Hue with ibeacon (homekit)

[I am Sampson]

Has anyone spent any time working with ibeacons?

I have 19 colour hue lights/strips and 2 taps across 3 floors but still use the standard hue app (plus huetro on an old surface rt stuck on the wall).

I'd like to explore something better like the home app people talk of, but £10 for an app is excessive for me unless it is exceptional. Does it support iBeacons?

I just got an ibeacon for my car (awarestack) and was thinking about it for hue lights as I have a spare one too (though obviously need many more)

Does anyone know of any ibeacon solutions to hue? Which to buy, what apps/software to use etc.
I'd love to walk around my house and have the lights turn on/off automatically as I enter and leave each room. That would be SERIOUSLY futuristic!

 

[BradWould]

I would love some opinions on this as well. I did some research on it a few months ago but never put any real work into figuring it out. The idea is perfect. You got me thinking again. I have an ecobee3 thermostat with some motion sensors and quite a few hue bulbs. I'm still hoping that ecobee allows access to the motion sensor through ifttt in the future.

 

[I am Sampson]

I've seen some work with it using a specific ibeacon device called the estimote. You only have to google"ibeacon hue" to get that. However the estimote devices are really expensive, normal ibeacon things are really cheap. The one I got in my car, about the size of a £2 coin costs only something like $9. I'd happily spend that for each room and get tracking for me throughout my home (even better if it can accept multiple users by giving guests/family a watch strap ibeacon too).

 

[simonx314]

I'm still hoping that ecobee allows access to the motion sensor through ifttt in the future.

The free Eve Home app allows you to use the Ecobee occupancy sensors as Homekit Triggers. Problem is, it takes 3 minutes for the Ecobee to report occupancy changes. So you can't use it for turning lights on when you enter a room, but it works fine for turning things off after you leave.

 

[I am Sampson]

I had a play around with this using just 2 alertme beacons that I already had and an app called Beecon.
Results were a little inconsistent with the app/beacons not always sure which one I was closest too. Hard to know if it was the app or the beacons fault (as the beacons weren't made for this use).
I need to do some more testing.
I was going to buy a bunch of beacons that the Beecon app support suggested when I initially had setup problems, but they turned out to only have 2 week battery life!!! Not sure how common that is with beacons.

 

[ericgtr12]

I would love to see something like this, too. I used to have WEMO switches and the WEMO motion was perfect for this, you could have it automatically turn on the switch then set it to automatically turn off after so many minutes and it worked great. I've switched to Hue bulbs and have been unable to find any real elegant solutions, IFTTT has way too much lag for instant on instant off like this.