This morning I had a strange issue - twice we were alerted via text message that my phone had left the geofence without the alarm being armed. My phone was in fact sitting on the breakfast table.
I am guessing this could be due to GPS accuracy issues. I had my wifi disabled which I know makes the GPS less accurate.
My question is, is there a way to adjust the radius of the geofence? Or, do you have another idea what could cause this issue?
Thanks,
Ben
You can definitely adjust the radius for the geofence. When you go to edit your fence on Alarm.com, under the “Fence Name” field, there is another field called “Radius”. Simply enter the range you’d like to adjust your fence to and press save.
Is there any work around for the geo-fence minimum radius? I’d like to trigger not at home events but I’m frequently staying within the 1 mile radius.
Currently there is no way to make the fence smaller. The problem is with the significant inaccuracies of location reporting in many phones. I think it will even base the location off the cell phone tower’s location if the phone’s GPS isn’t getting a good reading. If they let you make the radius smaller then it creates a lot of false fence-crossings. As phones get better a reporting reliably accurate location then I suspect Alarm.com will decrease the minimum radius.
I would like to see some sort of Geo Fence tied to a wifi hot spot. I know this would be complex to make sure it can not be spoofed, but I would like to see a way for a Geo Fence to be tied to the same wifi network the panel is on, that shoudl create some sort of secure saftey check. I would assume most home wifi reach just out side the home as I can see most of my neighbors wifi SSIDs. That would be great for when someone comes home my ideal scenario would be when my phone come in range of the wifi fence that it can open my garage door, unlock the inner door and disarm the alarm.
That’s a difficult sell, while with the App you can remember your credentials and automatically log in, you can set a passcode access lock so that if someone nabs your phone they do not gain access to the home.
Having your system disarm, unlock, and roll up the garage door simply by proximity to your home is awfully risky. It would be difficult to pull off, too. At least effectively. Typically a phone switching from cell to wifi kills internet connection for upward of 15 seconds while the new connection is established. Depending on when your cell connects to wifi as you near your home (or if it even manages to do so, not all routers are created equal) You are likely to have had the time to open the garage, unlock the door, and start keying in the code before the rule would kick in.
Love the concept but 1) don’t think Wifi would be the right way to go, and 2) you have to be careful with entry capabilities that don’t require interaction. Wifi is great for enhancing location services but is too unreliable to be a trigger by itself. For example, maybe it drops and reconnects as you are driving away from your house, opening your garage door for the day. Even the Kwikset locks that use bluetooth for proximity require you to actually touch the lock to open it, to prevent unintended actions.
Of note, you could use a driveway sensor to trigger certain actions, such as turn on the porch lights at night. We do this and I like the feature. But, the logic is frustratingly limited and you obviously can’t use it for access control.