Local expression in Rule does not evaluate as they used to do

[Fanan]

My question is in the topic: Is it possible for MSR to tell which (or how many) familymembers are home? I just wounder if it's even possible to create something with MSR to generate that kind of information? A scenario this would come in handy, is when I come home from work, or from a late night with friends, and I just want to ask Google home, which familymember is home. There's a lot more scenarios I could think of, but the aim of this post is to figure out if it's even possible. I've seen (kind of complicated) solutions with HA, and that's not my first pick - if it's possible to choose.
If I would to create all the different combination with five familymembers, there are 120 different combinations - so that's not what I'm intending to do...

[LibraSun]

Possibilities:

• Examine last lock code entered at front door (requires family members to key in code upon leaving, plus some logic around the order of locking/unlocking to distinguish coming from going);
• Occupancy sensors, such as those provided by ecobee thermostats (cannot distinguish individuals, of course);
• Requiring everyone to utter a specific phrase to your Home Assistant on entry or exit, such that a virtual switch's ON or OFF position reflects their current status; (this seems like the most sensible approach)
• "IN" / "OUT" RF tag(s) near front door which family members can tap to indicate status, then relay to your HA hub via Tasker (the "IN" / "OUT" markers could just as easily be Tasker-created "scenes" that appear as "app icons" on the phones' Home screens);

All food for thought.

[toggledbits]

@fanan I think the question you mean to ask is "how would I do this?" and that question has already been answered:

@fanan said in Is it possible for MSR to tell which (or how many) familymembers are home?:

I've seen (kind of complicated) solutions with HA, and that's not my first pick - if it's possible to choose.

It is not an easy problem to solve. And the problem is not MSR or whatever way you choose to do the implementation. MSR (or Lua, Python, C++, whatever) is just an implementation tool for the solution. Your first problem is in the qualifying criteria: your stated criterium "not complicated", and your unstated-but-always-implied criterium "reliable/accurate". The reason you are seeing so many varied solutions and that they are complicated, is that reliable, simple solutions don't exist with the available technology at a price that's tolerable. Consider some of the more common solutions:

• Phone GPS — increasingly unreliable due to phone vendors disabling background processing for supporting apps (except their own) for reasons of battery life and, now, privacy laws;
• Phone presence via Wi-Fi connection coordination with on-site WAPs (i.e. when a phone connects to your home Wi-Fi network, you know its owner is home) — requires specific hardware choices for the network (e.g. included customer premise equipment from your ISP may not give you the data you need), and often insufficiently reliable because phones may "sleep" Wi-Fi during periods of rest (phone and owner), users may turn off Wi-Fi for one reason or another, etc.
• Bluetooth or RFID or similar local "beaconing" — a whole new set of transmitters and detectors needed; there are advantages to this, such as not just whole-house presence detection, but per-room (or even finer) location detection, but generally, the cost/complexity makes these troublesome.
• "Wasp in a Box" — looking for signs of life in motion sensors, manual light operation, A/V or HVAC activity, and other inputs derived from the existing HA devices in the home; large numbers of inputs can drive up complexity, and there are other problems like competing with automated light controls, and "quiet" periods like sleep/rest (there was recently a post in these forums about a sensor that could detect human respiration, even during rest, but again, more sensors and more cost).

Each has trade-offs, and all of them quickly sacrifice reliability/accuracy when any other variable trends negative as well. You want a simpler solution? It's just going to be less reliable. You want a cheaper solution? Less reliable. That's just where we are now.

IMO, the most successful solution is likely to incorporate multiple strategies, and I believe there is no completely generic answer, at least at this time. It may be a good AI problem, as learning and adapting to behaviors of the occupants is likely a useful input. At the moment, any solution is going to be very individual: tuned to the environment and behavior of the observed, balanced complexity, cost, and reliability of (and by) the observer.

[Fanan]

I can tell by your answers, that I didn't ask the question as I intended. I already have a plan for what solution i want to have to know if my wife or a special child is home. But what I was really asking is if it's possible for me to ask my Google assistant; "Who's home?" And the answer could be: "Linda and Maja is home" or "Maja and Ebba is home" or "Andreas, Linda and Ebba is home". I can already see in the HA app, who's home, or where they are. But I can't ask the smart assistant and get a smart response. That was my intension when I asked earlier. Hopefully you can see the real question now. I don't know if what I'm asking, is possible with MSR?

[toggledbits]

Is it possible at all?

[Fanan]

@toggledbits Spot on!
I read about it, but I have forgetten where - probably in the HA community. If I come across it again, I'll post a link here.

[LibraSun]

It's possible, in theory:
A. Represent each occupant by a virtual switch, so that its condition can be known / polled by MSR;
B. Create an Expression in MSR which generates a text string based on the results of (A)
C. Create a routine on your Google Assistant that executes a Scene or turns on a virtual Device in response
D. Use a plug-in like VeraAlexa to utter the stored phrase, with MSR firing this Rule in response to (C)

Something along those lines.

[therealdb]

I’m doing something similar (ie what’s the pool temp? Or is the laundry done?) by using HA Bridge and calling a Vera function via HTTP. I think HA has this feature out of the box, using their hue emulation on Alexa or Nabu Casa.