Information about Geofence. 

Switch to presets automatically when you come home or leave the house. 

  • Switch automatically between  'home' and 'away from home' based on your location. 
  • This functionality requires a stable internet connection an operates on the background. 
  • Works with a big radius around your house, which ensures reliable input when you're not at home, prevents false operation by a weak GPS siganl or loosing the WIFI signal at home and uses less battery. 
  • Requires an IOS 8.0 or higher and an Android version 3.2 or higher. 

Activate Geofence. 

Geofence HomeWizard . In the app go to 'menu > account' and enable 'activate geofencing'. The first time you will be asked to add your home-location. This can be changed later on when needed. 

When you a multiple person household who all use HomeWizard, then Geofencing can also work with multiple devices at the same time. Enable 'activate Geofencing' on the other smartphones, so that the HomeWizard knows who is at home/not at home. The preset 'not at home' will now be activated when all persons are not at home or when everyone is back at home. 

In practice. 

Don't walk out of your home hoping that the lights will turn off directly when Geofencing is activated. Geofencing uses a wide range to see if you are at home/not at home. With the current state of technology, this is the best way to use Geofencing for daily use. (read more under 'how does it work?') What is daily use? When you leave home to go to work and you really aren't at home, Geofencing should activate the preset 'away'. When you are close to home, the lights are activated by Geofencing and are on when you arrive home. Don't expect that Geofencing will change the preset to 'away' when you to the neighbours to deliver a package. The technique is not ready for this and this also isn't a desirable use case. After activating Geofence, it's best to test this for a few days and see how Geofencing suits your situation. When you leave/come home you will receive a notification from the app, so you know that there was a switch and that everything is working. The idea behind this is that the preset automatically changes. The broad range provides the most accuracy and prevents false switching because of a bad WIFI connection or GPS signal. 

How does it work?

A Geofence is a virtual demarcation of a certain geographical region, in this case a wide area around your home. When you enter this area, (e.g. come home) the preset 'at home' is activated. When you leave the area (e.g. go to work), the preset 'not at home' is activated. How doest the HomeWizard know where you are? The location services on your Smartphone tells the HomeWizard where your are located. Apple and Google have advanced software in their operation systems which keep track of where you are with complex algorithms and hardware (WIFI, GPS and GSM chips). With this, Geofencing can check if you enter the area, leave it of stay at one place. The HomeWizard app uses the location services as input, in this case to to switch presets. This makes the accuracy of Geofencing dependent on the accuracy of the smartphone. The IOS version of 8 or higher are good enough, so Geofencing requires IOS 8 or higher. Android is compatible from Android 2.3, but there are differences per smartphone in their accuracy, based on how often GPS is activated and a WIFI signal is present in the background. Using the location services can have an impact on the battery life of the smartphone, but when you use other apps with location services (e.g. Foursquare), there will be little to no difference. 

The details. 

  • Do you have a multiple person household? Then everyone should have a smartphone with the HomeWizard app installed and Geofencing activated. When this is not feasible for all family members/residents, we advice you to not use Geofencing. 
  • There are no good solutions for these situations yet. Both the HomeWizard app and the smartphone need a stable internet connection. When you leave the area, a message will be sent once to switch the presets. When there is no connection at this moment, the message will be lost. 
  • Geofence can also switch from the 'holiday' preset to the 'home' preset and from the 'sleep' preset to the 'away' preset when these situations arise.
  •  Note: when you use a VPN connection on your smartphone, this can influence the accuracy of the location services and this also impacts Geofencing (this depends on the type of Smartphone used).