Presence Detection Based on Who Is Home

[Eddimello]

I need your help. Normally, there are three of us living in our house. However, our daughter isn’t home much anymore because she’s studying, and my wife is often abroad for work.
In short, there are three of us, two of us, or even just one person at home.
I currently have the Presence app and the Locative app running on our iPhones, and they work really well. Homey knows exactly who’s home when, so it knows whether there’s one, two, or three of us.
Obviously, I’d like the house to react differently when there’s one or three people at home.
The best example of this is a sensor on the stairs leading downstairs. My lights on the first floor and attic turn on automatically, so when I walk down the stairs and am home alone, everything upstairs should automatically turn off.
You’d think that would work if there’s no movement on the first floor or attic, but I often find that very unreliable.

In short, who can help build a flow based on 1, 2 or 3 people at home?

[Wim_Post]

I would recount the number of people in the house every time someone comes or leaves home.

So when there only one person at home ‘act this way’ else ‘act that way’

[Eddimello]

Okay, thanks for your explanation, Wim. I can follow this if one person comes home and stays home. But what if another person comes and, for example, someone leaves for a while? I still have to figure out that flow.

It was valuable to read your response, and it’s funny that two Dutch people have to communicate in English.

[Eddimello]

Oh, you mean the second time, Wim Post is the other person, and so on the third time?

[Eddimello]

It’s working thanks. For now.

[Wim_Post]

You figured it out. My homey has only one user​

[Eddimello]

Yes, but I’m not done yet. Now I want the house to react differently when my wife and I are home, so whether we’re together or when my daughter is also home. This is because when my daughter is home, the lights in the hallway and bathroom need to be dimmer. That bothers her in her room. But when she’s with her boyfriend, we prefer the lights to be brighter.

In short, it’s not necessarily about whether one, two, or three people are home, but also who.

I still have to figure that out.

[Peter_Kawa]

So, boyfriend is the 4th condition

@Eddimello

n short, it’s not necessarily about whether one, two, or three people are home, but also who.

I still have to figure that out.

You can add conditions like these

[s73nm]

You might want to have a look at Flowbits. The app basically allows you to define modes/states for your house.

You would still need to build the logic for setting the desired state/mode depending on who is home, but once done, you can adapt all your flows react to the mode/state your house is in, rather than have the logic be repeated in different flows.

[App][Pro] FlowBits

Simplify your flows with FlowBits FlowBits is a utility app for Homey that helps you structure, control, and extend your flows without adding any new device types. Everything is defined directly within your flows, giving you full flexibility. Work in progress documentation is available at https://flowbits.nl Features Step sequences Count upwards within defined boundaries. Useful for giving simple switches multiple functions or scenes. Flags Create feature toggles for your home, such as a…

[Eddimello]

Allright this helps to

[Eddimello]

I look it up

[Eddimello]

I do not see this condition in the AND e-card of Presence not at home

[s73nm]

Use the “… is at home” card, and invert it.

[Eddimello]

Thats great

[dsdevries]

hey, for my flows, I made a script that just counts the number of people at home, the number of people asleep, and the number of people at home and asleep on the fly and creates tags for them to be used in your flows. I used to work with variables which I updated on every presence event, but I found it to be unreliable and I much rather just calculate the values directly before I need them, so I know they are always correct.

To set it up, just go into the scripts section and create a script called Calculate Presence(.js). Then paste this script:

const users = await Homey.users.getUsers();
const userArray = Object.values(users);
await Promise.all([
  tag('Persons At Home', userArray.filter(({present}) => present).length),
  tag('Persons Asleep', userArray.filter(({asleep}) => asleep).length),
  tag('Persons Asleep At Home', userArray.filter(({present, asleep}) => present && asleep).length)
]);

here’s how I use the script in my flows:

The great advantage of this script is that people can just mark them selves asleep and awake, and at home or away independently. So people can be asleep while they are not at home, or asleep while they are home and it wouldn’t impact for the flows that depend on “Persons Asleep At Home”. So the automation regarding presence can be kept super simple. Just mark someone at home when they arrive home, mark someone away when they leave, mark someone asleep when sleep mode is enabled, and mark someone awake when sleep mode is disabled. No need to perform any other difficult checks there.
You came home after your phone already went into sleep mode? No problem.
You left the home but the phone is still in sleep mode? Not a problem.
You go on holiday but the phone keeps marking you asleep and awake? Also, not a problem.
You already left your parental house, but occasionally stay over? Again, not a problem.
I wrote a full tutorial on how I Implemented presence detection using iPhones shortcuts app in Homey. You can read it here:

[Tutorial] How I implemented Presence into my Smart Home Automation

Introduction In my household everyone goes to sleep and wakes up at different times. Also, not everyone sleeps at home every day, or some people might arrive while others are already asleep. This creates some tricky challenges when it comes to automating presence based behavior. Here are the problems I faced and how I tackled them. Problem 1: Reliable presence detection In many phones, but mainly iPhones, apps don’t have the same access level to location services, or will not always keep their …

I’ve also written a full tutorial on how I implemented motion sensors in my house and connected them to Virtual motion sensors to gain full control over the timeout values, and the ability to turn the whole sensor on and off. In this tutorial I use the Circadian app for my lighting schedules. The Circadian app has the ability to switch between manual, automatic and night modes, which might be useful in your use case as well. But you can also just as easily use the above setup without the Circadian app if that’s not what you need. You can read the full tutorial here.

[HOW TO] Gain full control over Zone Activity using Motion Sensors (PIR) and Virtual Motion Triggers

Introduction This is not a guide on how to implement a specific use case, but rather a framework that will give you full control over zone activity. Many flows like turning on/off lights could be done much simpler. However, when my personal flows became more complex, I ran into a lot of caveats and quirks that caused me to rethink how I work with motion sensors. I came up with this system which allowed me to solve all the bugs I ran into and I would like to share it with all of you. The problem…

Maybe this setup combined with the script can also help you out.