Mqttitude now has geo-fence support (for iOS)

[Ben Jones]

A few weeks ago I made a request to the Mqttitude developers to enhance the app to support geo fences so that it could be used more effectively for presence detection in openHAB with the Mqttitude binding. That enhancement has been completed for the iOS version of the app and just recently released to the play store (http://blog.mqttitude.org/post/70075873356/ios-app-5-3-in-the-app-store).

This means you can set a 'region' for your home and the app will send a location update to your MQTT broker whenever you enter/leave that region. This makes presence detection a lot more accurate and turns this already very useful app into almost a 'must have' for openHAB users!

NOTE: The Android app hasn't had this functionality added yet, but it is in the pipeline I am told.

[Thomas E.-E.]

thanks, Ben for driving this topic!

Best,

Thomas E.-E.

[Ben Jones]

My pleasure. It was either this, or me trying to add geofence support to the HABDroid and iOS apps myself...which would have ended badly for everyone concerned! ;)

Thomas E.-E.

Monday, 16 December 2013 9:11 a.m.

thanks, Ben for driving this topic!

Best,

Thomas E.-E.

On Sunday, December 15, 2013 8:45:10 PM UTC+1, Ben Jones wrote:

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Ben Jones

Monday, 16 December 2013 8:45 a.m.

A few weeks ago I made a request to the Mqttitude developers to enhance the app to support geo fences so that it could be used more effectively for presence detection in openHAB with the Mqttitude binding. That enhancement has been completed for the iOS version of the app and just recently released to the play store (http://blog.mqttitude.org/post/70075873356/ios-app-5-3-in-the-app-store).

This means you can set a 'region' for your home and the app will send a location update to your MQTT broker whenever you enter/leave that region. This makes presence detection a lot more accurate and turns this already very useful app into almost a 'must have' for openHAB users!

NOTE: The Android app hasn't had this functionality added yet, but it is in the pipeline I am told.

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[Pablo Romeu]

Hi Ben! I develop de iOS App and I don't get the point. You mean this app just tells your openHAB when you are at or close to home? I was thinking of including this feature in the next major version of openHAB iOS App.

[Rainer Ostendorf]

Pablo,

that feature would definitly be great to have in the iOS app! That would preserve me from having to set up my own MQTT broker just for location/presence tracking. Just a location, radius and an item that gets updated when entering/leaving that area would be great! Maybe even lat/lon coordinates would be sufficent, as the distance can be calculated in a rule.

Rainer

[Ben Jones]

Hi Pablo!

The initial plan was to include this in the openHAB phone apps but I have zero experience with app design, in either Android or iOS. I started having a play around with HABDroid but got very lost very quick!

Then I came across Mqttitude which did everything we needed. 

If you want to build this functionality into the iOS app it would be great - hopefully Victor can find time to do the same with HABDroid, and Till with HABSweetie. I believe presence detection is a very useful/important part of home automation and to have it 'built-in' to openHAB would only make this product more appealing.

The tricky bit is making configuration and setup as simple and painless as possible. Ideally there would be a map where you can drop a pin, specify a radius, a name, and an openHAB item it should be bound to. Then anytime the phone enters or leaves that geofence the specified openHAB item is switched on/off. We should probably allow multiple geofences to be defined, so you might have one for home and one for work for example.

I believe the geofence logic is baked into both iOS and Android, but you will no doubt know more about that.

I would be more than happy to help you with the design and testing of this if you need a hand.

Cheers,

Ben

[Shawn Mix]

Pablo I'd also agree that this would be great to have in the iOS app. I currently do this with an app called GeoFancy. Rather than setting up bindings and extra server/services, I like the ability of a simplistic geofence app that lets me set geofences, and associated actions. In this case, the app allows me to make simple GET/POST calls when entering/exiting the geofences configured. I've leveraged the ability to send basic web call CMD's to OpenHAB to control a switch mapped to the 2 people in the house. If this would be integrated into the OpenHAB app (just as Ben described below) this would be amazing!! and it would also let me reduce the app count on my device!!!