Home Management Controller Location Polling for Occupancy Detection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing smart home systems face challenges in determining the status of mobile devices, particularly when GeoFencing fails to detect the location of mobile devices, leading to undetectable failure modes and uncertainties in occupancy estimation.
Innovation Solution
A home management system that proactively requests the location of registered mobile devices using push notifications, enabling background location determination and triggering appropriate system behaviors based on the received status, including detecting failures and adjusting security and automation settings.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Extent of automation
If GeoFencing is used to determine mobile device location, then location triggering is automated, but location status becomes undetectable when GeoFence is not triggered
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements a feedback mechanism where the home management controller periodically polls mobile devices for their location status. When a device fails to report its location within an expected timeframe or when location information is needed but not provided by GeoFencing, the controller actively requests location data. This feedback loop ensures that location status is continuously monitored and detected even when passive GeoFencing triggers are not activated.
2Ease of operation
If passive GeoFencing monitoring is used, then system operations are simplified, but occupancy estimation accuracy deteriorates due to undetectable failure modes
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by proactively polling mobile devices for their location status before occupancy estimation is needed. The home management controller maintains an up-to-date location status for each registered mobile device through periodic polling, ensuring that accurate location information is already available when occupancy estimation must be performed, thereby eliminating delays and uncertainties.
Solution Approach 2:
Mobile devices actively report their own location status to the home management controller when polled. Each device determines its own location using its built-in location services and communicates this information back to the controller, enabling self-service location reporting that improves occupancy estimation accuracy without requiring complex external monitoring systems.
3Reliability
If active polling is implemented to determine mobile device status, then location detection reliability is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The home management controller implements periodic polling of mobile devices at strategically determined intervals rather than continuously. The polling frequency is adjusted based on factors such as time of day, expected occupancy patterns, and whether the home is currently occupied or vacant. This periodic approach maintains high location detection reliability while significantly reducing system complexity and energy consumption compared to continuous monitoring.
Data Source
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AI summary
A home management system comprises a controller configured to determine that a status of a particular mobile device registered with the home management controller is of concern; transmit to the particular mobile device a request notification to enable the registered mobile device to determine a device location in the background; receive a location notification from the particular mobile device in response to the request notification; and based on the received location notification, determine the status of the particular mobile device.