Is a Person home or not flow

Flows
21

Hi folks,

It might be my imagination, but I think there is a simple solution to the problem.

First, you need to know whether somebody is on the premises (in the house).
Unless you chip every person, it is not possible to know this with certainty. All you can detect is whether a device is present. For example, when I leave the house but leave my phone at home, Homey will still detect me as being at home.

If you can or want to install the Homey app on everyone’s phone, detection will be automatic based on geofencing.
If you cannot or do not want to install the Homey app on someone’s phone (e.g., guests), then these persons need to sign in or out when they enter or leave the house.

You could use the Ring Alarm keypad and give every guest a unique code. When they leave, they enter their code and press the arm button; when they return, they enter their code and press the disarm button.
This only works if guests actually enter the code and press the correct button. You could enforce this if you have a smart lock: simply add two keypads (one outdoors and one indoors), and guests can only open the door when they enter their code. Outdoors for entering the home, indoors for leaving it.

You could also try the Frient Intelligent Keypad, which should have an RFID reader. Guests scan their RFID card, and based on their status they are marked as arriving or leaving. I do not know this device personally, so I cannot give specific advice.

Second, you need to know whether somebody is in a room.
This is easy to detect with a presence sensor.
However, you only know that somebody is in the room — not who it is.

If this information is crucial, you could equip the room with a keypad and use the same technique as above for guests, perhaps combined with an additional smart lock.

PLEASE BEWARE!
If you use smart locks to control access to rooms or the house, make sure there is always an escape route in case of an emergency (especially fire).
I use Nuki smart locks, which can always be opened manually.

22

Hi I’ve been using smart presence with succes my phone and the phone of my wife both have a static IP adres (set in your router) so homey always knows when, if and who is at home or not downside is that you shouldn’t forget to take your phone with you when you leave now a days hardley to imagine that someone forgets their phone :grin: so do mind that this only works when your phone is connected to your wifi if your phones wifi is turned off homey still doesn’t know if you’re home or not

23

A friend of mine running HA based smart home system recently installed 3 Sonoff presence sensors just to be aware if anyone (no matter who) is in his workshop, carport or sunroom.
This way he isn’t depending on any app or configuration in system. Regardless of whoever is in in any of these areas the lights will be turned on and he will be notified and can be aware of that as long anyone is in any of these areas.
Flipside? Cost of HW and some cabling.

24

Like @Erwtje I recommend using the app Smart Presence. It’s highly reliable and I prefer it over Honey presence system.

Note: you can mark a device/users as that of a child or guest OR even use it to register which cars are on the driveway to ping charging notifications. (if your car uses the wifi)

25

The only problem with this app is that when you design your Home Network and Smart Home securely, you would have 2 isolated vlans for your IoT devices including Homey and your regular clients.

IoT devices are not always updated regularly, and this leaves your network vulnerable to hackers. Especially when you have a lot of (matter over )WIFI devices.

I would not advise people to give Homey the rights to scan for active client devices on the network. Instead, I once wrote this tutorial on how I implemented presence in my Homey. It has been working pretty reliably for me.