Hi everyone! I wanted to share my experience with setting up a smart presence automation system in my home. The goal was to trigger notifications when someone leaves the house, but I quickly realized that the existing setup was too sensitive due to multiple access points in my house.
Initially, I tried using a simple flow that triggered whenever a phone lost its IP address on the local network. However, this led to false triggers whenever someone switched between access points, which happens frequently in my setup. I didn’t want unnecessary notifications, so I decided to add a delay to the automation.
The challenge was figuring out how to implement this delay effectively. After some research, I discovered that I could modify the flow to include a conditional check. Instead of triggering immediately, the flow now waits for one minute after detecting that a device has left the network. If the device remains offline for that duration, it sends out a notification.
To achieve this, I utilized the built-in delay functionality within the flow editor. While there wasn’t a direct ‘AND’ condition available, I found that using a combination of timers and state checks worked perfectly. This approach not only reduced false positives but also made the system more reliable.
I’d love to hear how others have tackled similar issues or if there are more advanced techniques to refine these automations further. It’s been a great learning experience, and I’m excited to see how I can expand this setup in the future!