Geo-Fencing

[mike48085]

I believe I have isolated my geo-fencing problem to my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge phone itself. Looking at a live map in the App Manager > Location > Google Location History > Manage Timeline, I see my live location jumping around to what appear to be random (phone?) locations within a mile or so of my actual location. I have tried clearing my phone's application cache partition with no improvement. I do not have the Ooma app (1.8.4) currently open. I will try taking my GPS setting off High Precision to see if that is better. I'll re-post if so.

[AnthonyH]

Hello all, thank you for your feedback regarding the latest Android Geofencing changes. This information has been very useful to us. We are focusing our attention on the issue where Android users are seeing extraneous away/home events, seemingly at 1 minute intervals. We just made a server-side change that should alleviate this issue, and you should benefit from the change immediately. To ensure that you've received the change, you can also try minimizing your app and bringing it back to the foreground on your Android device.

Version 1.8.4 of the Home Security app on Android is still the recommended version. Please let us know if you continue to see any Geofencing issues.

[j2carte]

Anthony, the latest tweak to the server side seems to have greatly reduced the "ghost" events you wrote about, but has introduced a new problem - at least in my environment.

Following your post about the server side tweak, I turned one of my two Samsung Note 5 Android phones completely off, and set the other to Affect System Home/Away Status. At this point, the Dashboard indicated both phones were Home, but the one that was turned off displayed the appropriate message about location feature whenever I tried to change its affect on home or away status. Everything looks great at this point - except for the Dashboard thinking both phones were at home when one was completely off.

System switched to Night mode as scheduled and we all went to bed.

Checking the log this morning I found that the system executed a mode switch to Home mode at 2:47 am when it reported that the phone set to affect the system home/away status "Arrived Home" - where it had been for at least 4 hours. There are no other "ghost" events logged, but what ended up happening is the system essentially disarmed itself at 2:47 am without anyone knowing.

So my suggestion is that the Geo-Fencing status changes only affect system status when the system is not in Night, Vacation, or some other custom mode (depending on options chosen). This will prevent disarming in the middle of the night without the homeowner knowing. (I know that I can set the system to alert me on mode switches, but I'd really rather not be rousted from my bed at 2:47 am for a "ghost").

Endeavor to persevere...

[thomasm]

OK I'll try 1.84 again but if it continues it's annoying random mode changes while not leaving home its back to the previous version.
Someone mentioned Comcast. I have A T & T internet but the phone is usually not connected to WiFi- even when I'm home. I have a mobile plan with loads of high speed data.

[murphy]

GPS reception can be sporadic inside of a house. If you don't have one, get a GPS app to monitor the signal strengths from the GPS satellites.

[thomasm]

1. App changed to night mode at 10PM last night as scheduled and then 15 minutes later it changed to home mode for no reason at all. Geofencing is (still) completely unreliable in ver 184. Changing back to 182 which worked much better and rarely changed modes when it wasn't supposed to.
2. I have a SUPER GPS signal and it never drops out. I have had GPS Plus app ( the paid version) for a long long time and it reports 12 or more satellites in use and an accuracy of 15 feet.

[OwenE]

I'm seeing erratic behavior using the Home Security app, both re geolocation and otherwise. I'm on 1.8.5 / Asus Z01FD (Zenphone) / Android 8.0.0.

I have a good GPS signal and my battery is rarely below 50%. I have Location set to high accuracy, with both Wifi and Bluetooth scanning allowed to "improve location".

It used to be much more reliable, but now, the system often does not register the phone leaving or arriving home. I have given up on close observation of variables, as I've spent more time on this problem than I can justify, but sometimes it appears that opening the app will cause it to suddenly notice the location of the phone and trigger an "arrived home" or "left home" event in the log, and cause a corresponding status change to Home or Away.

But in general, the Home Security system's usefulness has always been quite compromised by the instability of the Geolocation function. Although I'm grandfathered in to having this function due to being an early purchaser, I'm pretty amazed that Ooma is trying to charge $4 a month for this feature at this point in its development. Unless it's working perfectly for 95% of users, which I suppose is possible...

Owen.

[thomasm]

Geofencing with version 1.8.5 is still very unreliable. If you have the app set to night mode (either via a scheduled or manual mode change) after 15 minutes or less the app declares that the user has arrived home and is switching to home mode. Of course the user has been home all the time. Normally, users change to night mode when they go to bed and they generally do this from home. Why not disable geofencing changes when the app is in night mode?

Also, while not leaving home the app will suddenly and for no reason announce that everyone has left home and it's switching to away mode. It does not matter which geofencing setting is used (low, medium, high) for the range considered home. Sometimes it catches on and switches back to home mode, sometimes it remains in away mode even though the phone is home.

I noticed from a previous message that Ooma charges $4 a month for geofencing if you are a newer user. Really? The way it's working now? Ha ha.

[OwenE]

I have complained here in the past about unreliability of the Geofencing feature. It occurred to me recently that is has been non-flaky and generally reliable for a number of weeks now.

So, credit where credit is due - Ooma's tech folks have done some Good Things with geofencing recently, and the feature, at least for me, now basically works.

Thanks, Ooma tech people.

Owen.
(oh yeah: on Android, 1.10.4)

[thomasm]

Geofencing still totally unreliable on my Samsung Galaxy G7. It says "away" when it's sitting in my kitchen. Or "home" when I'm miles away. I've (sadly) pretty much written off this feature as it has never worked reliably for me on a variety of Android devices. It's not worth being woke up at night because it decided to change modes for no reason or losing effectiveness when away from home when it decides I AM home.

Perhaps other more reliable and predictable mode change options could be incorporated but geofencing would be a great feature-if it ever gets fixed.