[APP][Pro] Beacon - Detect your presence with BLE beacons

Hello,
I intend to switch from homee to homey in 2023.
Not everyone in the family has a cell phone in their pocket all the time, so the geofancing story doesn’t work for us.
I am successfully using three Gigaset G-Tags (version1) with a raspberry pi zero as a BLE scanner/server. The notification to homee takes place via webhook.
homeean presence
The G-Tags have good reception in the home, the message comes as soon as I drive into the carport.
I hope this works with the homey-pro (2023) as well,
and without additional raspi?
Grüße :raising_hand_man:

Hey guys,
because the presence function of Homey itself still doesn’t work properly, I decided to manage the presence/away status by a beacon. So at this point, I would like to thank @Koktail for this awesome and quite helpful app. I really appreciate your efforts and time you’ve invested in the developement and given support for it. (i will suit the action to the words when I’m familiar with the app functionality :wink:)

In the end, I bought a BLE beacon called finder2 from the German engineer brand musegear (see https://www.amazon.de/dp/B01MRXVY2O/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&ref_=psdcmw_364918031_t1_B09998MBFM&th=1 and the manufacturers homepage Produkte – musegear finder – Finde den richtigen für dich! for details).
It’s very similar to Tile or rather the same, with the decisive benefit, that there are no hidden-costs or a need for an account or a registration of the beacons.

I don’t want to overdo this topic at all (it’s still long enough), but I want to share a simple as confusing experience with you:
as mentioned above, there’s no duty to register the beacons. This is why I didn’t installed the musegear-App on my smartphone. Instead of this, I tried to add the beacon directly to Homey. I knew, that it’s public discoverable, because my smartphone was able to detect it as a generic BLE device.
I tried several attempts to add it to Homey. But it didnt’t function.
Than, the only thing I did was to restart Homey (not the beacon-app itself) - and suddenly my beacon was founded. And never lost its connection until now for around 10 hours. So far, so good.

But know I’ve got an issue very similar to other user, especially to Peter_Kawa. This is the reason, why I wanted to reply to his post for asking for a solution, because I’ a little bit unsure about the right seetings (I didn’t changed the default ones).
As you can see on the screenshot, regularly after 20-25 seconds, the outside range status is changed in inside status. In the meantime, the beacon was moved only in direct range of Homey (not outside of our house).


Is this a matter of a too less number of verifications out of range? (even if it seems to be a trivial question… :innocent: :grimacing:)

I would be very grateful for any reply!
Greets
Albert

Sorry…just one more question from me as a newbe:
What’s the difference between an Beacon and a iBeacon? I didn’t find any explanations on this question by searching the topic.
I’m asking this question myself, because I want to rule out of course, that I added the wrong type of beacon to Homey.
I just red something about random addresses as an advertising signal from some beacons. And I was wondering, if mine is such one (see screenshot as follows). Even because of its default name iTrack

just for understanding of my first post: this was the issue, which I wanted to reply originally. But for whatever reason it didn’t so…maybe i used the wrong button. Sorry!

Hi Albert, no worries.
I understand the Ble stack of Homey is not perfect (yet), and connections get dropped at random. That makes, in this case, the beacon(s) somehow getting marked as ‘away’.

I use a Chronograph timer in between now. The timer’s time should be higher than the time between the typical faulty ‘away’ and ‘home’ status changes. For me, 2 minutes was sufficient.

When…
beacon X status = away
Then…
start or replace timer Y with a duration of x minutes

When…
timer Y has finished
And…
beacon X status = away
Then…
(presence) mark Person X (beacon X) as away

BLE stability improvements in this firmware update, but clueless how to read what they updated :smiling_face:

3 Likes

I will play with the settings to see if there are improvements

Still unstable at the 10 times settings. Back to 15

Hey Peter,
finally, I found time to answer: thank you so much for your both quick and especially very kind response! :ok_hand: :clap:
It’s really helpful while logical, although I didn’t tried out yet. But this is what I’ll do next, maybe in combination with a higher verification amount outside range. I figured out in the meantime, that 15 times seems to be the best - just at the moment. :man_shrugging:

Since I’ve been a (still proud :wink:) owner of a Homey Pro (early 2019) I’m regularly excited about this huge community of Homey users. In my opinion, one of the strengths of Homey, among others.

But nevertheless: at this point, I can absolutely agree with @NoX comments about Homey’s usability und Athom’s policy: Beacon - An app for presence detection using BLE beacons - #608 by NoX
I invested 399 € as well in this futuristic “wonderball”, and for that, we can expect a stable system with it’s general functions. Herefore belongs e.g. the Bluetooth connectivity in general. (By the way, even my wife told me some days ago, I should not spend more time in configurating our smart home as it will save us in the end​:grimacing::man_facepalming:)
But I don’t want to start a new discussion about it though, that’s not the right place for it.

Just to clarify and intensify the awareness, I think about reporting one more issue for that to Athom.
Greets
Albert

2 Likes

Thanks for that announcement. Let’s see, what it really helps!
@Koktail, your awesome app deserves a stable system!

1 Like

Hi!

I just bought an Apple Airtag and installed Beacon. I have tried 10 times now to create a new device (iBeacon) without any success. It says no new devices are found. Is this app not compatible with Airtags?

Many thanks!

See earlier post in this topic about the situation with Airtags:

1 Like

Thank you for clarifying this! :slight_smile: Short answer then is that I jumped on the wrong horse ha ha (I was sure Airtag would work, so I didn’t really check)… Well, any suggestions for best beacon (will only be used for Home/Away presence) in respect to size and price (and battery life)?

Thanks!

Feasycom? Pls search this topic for it.
Seen at Ali’s for around €22

1 Like

Thanks Peter, I just bought one from AliExpress, hope the battery time is as promised!

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@Koktail I try your app on my new HP2023 and it don’t work (official 2.3.2 and test 2.3.5 versions) :

I have 2 Nut mini, that works like a charm with 2.3.2 on HP2019
This one is detected when I “add” it to HP2023
but the status is never updated :
image

Thanks

Is your Homey 23 firmware higher than xxx.rc.40?

Yes it’s the rc62

Below are the Ble updates in the firmwares, so I suggest you inform Athom also about this issue.

v10.0.0-rc.40

Bluetooth LE

  • Improved stability.
  • Added support for notifications.
  • Added support for disconnect events.

v10.0.0-rc.37

Bluetooth

  • Added preliminary support for ManagerBLE.
    Note: BLECharacteristic.subscribeToNotifications is not yet available.
    Note: disconnect events are not yet sent to the app.

v10.0.0-rc.2

  • Improved the Bluetooth Advertisements interval.
1 Like

I have exactly the same issue, I connected my 3 beacons (2x tile, 1x Ali-express), using those for years already on Homey Pro 2019 (and 2016), but they won’t get detected at all: