Geofence and VPN?

D

dwfj

Young grasshopper
Oct 22, 2014
38
6
New Jersey
OK, so I took the advice of many on this forum and installed a router with a vpn server. No port forwarding! The vpn works great with a laptop and my Iphone. Apparently I didn't think it through because now the geofence doesn't function on the iphone. Assuming that I would have to remember to turn on the vpn client on the phone before leaving the house, the geofence does not function anyway. I'm guessing BI looks at the
WAN connection and sees that it isn't an external IP? Don't know. This is a major bummer because the geofence action also sent a link to Homeseer, setting the alarm and other stuff.
 
Correct the Geo-fencing feature requires communicating with the BI server at the time you cross the imaginary Geo-fence line which would be well outside your WiFi coverage so it won't work for away or home switching without an active VPN connection or port forwarded. I got around this issue because I had a SmartThings Hub I used for Presence detection to arm/disarm my alarm already so I installed the BI Fusion integration for BI so the SamrtThings hub controls my BI profiles when my hub changes to Home, Away, or Night.
 
Did you activate the VPN before you left your house or work, if so it was likely connected via WiFi then as you drove away from the WiFi source it switched to cellular and the VPN most likely dropped. I never tried it via VPN because I figured it would be unreliable and a pain to remember to activate and the whole point of Geo-fencing is to not have to mess with setting things manually as you arrive and go but I would have expected it to work as long as your cellular connection remains strong from the time you activate the tunnel until you cross the Geo-fence line.
 
Yeh, I'm going to have to monitor what the VPN does when I leave the next time, maybe try it with and without WIFI on when I leave. But you're right, that's not the way to go anyway. I'm lucky to remember my keys, let alone turning on VPN! Just curious to see if it does work. I'll have to look into something on the Homeseer side for a plug-in with geo-fence capabilities. Thanks for your input.
 
OK, since my reason for using the geofence was to notify Homeseer to subsequently set up alarm conditions, lighting, etc., I installed the Geofency app on my iphone and the PHLocation PI in HS3 and it is working great. Seems to be very reliable. Now I do what I need to do in HS3, including sending profile changes and camera commands to BI from HS3.
 
Glad you got it working how you want.
 
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