WinPhone trigger action based on GPS or Geofencing

[psyctto]

Hi, I just got my HomeGenie setup and zwave switches/outlets up and running and was wondering if anybody had done any work with GPS locations or Genfencing...  or if I was just missing an option somewhere in the WinPhone app.

I put together an automation script to turn on my house porch lights when I come home using WiFi, which works ok...  but not great.  I got around the little issues of WiFi inconsistencies with delayed file writes for storing last time I came home if it was within a certain time, and only returning true if the time delta was great than a certain time.
But WiFi is proving to be more unreliable than I had originally hoped...

My next step was to use some GPS tracking apps to log data, then parse the data out with some automation scripts.  But this may be more work than it's worth.

Is there anyway current to use HomeGenie itself and the WinPhone app to complete these tasks?


Thanks in advance.
Great project, I really love the flexibility.  I had originally picked up a Wink, but that had some issue getting setup and the lack of customization was pretty annoying...  Also, I'm not a fan of that stuff being out on some remote server over the internet.

[NicoVermeir]

This is currently not possible in the Windows Phone app for one reason. Geofencing is a Windows Phone 8.1 feature, the app is currently targetting WP8.0

but I agree that it's an awesome idea

[psyctto]

I agree, relative to the built-in functionality of 8.1 and geofencing.  But geofencing is really just a GPS proximity sensing function, so needing it built in really isn't necessary...  it's easy enough to compare GPS coordinates to others.

It would be nice if there was an option in the app to say complete any task, like turning on a light or automation routine, when within 1 mile of a set of coordinates.  I don't really want to learn another language, but I suppose I could make my own app/background task to do this...
I was just hoping this was either on the plate to be done or somebody had a solution already.

[NicoVermeir]

the difference is that when you implement this yourself, your app will need to keep running in the background. WP8 only allows one app to do this at a time, this is mostly used for sports tracking.
big downside: this has a negative impact on your battery.

if you use the built-in geofencing then you register the trigger in the OS itself. The OS checks for the location triggers and fires your app when you are at the location. result: no battery impact and it even works when using sports tracker or other background GPS apps