Timing differences between Wifi Near and Wifi Connected.

[Garry Collins]

Hi,

Hopefully this is not covered elsewhere.

I have wifi at home which I connect my Galaxy Note 2 to, and wifi at work which I don't connect to (And don't want to).

My "At Home" profile state is determined by "Wifi Connected", and the state typically changes within less than a minute, both when I arrive at home and when I leave home.

My "At Work" profile state is determined by "Wifi Near". All is good when I arrive at work, with the profile becoming active within seconds of arriving at work.
My problem is when I leave work.
Even though the the Wifi I have specified is no longer in range (I can be many kilometers/miles away) it can be anywhere between 5 and 19 minutes before the "At Work" profile becomes inactive.
In some cases I end up with both profiles active because I have arrived home while the At Work profile is still active.

Reducing Wifi scan has had no effect.

My question is; What are the differences between Wifi Connected and Wifi Near, does Wifi near have a much greater signal drop out timer for example, and why am I seeing such a wide variance in disconnect time from Wifi Near?

There are other options involving towers and GPS coordinates, but I would prefer to get the Wifi working as for me it is more accurate and less power hungry.

Many thanks,

Garry.

[Bob Hansen]

Wifi Near works by periodically turning on wifi and checking for available wifi signals. In order to determine when a signal is no longer available tasker will not consider the signal as no longer available when it has not been found on two consecutive scans. That is why it takes much longer for the wifi near to determine a signal is no longer available.

You can change the time between scans in tasker by going to Menu > Preferences > Monitor tab > Wifi Scan Time. Of course, reducing the scan time will increase the battery usage, so keep that in mind.

[Brad Minion]

With Tasker defaults it can take up to 20 minutes for a WiFi near profile to exit. I got around this, somewhat, by adding a " and not connected Bluetooth" context to the profile. Since my car has Bluetooth and I connect to it when I start my car, that deactivates my WiFi near profile. Maybe you can find something like that to work for you.

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[Scott Lyle]

I got around it by using geofences with AutoLocation rather than WiFi near.  I had the same issue where I could get home before my phone knew I was away from work and couldn't improve on it.  AutoLocation works amazingly well and if you are already using location in Google Now then it doesn't seem to take much, if any, more battery.

[Wes Stacey]

But i ran into the issue that Geofences tracking requires you to keep the Wifi antenna on all the time. 

[Scott Lyle]

So does WiFi near.  I have yet to see my phone report WiFi as using more than 3% of my battery and I never turn it off.

[Wes Stacey]

If you turn on the "Toggle" check box then Tasker turns on the Wifi every so often (if it is off) and does one scan, then turns it back off, saving considerably more battery than leaving it on all the time. The time between scans is controlled in preferences -> Monitor Tab -> Wifi Scan Seconds, defaults to 200 seconds. 

Add in a less battery intensive, yet less accurate location context such as Cell near, then you can leave Wifi off, and when you get into your neighborhood and (Cell Near goes active), Tasker starts toggling the Wifi and doing scans and when it sees your home Wifi the profile goes active. 

Check out the Location Without Tears Section of the Userguide for more details about the various location contexts that Tasker has, and about chaining them for accurate yet battery saving techniques. 

[Scott Lyle]

What sort of data do you have to show that it saves "considerable" battery?  3% is what my phone reports after 12.5 hours of having the WiFi on (GSam only reports 1.8%).  How is saving 1-2% by not having it on all the time "considerable?"

The problem with the toggle is that you have to either set it up to be so short that your WiFi is basically on all the time or you set it longer and have terrible resolution.  The cell near doesn't help much because you run into the same issue.  You will either end up with bad distance resolution (you'll only know that you're close to the cell tower that's' nearest to you) or bad time resolution (you'll have to wait for your phone to know you're at the more specific location), all to save minimal battery.

You also totally skipped the part where I mentioned that if you're using Google Now with any of the location features on then it seems to be battery neutral.  My location is not checked any more often with Geofences on than it is with Geofences off if I have Google Now on.  The amount of battery my phone uses while idle with all of this on is about 2% per hour.

Also notice that the OP hasn't complained about battery life while having WiFi on all the time.  You're totally missing what he's asking for.

[Wes Stacey]

I'm just offering an alternative. And the resolution isn't THAT bad... "considerable" is realtive and depends on alot on your phone battery, you could probably go from 3% to probably <1%-1% with this solution, i'm just letting you know that there are alternatives.

Also Cell near doesn't have this issue because in order to have phone service your phone HAS to know what cell tower it's connected to...all Tasker is doing it checking the phone memory for information that is already there, It doesn't have to do any additional scans. 

Some people do have bigger issues with wifi and battery, so a lot of people try to keep wifi off as much as possible.