I’m having an issue with the Geo-Services. It doesn’t not seem to detect when the mobile devices are leaving the geofences. Both have been out of the fence for 2 hours now, but none of my alerts or rules have taken effect. I also havent received the no communication alert, so it seems that the devices are communicating with the server just fine.
Note that Geo-services triggers based on movement of the phone by cell-tower triangulation, not GPS. A number of factors can affect reliability. Check the following when you are setting your Geofence and troubleshooting:
- Low power mode on the phone may hinder geoservices.
- Carriers often disable data when voice is active. If you are on the phone while leaving/entering the fence, it may not register. It may be complicated further if you did not exit the fence very far.
- If the Alarm.com app had not been opened since the phone was rebooted, geoservices may not have been active.
If both phones must leave the Geofence to trigger the alert and one fails to register you would not see the rule fire.
I have figured out that geofence is not very robust for all the reasons Jason listed.
I wanted it to work on a family of four for arm reminder.
But odds of all of the phones working right is very low.
For testing I made four different rules to separate phones.
Mine works OK most of the time. I think because i use my app more.
But it even seems that in the last month it has gotten worse.
Bummer that I can’t use this feature. It would be good.
The more phones you add to one rule the more chance for disruption, if the rule requires all phones to perform the same action, for example leave a geofence. That’s not to say it can’t work, but user activity has a heavy impact.