[APP][Pro] Absence Simulator — replay your home's real activity while you are away

Apps
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1

Absence Simulator watches what your lights, blinds, sockets and media devices actually do, keepting a rolling 30 days. When you are away, it replays that behaviour — the real rhythm of your
household, rather than a timer.

Why it looks real

A timer that switches the living room on at 19:00 every evening is a pattern anyone
watching for a few days can read. This app replays a genuinely recorded day instead:

  • It picks one recorded day and reproduces it, rather than averaging several days into one
    implausible evening of constant activity.
  • It prefers a day with the same weekday, because Tuesdays look like Tuesdays.
  • Anything recorded near sunset is re-anchored to *tonight’s* sunset. Around the equinoxes dusk shifts by nearly an hour across the thirty days the app remembers, and a change to summer time moves it by another hour overnight — so a light recorded at dusk three weeks ago still comes on at dusk tonight rather than an hour off.
  • Every event is shifted by a few random minutes, so no two evenings are identical.
  • Before replaying, it puts your devices into the state that day started in — so a room
    that was already lit does not sit dark all evening.

Useful from the first week

It does not wait for 30 days of history. If a weekday has not been recorded yet, it borrows
the closest match and tells you which. A slightly wrong pattern beats an unlit house.

Switching it on

  • Manually, with a start button that can run until a time you choose — the next 08:00 by
    default, for an evening out.
  • By planning holidays in advance. Enter “1 July to 10 July” months ahead and it switches
    itself on and off. Times of day are optional; without them, whole days are covered.
  • From a Flow, including start until a given date and time, so it can hang off a geofence
    or a door lock in an Advanced Flow.

Come home early and press stop, and it stays off for that holiday rather than switching
itself back on a minute later.

Built for real installations

Filter several hundred devices by name, type or zone, and select whole types or whole zones
in one click. A Data basis panel shows exactly what has been recorded — a calendar of the
last 30 days, coverage per weekday, and the daily rhythm of your household — and names any
selected device that has recorded nothing at all, which is usually one ticked by mistake.

Privacy

Everything stays on your Homey. The app operates no server and sends nothing anywhere.
Records older than 30 days are deleted automatically. Removing the app removes its data.

Requirements

Homey Pro, firmware 12.9.0 or newer. Homey Pro only. Available in English, German, French,
Italian and Spanish, with a user manual in each language linked from the app settings.

Please note

This app is a deterrent aid, not a security or alarm system. It does not detect, prevent or
report burglary, and it depends on your Homey, your devices and your power supply. Do not
rely on it as your only precaution when leaving a property unattended, and do not reduce any
other security measure or insurance cover because of it.

Links

Bug reports and feedback in this topic are welcome. If something is not being recorded,
please open the app settings and quote what the Data basis panel says — it reports what
the recorder is watching and how many changes it has seen, which usually identifies the
problem straight away.

2

Sounds realy cool.
Think you can add an option to read the stats of the last 30 days from the selected devices?
And as an extra goody add an option to define a shedule or adjust it for each selected device in case the last 30 days won‘t represent the next days. Was thinking of winter, the times from december might be a bit different from januar.

3

Thanks for the feedback.

The app is keeping track of rolling 30 days - what you requested. It was not clearly mentioned in the text. I’ll update the explanation once the app has been approved by Athom.

Regarding the second request to add a shedule for each device: The moment you hand-write when each device switches, you’ve built a timer. Being unlike a timer is the app’s entire argument. A schedule editor would let people quietly rebuild the exact pattern the app exists to replace.