Status of Phone for Presence

#1

I’d like to see if my latest phone (Note 9) is any better as a Presence device than my last one (an S7) and created a piston that reads"

If
myPhone $status changes to ???
then
with
FrontDoorLock
do
Unlock

The problem is, as you can see, what the correct status is for this. I’m assuming you set Value to something, or is there a different way to go about this? I’m assuming “changes to” is also the best way to go about this so that the door isn’t unlocking simply when it sees the phone at home.

#2

Feel free to experiment, but normally we cannot use the highlighted symbols as a trigger.

pic

(They usually work as conditions, though)

Pro Tip:

During testing, I highly recommend that you do not implement the door unlock command. Any other command would be much safer to use. (Flash light, send SMS, log to console etc)

#3

If you’re not sure what you are looking for, why not just ‘$status changes’ and then log the status? Of course, this still will never trigger based on @WCmore’s experience.

If you are looking for how well this acts as a presence sensor, why are you not looking at presence? Perhaps just log it through one day to see how well it behaves?

#4

Changes to PRESENT or HOME would be it.

I used to have same exact piston. I thought it was a cool idea BUT please be careful (unless this is an inside garage door etc) because as @WCmore stated in many other posts, the cell signal jumps on the map sometimes and your piston might consider that as “Ohh Rich just came home, let me unlock the door”
it happened in my case. I would see the door is just unlocking while I was home.
I feel like the worried dad of the family LOL

#5

The $status attribute is a webCoRE invention. It gets the status of the device as in ACTIVE, INACTIVE, ONLINE, OFFLINE or HUB_DISCONNECTED. Although $status can be used in trigger condition, no event would ever be generated with that attribute.

I suspect you want to use the ‘presence’ attribute ‘present’ or ‘not present’). You could use the ‘occupancy’ attribute (‘occupied’ or ‘unoccupied’) but the secret of what that actually means for mobile presence doesn’t seem to have leaked out yet.

However I personally wouldn’t use it to unlock a door.

#6

Been testing out the presence function in the new app using my G7 ThinQ. Pretty consistent and accurate results so far. Only gripe so far is that it just goes back and forth between “present” and “not present”. Would rather have seen “home” and away".

So far occupancy has never changed. Always been “unoccupied” so far.

results

piston
piston.png1178×891 104 KB

#7

Nice analytical piston, @SergL… That is a great way to monitor the action behind the scenes!!

You can use an expression to do just that:

pic
pic.jpg912×267 24.8 KB

As seen here:

pic

#8

More then likely inspired by one that I have seen of yours! :slight_smile:

Curious to see if ST will ever changes it once the new app is implemented to everyone across the board. Until then this is a great solution, thank you!