How I know I am home

[George Handley]

Rich,

Your entirely different way of doing this needed job intrigues me, as well as being very clever.

I would like to know, however, exactly how responsive your system works, as I had some discouraging results yesterday with Geohoppy after the previous day’s total successes.  

Specifically, there have been a few times over the years I’ve noticed that when I first use my phone at home, even a few times after I’ve been home for almost an hour, that it will start out in LTE, 3G or 4G, and not WIFI from either our Airport Express used here for guests, or our AT&T M-Cell (A mini cell tower with satellite and internet, [Time Warner] access) we have for our phones for best reception.

I need a foolproof system to know whether my wife or I or both of us are arriving at home, and I need to know it BEFORE the garage door is opened upon arrival. Geo tags on a set of keys is not a solution.

I just ran a discouraging test in that I merely walked down our street three houses watching how fast I would lose our WIFI, and it only took two homes. Even worse than that, as I watched it on the way back, it didn’t revert to our WIFI until I literally was touching the front door knob.

I’m going to assume your’s has to work the same way, but I hope I’m wrong, and will sure look forward to your reply.

Thanks,

George

PS I’ve got it! I just contact the NSA to have chips implanted under our skin! :-)


> On Jun 3, 2015, at 6:02 PM, rnaleonard <rnaleonard at rcn.com> wrote:
> 
> When there is motion in selected outside areas like the driveway, and if we are not home, then an external script runs.  This script checks the ARP entries for our phones.  If either is found, the necessary incantations to update XTension to at home status are issued.  My guess is that since the phone(s) have just arrived and are switching from cellular to wi-fi, the ARP tables update immediately.  We choose not to let the system determine when we are not home.  We have a separate process for that.  Here is the external script (with personal identification elements removed and described inside [ ] ).  Run the shell script to get the exact entries for your phones. Works every time for us.  YMMV.  The advantage is that there is no external web service or app involved.
> 
> on arpcheck()
> 	set theMsg to ""
> 	repeat with theCount from 1 to 60
> 		set theResult to do shell script "arp -a"
> 		if theResult contains "? ([Assigned IP for phone 1]) at [MAC address for phone 1] on en0 ifscope [ethernet]" then
> 			set theMsg to "Phone 1 "
> 		end if
> 		if theResult contains "? ([Assigned IP address for phone 2]) at [MAC address for phone 2] on en0 ifscope [ethernet]" then
> 			set theMsg to theMsg & "Phone 2 "
> 		end if
> 		if theMsg is "" then
> 			set theCount to theCount + 1
> 			delay 1
> 		else
> 			exit repeat
> 		end if
> 	end repeat
> 	
> 	tell application "XTension"
> 		write log "Checking for iPhones"
> 		if theMsg is not "" then
> 			set theMsg to theMsg & ": At Home"
> 			[do things here to turn on your at home status]
> 		else
> 			set theMsg to "No iPhones are home"
> 		end if
> 		write log "" & theCount & ": " & theMsg & return & theResult
> 	end tell
> 
> 	set theMsg to ""
> 	set theResult to ""
> end arpcheck
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