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.
  • GreatAlbatrossMAEnglish
    16·
    1 month ago

    Security wise, while I love automating everything, I personally would just give them a physical key to the front door. (Or an RFID keyfob system).
    What you’d be achieving is the equivalent of keyless car entry, with the additional downside that your son can’t choose not to open the door if something sketchy happens.
    And instead of entrusting them with a traditional key that they can treat responsibly, you’re just putting something in their backpack that they don’t have to think about.

    If you really want to do it, basically anything in homeassistant that has wireless capability and a state would probably work.
    A zigbee radio, and pretty much any device doing anything would do it.
    When device_name becomes available, activate door opening.