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.
Definitely make sure you think through all the physical security implications of having your house automatically unlock in any scenario.
Have the house auto unlock when getting home on a bicycle, sounds convenient until, as you point out, they could get stolen and now the thief has a convenient way to unlock your house. So you would not want that.
You would definitely not want the house to STAY unlocked when something like a tag is in range. If your kid is home alone, you want them to be able to re-lock the house (or in general, you want to be able to lock your house while the kid is home).
Whatever solution you wind up with, you are going to be trading physical security for ease of use (and complicated fun task). Be safe. Make sure the tradeoffs are actually thought through and worth it.
Very good point that I hadn’t given though to. Thanks!
Or you know, he’s gonna brag to friends who are gonna talk about it and backpack is now key (that a lot of people know about) to a house probably filled with expensive gadgets.