Haiku Proximity

[serky]

Hi,

I have constantly tweaked the area set to turn on the proximity flag. It seems to not be reliable, at least for my area. Is there something that could be written to check my current proximity every so often and turn the flag on and off? I am finding the flag doesn't turn off and takes a long time to turn on in and out of my selected zone, whatever I tweak it to. I have set it pretty far from my home to give time to to turn on but is is never reliable enough to use. Any ideas to make this feature I really find useful to be more reliable?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[lupinglade]

Its important to understand that the way it works is by checking what cell tower you are connected to. This means that in order for the feature to know you are in a certain area, it must be within reach of a cellular tower or at least there must be a few towers around the routes to the area and your radius would need to then be increased. You need to try different radiuses to try to encapsulate the ideal # of cell towers. If you leave the volume on, Haiku makes a Ping (sonar type) sound that lets you know when you enter or leave the area.

PS. The feature may also use WiFi networks to some degree. Its up to Apple on that portion though.

 

[serky]

Does it continuously check? It seems that if I leave the area and it misses turning off the flag, it never checks again when I might be in a better cell area. I hear the ding but I only get a 50/50 success rate at best for now. I was wondering how often my location is checked for the flag.

I am always messing around with the radiuses. The problem is I am getting too far from home to make it useful to do things when it turns on. I set a flag to turn on for 5 minutes when my proximity flag turns on to try to extend the time before I will be home soon enough. That works fine if the flag turns on.

Thanks,

Jason

 

[lupinglade]

The times when it doesn't succeed, does the ding still play or not?

Its handled by iOS, so its hard to say for sure, but it does seem to respond even "delayed" when it realizes the location has changed from what I've seen. You shouldn't (hopefully) need to set the radius that high, have you tried with a smaller radius but by moving it around a bit around the home? Its not necessarily the best to put the home in the center of the circle, it really depends on the layout of the towers and which routes to your home are available. We could possibly add a GPS option, but then your battery would probably drain very quickly.

 

[serky]

I have messed around with the radius all the time. I will go back to a smaller one with the circle not on the house. I was so far out that the circle was larger than my property. I know it depends on cell service. I was trying to see if once I get in my radius if it checks more than one time or a method to check every so often so i don't have to remember to manually turn off the proximity flag when not home.

Thanks,

Jason

 

[lupinglade]

You may need it to be significantly larger than your property, you have to make sure it covers some cell towers. Once this is setup right, it should notice the change every time, even if it takes it a little bit longer to notice initially. But again we don't write that portion of the code, so its hard to say for sure how it works.

 

[fearsno1]

i am having some of the same problems you describe, my flag on my iPhone works fine about 90% of the time, just every now and then it doesn't set the flag for some reason, but now my wife's iPhone only works about 30-40% of the time. not sure why that is. A GPS feature would be nice, but i understand about the battery life issue.

you said that you had the flag bigger than your property, i am not sure how big that is but i have mine set to about a 4-5 mile radius.

 

[jmorris644]

Would it be possible to add the home WiFi as a proximity trigger? I use a WiFi mesh for my whole property and I get a WiFi signal as soon as i turn into my driveway.

Joe

 

[tigers]

That would be great: no GPS always on, less battery drainage. Also it could switch from one interface to another when the wi fi Is detected. Currently I can access my system in 3G only if I'm outside my wi fi coverage so it would be nice if it triggered the proximity flag on once I'm near and then switch to my @home interface.

 

[lupinglade]

This is something Apple has to implement. I think they do use WiFi stations, but since we have no access to the code there is no way to tell exactly how it works.

 

[tigers]

So you're saying that you have no way of knowing the name of the current wi fi network? That's a big limitation even for Apple standards…

 

[jmorris644]

@lupinglade I am not sure you understood. I was not thinking that WiFi signals would be used for triangulation purposes. I was thinking that when I turn into my driveway and my iPhone "sees" the home WiFi signal that it will activate that connection.

Maybe there is no callback function to review a change in network status. I have not personally looked at the network API for iOS. But I thought that there possibly would be one.

Joe

 

[tigers]

Yes, that's exactly what I'd want too.
Sort of:

WHEN SSID=="myhomewifi" THEN turn on proximity flag

It should not rely on GPS or AGPS anymore.

 

[lupinglade]

There may be a way to figure out the wifi network name, although I don't think there is an official API -- however the real problem is that Apple does not allow apps to run in the background, so there is no way Haiku can constantly check this to make this sort of thing happen in the background.

 

[tigers]

Then how do those apps that keep sending messages in the notification bar even when unopened? For example whatsapp that brings up notifications even when I am not running it in the background? Or those apps that notify me of a free app every day?
I tuoght real multitasking was possible since iOS 4.