Next school year, my son will be left home after school for a few hours while my wife and I are at work. I’m looking for a way to detect when he’s home and have the front door unlock (among other automation scripts that are in place).
I came across this post and was going to get the Tile Pro as it seemed to check off all my requirements:
- I could put it in his backpack where it can be forgotten.
- long battery life.
- Through the Home Assistant integration, it can trigger when it gets in range.
- It also has a few other beneficial things, so I was thinking of putting one on each of our bicycles in case they’re ever stolen. Hell, I could look into putting one on my cat’s collar in case she ever gets out.
Then I came across some concerning articles regarding data harvesting. The whole reason I started self-hosting was to prevent data harvesting, so it seems like the Tile is a non-starter for me.
Has anyone been in this (or a similar) situation? Mainly, I’m looking for a device I can put in my son’s backpack that can trigger when he’s within range, so the house will open for him. BLE seems like it might be a solution, though I run my server on an old Dell r720 enterprise server in my basement, so I don’t currently have Bluetooth functionality (and it’s pretty far away from the front door, 20+ feet), though getting that is not a dealbreaker for me.
- Addendum: To people saying just get a key: we have a key for him. I have a monolith sized server in my basement that automates most everything in my house these days, and was curious if anyone had set up something similar to what I was thinking. Home automation is very much a hobby, and I’m using it to learn new things.
Yeah, I have an August lock right now. That one is nice because I can keep the out-facing lock the same, so people like my father-in-law don’t get flustered. Ultimately, I’m trying to solve this in the most complicated way possible for me. I could just give him a key, but where’s the fun in that?
What you mentioned with the proxy is probably the way I’ll have to go.
This lock has a keypad, so the kid just needs to remember that. It has a key also, but if the kid never has the key, they can never lose it.
Does your August lock allow multiple codes? I’ve got a Quickset keypad deadbolt that does, and that allowed me to set a code I gave my neighbor, and the lock reports which code was used. If yours does something similar, you can give kiddo a separate code, then when that code gets used after school, the house does the needful. No key to lose or tag to track that way.