Is there a way to trigger a geofence profile outside of BI?

Weather_Junkie

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So I want to use geofencing to trigger home and away profiles but, I have 3 other family members in the house that don't have the BI app and would never open it if they did. Regardless, I'd like to get everyone's phones set up to trigger the BI profiles and would rather not spend the $30 on BI apps for them. I have a dumb home so I don't currently have anything in the house to let an app fire off something in my house. My co-worker mentioned something about using an app like Life360 with it's GPS functionality in conjunction with an app like ITTT to trigger something else but wasn't sure BI could do that.
 

Terk

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IFTTT doesn't work with BI, you can share your purchases in the Apple store with family numbers if you'd like (I think you can share with up to 5?). The BI apps Geo-fencing ability requires you to open a port through your firewall to the BI server which is less secure than using a VPN connection for remote viewing. The only method I've found to enable Geo-fencing capabilities without opening a port in your firewall is using Geo-fencing and presence sensors on your phones with a SmartThings hub and using BI Fusion v3.0 to integrate that with your BI server, I've been using it this way for months reliably. Of course a SmartThings hub would only be a good solution if you already have one as the gen2 hub costs around $90 at the moment.
 

Weather_Junkie

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IFTTT doesn't work with BI, you can share your purchases in the Apple store with family numbers if you'd like (I think you can share with up to 5?). The BI apps Geo-fencing ability requires you to open a port through your firewall to the BI server which is less secure than using a VPN connection for remote viewing. The only method I've found to enable Geo-fencing capabilities without opening a port in your firewall is using Geo-fencing and presence sensors on your phones with a SmartThings hub and using BI Fusion v3.0 to integrate that with your BI server, I've been using it this way for months reliably. Of course a SmartThings hub would only be a good solution if you already have one as the gen2 hub costs around $90 at the moment.
That's what I get for being the only Android owner in the house but Apple sharing on their devices would at least save me $20. As far as open ports, I just got stunnel up and running so if I got Geofence working, that ought to be safe enough right?
 

Terk

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Yeah, It's definitely better than http since any traffic you send through is encrypted, however its still an open port which provides an easier attack vector than a fully secured router using a VPN tunnel.
 

Weather_Junkie

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Yeah, It's definitely better than http since any traffic you send through is encrypted, however its still an open port which provides an easier attack vector than a fully secured router using a VPN tunnel.
I'm going to tackle VPN tunnel next but knew stunnel was safer than http. Thanks!
 
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