Is that possible to use iBeacon with Fibaro ?

[simdilikbuolsun 0]

Have you ever experience to use iBeacon with HC2 or HCL ? Or any suggestions how to use with Fibaro ? 

 

Thanks in advace.

[Dalle1985 13]

Yeah, I have been experimenting quite a bit with it - but to be honest, it isn't really that great as you need a phone on you at all times for it to work. I have tried to do presence detection using estimote tags and 3 RPis placed throughout the house which can then triangulate an estimated position. But it isn't really that great... Motion detectors work better. So what I have now is an estimote in my car and one in my hall. When my car arrives home, an RPi picks up the tag and opens the garage door and turns on the light. When my phone registers the other estimote tag, it will detect that I have arived home and turn on the light by sending a http-request to the HC2 to start a scene... But really, it isn't working that great.

 

The bluetooth signal is to unreliable i.e. in heavy rain the signal is absorbed by rain drops and I almost have to drive into the garage door to get it to open. I have tried to optimize by letting both the estimote tag and the cars built in Bluetooth headset activate the arriving home scene, but they just aren't powerful enough to give a consistent signal. So now I have backed up that approach and is now using WiFi detection. When I leave in my car, a motion sensor in the garage will register this and activate a scene (with some logic behind it so it doesn't just activate the away scene every time I walk into the garage). Then after 60 seconds, it will activate a scanning program on my home automation server which looks for my phones MAC-address. It sometimes take a few seconds for my server to pick up the phone, but it works better than the bluetooth option did.

 

A hell of a long way to go to press a button to open the garage door when I arrive home - and I still have the garage opener as a fall back if my phone is out of juice and it is raining... So not a great solution.

[simdilikbuolsun 0]

Yeah, I have been experimenting quite a bit with it - but to be honest, it isn't really that great as you need a phone on you at all times for it to work. I have tried to do presence detection using estimote tags and 3 RPis placed throughout the house which can then triangulate an estimated position. But it isn't really that great... Motion detectors work better. So what I have now is an estimote in my car and one in my hall. When my car arrives home, an RPi picks up the tag and opens the garage door and turns on the light. When my phone registers the other estimote tag, it will detect that I have arived home and turn on the light by sending a http-request to the HC2 to start a scene... But really, it isn't working that great.

 

The bluetooth signal is to unreliable i.e. in heavy rain the signal is absorbed by rain drops and I almost have to drive into the garage door to get it to open. I have tried to optimize by letting both the estimote tag and the cars built in Bluetooth headset activate the arriving home scene, but they just aren't powerful enough to give a consistent signal. So now I have backed up that approach and is now using WiFi detection. When I leave in my car, a motion sensor in the garage will register this and activate a scene (with some logic behind it so it doesn't just activate the away scene every time I walk into the garage). Then after 60 seconds, it will activate a scanning program on my home automation server which looks for my phones MAC-address. It sometimes take a few seconds for my server to pick up the phone, but it works better than the bluetooth option did.

 

A hell of a long way to go to press a button to open the garage door when I arrive home - and I still have the garage opener as a fall back if my phone is out of juice and it is raining... So not a great solution.

 

Thank you for this nice description about your experience. So it is possible but not working great. I think, I'll give a shot. 

[azevenhuizen 5]

I am fiddling with iBeacons at the moment from radiusnetworks.

I got 3 of the radbeacon dots in combination with geofency (mark the e, not the a !)

This combination works amazingly stable and fast. But above, it hardly drains the battery of the phone.

Also using ibeacons is much more accurate than gps tracking.

 

So when my iPhone detects the uuid of beacons it triggers a http request that runs a script on my Pi, that in turn sets a globalVar on the HC2.

Next step is to trigger on the major/minor of each beacon to actually track the room or area I am.

For example, when I sit in the garden having a beer, there is no need to have the light on inside the house.

The only trick here, is that the app can trigger on entry or exit of an area. So what about overlapping area's, or returning from the kitchen, while the livingroom beacons is still there...?!

 

In other words, the app detects last entry or last exit, while we actually want real location in a small radius.