Setting up presence detection

Presence detection detects if people are home, which is the most valuable input for automation. Knowing who is home or where they are, will open a whole range of other automation options:

• Send me a notification when my child arrives at school
• Turn on the AC when I leave work

Screenshot of Open Peer Power showing a school, work and home zone and two people.

Adding presence detection

There are different ways of setting up presence detection. Usually the easiest way to detect presence is by checking which devices are connected to the network. You can do that if you have one of our supported routers. By leveraging what your router already knows, you can easily detect if people are at home.

It’s also possible to run an app on your phone to provide detailed location information to your Open Peer Power instance. For iOS and Android, we suggest using the Open Peer Power Companion app.

During the setup of Open Peer Power Companion on your mobile device, the app will ask for permission to allow the device’s location to be provided to Open Peer Power. Allowing this will create a device_tracker entity for that device which can be used in automations and conditions.

Zones

Zones allow you to name areas on a map. These areas can then be used to name the location a tracked user is, or use entering/leaving a zone as an automation trigger or condition. Zones can be set up from the integration page in the configurations screen.