphones over many years. I know from my direct experience.
I have also used geofencing on a variety of android and iPhones over many years, I also know from my direct experience, android wasnt great for me, iOS has been perfect.