→ Home Zone beta 9 (Mac OS X 10.4 only)
I’ll call it the Birthday Release, since today is my birthday. 
What’s new:
- Added Network IP/Host trigger
- Added Airport enable/disable actions
- Added iChat/Adium status action
- Added intelligent trigger evaluation; zone availabily test will check easiest triggers first and skip unneccessary checks of harder triggers. Order is Network, Airport, Bluetooth. This way, you can save bluetooth power by also defining a network/airport trigger in a zone where “any” trigger is sufficient to determine availability. You can also cut airport scan load by defining a network IP trigger with your router’s IP address instead.
- Made actions rearrangable, defining execution order (drag to rearrange)
- Improved responsiveness
- Copy any custom actions to ~/Library/Application Support/Home Zone/Actions/ as Home Zone updates will override your actions otherwise
As always, please feel free to comment on problems, suggestions or things that just work.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
How do you get this to work? It cannot see any of the wireless networks in my area.
June 6th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Happy Birthday, Dude!
June 7th, 2007 at 12:34 am
When can I give you my money? This ap. is great and I use it every single day (well, except the weekends). Thanks.
June 7th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Maybe you have the scanning disabled (like i had). turn it on in the preferences. That had worked for me!
Happy Birthday Jonas. Have a great day, your app is realy great. What about a german translation? You are like me from Germany, could it be possible?
June 7th, 2007 at 1:17 am
I had begun with a translation, should i send it to you, when i’m ready?
June 7th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Great release Jonas
Happy birthday! Sorry I didn’t get the chance earlier to congradulate you.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:07 am
Jonas,
Happy Birthday! And I, too, want to know when you’ll start charging for your app because I’ll be one of the first to buy it. But I’ve got a small observation with the latest release, however.
I’ve noticed about 2 or 3 minutes after establishing a bluetooth connection with my Blackberry 8100 (Pearl), all of a sudden, all my ‘Away’ actions get executed and its because my Mac looses its bluetooth services. The bluetooth system panel locks up and I can’t access any settings.
It didn’t do this in .8 (although I’ve only had it running less than a day before it was upgraded) and I’ve only noticed this when I have iChat running (maybe that’s a lead). I’ve also noticed that by quiting Home Zone, I can ‘unfreeze’ the bluetooth system panel which makes me believe there is something odd going on in the software.
It could be my phone but so far, I’ve got no evidence to support it.
I love this app and I am looking forward to all the great things you’ve got planned!
June 7th, 2007 at 2:29 am
Dude – wicked awesome birthday release man
I’ve been craving some of this stuff for awhile—feels so good to have it at my finger tips
UI looks improved slightly too! (or maybe that was in the last version and I didn’t notice…)
June 7th, 2007 at 5:39 am
hey, thanks so much for this awesome program!!
just fyi, i’ve had to revert to the prior release due to the new .9 version freezing my clock!
i don’t know why this is happening, but ever since the upgrade, my clock in the menubar doesn’t respond until i quit HZ.
happppy bday!!
June 7th, 2007 at 7:51 am
How long is your bluetooth scan interval? Does it help when you increase it?
June 7th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Once Home Zone goes final, I’ll think about localizations. A german one should definitely be possible, obviously.
June 7th, 2007 at 7:54 am
Chris, do you have any bluetooth triggers? If so, does removing them help?
June 7th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Happy birthday, and thanks for this exciting new release!
June 7th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Hi there.
Happy birthday mate.
That’s an unexpected release… I thought you’d be too busy thinking about WWDC hehe. Congrats n thanks.
Cheers,
Shawin.
June 7th, 2007 at 8:40 am
You mention custom actions. Is there any documentation on how to create custom actions?
June 7th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I started writing something about actions at http://metaquark.de/homezone/howto/ but it’s obviously not finished. Some people have started to create their own actions by looking at the provided actions, which is very clever. Just make sure to modify the Info.plist with your values and move your custom actions to ~/Library/Application Support/Home Zone/Actions/ to make sure they don’t get overwritten. I’ll finish the howto as soon as I’ve got time.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Happy Birthday Jonas
I love this app but have noticed my Mac occasionally runs leaving zone actions for my bluetooth mobile when it shouldn’t (the mobile is sitting on the desk next to my Mac).
I’m using the default 8 second scan interval and suspect the problem can be traced down to a bluetooth interference/flakiness on the mobile side so how about adding a count for how many times to try to find the device before launching actions to Home Zone preferences:
Home Zone scans for my bluetooth mobile ever 8 seconds but doesn’t launch any actions until it has tried 2 times to find my mobile where 2 is set in the preferences.
This would also help prevent false action launches on Airport networks which occasionally drop out due to interference.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:32 am
That setting is there, “additional scans needed before trigger is disabled”. Set it to 2 to achieve what you suggested.
June 7th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Hey Jonas, you forgot to change the “Pause iTunes” script to make it check if iTunes is running first. But we all know how to do this now hehe.
And there’s not only the clock that gets frozen, but all the apple things like dotmac sync, volume, airport and battery icons.
I’m only using bluetooth triggers with one phone, triggering itunes and isync. That’s all.
Cheers.
June 7th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Hi. Congratulations for this great app.
Which type of software will it be? Open Source? Donationware? Freeware?… If it is one of this i am going to make a post in my free software’s blog about it.
Thanks
June 7th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
great work – been looking forward to this release for a while!
is it possible to have the printer setup utility automatically quit after it has selected the printer?
can i just make this change to some script itself?
June 7th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Lovely app – although there are 2 extra features I would like to have.
Those are:
- dependency on another zone being available/unavailable in triggers (I have variety of devices at home that I want to look for when I am at home network only; I’d like to enter stuff like “home is available AND 192.168.11.14 is available” for my RAID mounts for example).. second approach would be to make zones a tree?
- trigger for your assigned IP address substring (for example, 64.* is work for me).. extra points if you can optionally choose which interface’s address you care about.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
i do have bluetooth triggers, enable screensave and pw on leave, and set IM status on leave.
on return, disable screensaver pw.
i have tried deleting all of them however, everything in the menubar besides homezone and quicksilver is unresponsive until i quit homezone.
June 7th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
I had the same problem. SystemUIServer becomes unresponsive about a minute or so after launching HomeZone.
I only have one zone configured (bluetooth). Deleting it and starting fresh seemed to fix the problem; but I am remotely controlling it from work, so I will have to test some more when I get home.
BTW, this is a great program!
June 7th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
i’m seeing the same behavior myself – it seems that anything to the “left” of the homezone icon (which seems to be all the os x specific menu bar items – clock, airport, volume, etc – get the pinwheel when you mouse over them.
June 7th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Happy birthday, Jonas !
And exceptionally, nothing to say about Home Zone (I have an iMac !)
Just here to say : “Bon Anniversaire, Jonas et bonne WWDC !”
Michel
June 7th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Hi Jonas,
happy birthday from me as well and a nice stay at the WWDC. Unfortunately I have also a comment on Homezone: I just upgraded to the latest version and I find that if I run it on login, my clock is stuck on the menubar. I know that this sounds strange but it worked again when I shut Homezone and does work still now that I have restarted it. I am running 10.4.9 on a MacBook Pro Core Duo, language setting is German.
Anyway, it is a great program.
All the best at WWDC.
Best regards,
Thomas.
June 7th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Happy B-day from across the world (Montana, USA)!
LOVE the addition of network IP support, though I am not clear as to how to get it to work in a DHCP environment. For example, my ip here is 192.168.254.X, where X is the assigned suffix to the IP address and it changes each time. Any way to do a wild card “*” or something similar? To this point I cannot seem to make it work. Or, perhaps there is some simple solution that I am missing?
June 7th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
First of all let me say I love the changes in the new release, but there is one major show stopper that caused me to have to go back to 0.8.
When I am away for awhile once I reenter the zone, it never finds my phone again, the spinner in the configuration screen just keeps going around and around. In case it is a cellphone specific problem, i am using a Samsung u-740.
Keep up the great work!
June 7th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
James’ advice fixed all the “menubar items FREEZING” problem.
I just removed all Zones, Triggers and Actions. After re-adding everything, no more freezing
Thanks mate.
Cheers!
June 7th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Can someone check if http://metaquark.de/download/homezone-0.9.1 resolves the frozen SystemUIServer/BT check problem? It does for me, I just want to make sure it also works for you.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Home Zone is supposed to be Shareware eventually. No information on a final release date or price point though. I’ll have to see how this evolves first.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
I too have noticed HZ can’t see a wireless network it used to. It sees my home Airport Xtreme (g) just like the .8 version did. However, it can no longer see the Cisco WAP at work. This WAP doesn’t broadcast it’s presence, but you can connect if you know it’s name and password. It shows connected in the menu bar but HZ doesn’t recognize it as such. And the scanning is enabled on preferences (Airport scan interval 10 seconds.) It also shows connected to that exact Airport name on the Network status screen of system preferences.
June 7th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Happy Birthday, Jonas!
June 7th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
i am testing this version right now
June 7th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
ps: so far so good!! what seemed to be the problem?
June 8th, 2007 at 3:10 am
Jonas – HELP/Happy Birthday/Have Fun at WWDC
I’m fighting the bugs on this one. I’ve got the latest 0.9.9.1 and really like the improvements. At first the bluetooth sensing of my Blackberry was HUGELY improved relative to not having false positives.
After 0.9 I had (and continue to have) the issue of seeing my home Airport Xtreme base station but not the Cisco one at work – even though system preferences clearly shows me connected to it.
I also continued to have lists for things like changing networks or changing printers “forget” what they had been set to and revert to the 1st in the list.
To try to correct this I deleted HZ as well as the persistentstore.xml in ~/Library/Application Support/Home Zone and the plist file in ~/Library/Preferences and then downloaded HZ fresh and recreated the zones. I haven’t figured out if that solved the problem of “forgetting” which option in a action’s list I selected but NOW HZ can’t see any bluetooth device I try. It can’t see my Blackberry, OR EVEN THE BT Mightymouse I’m using as I type this.
Please help me beat back these bugs!
June 8th, 2007 at 3:38 am
Jonas,
A little more info for you. I tried deleting HZ 0.9.9.1, the plist and persistentstore.xml files again and reinstalled 0.9.8. The bluetooth problem immediately resolved itself and HZ saw my Blackberry again. I then upgraded to 0.9.9.1 and it continues to see the Blackberry. So, there seems to be a problem with setting up a new bluetooth.
I probably still have the problem of not seeing the Cisco WiFi and the forgetting of list options for changing printers or networks.
June 8th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Hi,
Love your app. Feature request:
Turn airport on briefly when the computer starts up to scan for available network.
Reason: I turn off airport at work and use network cable, but use only airport at home.
home -> work: works fine as it can detect LAN
work -> home: don’t work because it couldn’t find my home wireless network.
Thanks
June 8th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Jonas,
Further bug information. I can confirm that a fresh install of .8 and the creation of a bluetooth trigger there will continue to function (in fact appears better at avoiding false aways) when upgraded to .9 However, once upgraded I don’t seem to be able to create new functional bluetooth triggers on other devices – or even a second one based on the existing bluetooth device that is working.
After setting up my zones in the .9.9.1 version I experienced a false away but in the process HZ crashed and lost the zones I created. I imagine this relates to not updated the persistence xml doc except when the app is shutting down normally.
It also appears that if I completely power off my Powerbook that when I power it back on HZ does start as I’ve set it to – however no zones activate. I’ve let it sit there for 10 minutes and it fails to acknowledge any triggers that are clearly present. As soon as I click on configure and click on any of those zones they immediately turn green and things function. – So there is some startup bug I think.
There are some bugs here, but I really like this app. It’s going to be great when you release a production version.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Also, the app continues to occassionally crash – never did that before. The crashes take place upon a trigger executing
And the program definitely is still forgetting settings on things like change network or change printer. When it does, the setting reverts to whichever network or printer is the first in the list
June 8th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Jonas,
More info as I’m using this. It does seem prone to crash when triggers fire actions at times. I’m wondering if the crash could be it attempting to change trigger states back and forth too closely together.
If I get a false away (Airport scan interval 5, BT 8 and Network 8 with additional scans set at 3) it seems odd that the log will show a state change as quickly as it does. For instance, it shows “Trigger state changed…0″ at 12:52:34 and then “Trigger state changed…1″ at 12:52:38 – why would it show state changes within 4 seconds with the above preference settings?
June 8th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Hello. The new version delays my sleeping-time. When i close my ibook it takes about 10 – 15 seconds for it to got to sleep. When i quit home zone before it only takes 1 or 2 seconds.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:57 am
I too can no longer see my Airport network, which showed up fine in the previous release.
June 10th, 2007 at 5:14 am
Happy Birthday & Enjoy WWDC!
A addition would be this action: “Enable/Disable Bluetooth”
June 10th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Hi,
I have a problem that when Home Zone is active, iTunes streaming to an Airport Express drops the connection every other 5 seconds or so (I assume that’s the interval Home Zone uses). Quit Home Zone and everything works properly.
June 11th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
When using Bluetooth to poll my Palm Treo 650, after a very short time the Treo will hang, or go into a reboot-loop (until I disable Home Zone). The Treo seems to be attempting some action each time a poll event is sent. I see some text flash at the bottom of the Treo’s screen, but it’s too fast to read.
Has anyone had success using a Treo?
I’m hoping to get this solved — I’m loving Home Zone!
-Chris
June 12th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Hi,
Just a suggestion, if you could add something to specify your smtp server for each location?
I currently manage this via an arkward scipt that requires me to use my admin username and password, it would be great if this could be managed by location id!
Thanks for the great software.
Terry
June 12th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I’d like to use this Home Zone, but I’ve hit a snag. It won’t recognise my Bluetooth-enabled Nokia N73.
My Mac is paired with the phone, and I can synchronise it with iSync and send files to it, but Home Zone refuses to acknowledge it exists.
The spinning wheel next to the Device pull-down menu keeps spinning, no devices appear in the Devices pull-down menu, and the circle next to the Bluetooth icon in the Triggers list remains red – even after I select the phone from the Select Bluetooth Device menu.
Can anyone suggest how to get Home Zone to see my phone?
Thanks.
June 13th, 2007 at 2:02 am
Looks like a great app. I setup a “zone” that when my BB Pearl comes within range, to disable the screensaver password then stop the screensaver (aka disable the running screensaver automagically). the other side (leaving the zone) to enable the password on the screensaver and start it up. The HZ saw my BB as one of the BlueTooth devices to pick from. But as my BB gets within range/leaves the range HZ never triggers the zone. I can mimic the phone leaving/entering the zone but turning the bluetooth on/off on the phone itself.
is there anything I can do to provide you to help fix the issue?
June 13th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Looks like a very promising app. I look forward to future revisions.
My experience so far is that it never recognizes the presence of my Nokia N91. Bluetooth works fine between my phone and powerbook for all other applications that I have tried. I can select my phone via the Home Zone Cofiguration and bluetooth scanning is set to the default 8 secs, but the zone never becomes available. I don’t know what else to try.
June 13th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
With 0.9.9.1 version I no longer see any airport networks or bluetooth devices.
Have tried removing everything home zone and reinstalled…
June 13th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I really like the start of this app and I wish you the best with it. Personally I’m not a big fan of shareware, I prefer open source apps but it’s your software and this might end up being one of those apps I have to buy. (Or try and code something similar)
Anyway, I just wanted to tell of some issues I’ve been having with the BT. Originally it was working ok but then at some point, it wouldn’t find my phone. I tried turning off and then back on the bluetooth on both my phone and the computer to no avail. I decided to restart my computer in case something wasn’t getting reset properly. That seemed to do it and it now sees my phone. I don’t know if this is a OS X bluetooth bug or a bug in your code but I thought I would mention it.
The only other thing is that I found it annoying that if iTunes wasn’t open, it would open it just to pause it. I changed it to the following:
[code]
tell application "System Events"
if (get name of every process) contains "iTunes" then
tell application "iTunes"
pause
end tell
end if
end tell
[/code]
Just thought I would share. Anyone can feel free to use the above code.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Same problem as the previous three posters. Never detects my phone. It’s a SE W300i
June 14th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Update: After some restarts, Home Zone detects my Sony Ericsson k750 without problem.
Still *no* Airport networks though..
June 15th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
For anyone having problems detecting your phone, try restarting the computer. I’ve found at least that if my computer goes to sleep (sometimes, not always), it doesn’t seem to recognize my phone again until I restart. Also I’ve noticed that it doesn’t always seem to find my wireless connection either. For that, I just have to open up the config and just click on the config that uses the wireless connection in the left sidebar and it then automatically seems to find it. (I have only when connected checked, I don’t know if this makes a difference)
Hopefully the developer can get these bugs worked out because this certainly has the potential to be one of the coolest apps I’ve used on the mac!
June 16th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Tried that.
Home Zone does not recognise my Airport network, my Bluetooth-enabled phone, or my network address.
At all.
- Richard
June 17th, 2007 at 10:05 am
There seems to be a big problem regarding latency in this app…. Every time Home Zone polls, (8-10 seconds) ping times on wireless jump to over 2000 ms. This is a problem for people that do video conferencing or VoIP from their laptops….
I think this has great potential if bugs such as the one listed above are resolved.
June 18th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
You’re right, restarting seems to do the trick. I added the phone to a zone first then restarted. It works, odd though.
June 18th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Nokia just released a very nice app called Media Transfer to synch their BT enabled phones with mac applications (like iTunes and iPhoto). Would be great if there was a HZ trigger that started a Media Transfer synch when my N95 came within BT range of my mac.
BTW this is a very cool app. Great job.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:43 am
Nice work so far. One feature I’d like to see is support for the external IP. When I log into my employer’s VPN using CiscoVPN my local network IP doesn’t change, but my external IP does.
Any ideas if there’s a way to get this working?
June 19th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
I just discovered HomeZone and it looks very promising.
I am consistently seeing a crash whenever HomeZone executes an “Open File” action which points to a sparseimage file. I’ve got a crash log I can send if you think it would be useful
June 19th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Same with me when using Synergy to control my PC and Home Zone is running. Mouse stops moving every 5th second or so.
June 21st, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Tried that. Didn’t work. Homezone just refuses to see my phone.
- Richard
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
I’m seeing an issue with Home Zone not remembering files that it should open — I have a few applescripts that are supposed to run when the network changes, but after I quit and restart Home Zone the files are no longer linked.
June 27th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
i´d like to know how can i open itunes and play my playlist once i enter the zone… i know how to pause itunes but i duno how to play it..
i really duno a lot abt codes and modifying the library and those stuff… ill be glad if someone could tell me
Thanks…
June 29th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Nifty piece of software! I use it to auto-lock the macbook whenever I move away from it.
Is there any way to (re)connect the address book bluetooth connecion once the phone (re)enters the zone? I tend to dial from the address book, but now I have (to (remember to) hit the bluetooth icon in the address book every time I’ve been away. Pretty please?
Oh, and donations go where?
June 29th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Oi.
Get the zip file from here file: http://www.box.net/shared/d0szz1m7y2
Extract it’s contents. Take the “Play iTunes.homezoneaction”. Move it to “/Library/Application Support/Home Zone/Actions/”.
Restart Home Zone. You’ll find the Play Itunes action.
Cheers.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I have been looking for an application like Home Zone, so first of all, thank you! I have however had some difficulty getting it to recognise my Nokia 6300. When adding a device, the application scans continuously and can’t find the phone (Bluetooth is on and discoverable), I have to select it from the Bluetooth menu but it still doesn’t work. Any ideas? Regards, James.
July 2nd, 2007 at 7:39 pm
I have the same problem, only with my Razr V3. Any help would be much appreciated. Happy Birthday and I love the program.
July 4th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I have a problem selecting a default printer. I only get 1 in the drop down.
Mount (local, network, whatever) on entering a zone…
July 5th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Woks Great with my Motorola PEBL. It’d be so cool to get more actions or to get a tutorial for creating custom actions! Use it all the way in Venezuela! Very Cool! Got some issues at the beginning but the worked themselves out! Love it.
July 5th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Jonas,
Now that you’ve recovered (hopefully) from WWDC, when is the next release?
July 5th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
I’m sorry there’s no progress right now. Home Zone really is one of the things I do in my spare time, and real life needs some attention right now so there isn’t much spare time at all. I haven’t forgotten you all, and I still hear your comments. As time permits I’ll continue to improve Home Zone, although I’m a bit concerned that bluetooth and airport scanning by way they work seem to be not as well suited for this purpose as I’d like them to be. I’ll have to think about this a bit, but I still believe that the concept of such an application is a great thing.
July 5th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I think all the issue can be fixed with some code tweaking. Overall I think it is a good app. Just waiting for the 1.0 code.
thanks!
scott
July 5th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Great App. Works fine with my SE W810i, but can’t see any wireless networks.
Would like to have this enable/disable bluetooth feature too.
hertzi
July 8th, 2007 at 5:36 am
how about an option for changing desktop picture?
work only allows nature scenes
..
tho i have an issue with “nature scenes” not including beautiful women..
July 8th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Don’t suppose we can get a quick patch for this to run on leopard?
July 11th, 2007 at 4:19 am
Yep. I’m on the same boat. With my N73 too. I’m wondering, since people have more success with the 0.9.8 version, maybe we could try that? Anyone know where the 0.9.8 version could be downloaded?
July 11th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
You can get it at http://metaquark.de/download/homezone-0.8 – let me know if this works better for you.
July 12th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
thanks a lot Shawin… it finally works… im really glad about this program!!
Thanks from Mexico…
July 13th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I absolutely love your application, I think it’s an awesome idea, and an amazing implementation thereof. I use it to lock down my laptop when I walk away from it (and turn down the volume/set aim status), and undo that when I come back. It works very well.
I’ve been using it for a month or so now and I have no complaints. I do however have a couple suggestions:
I think you should add a trigger that can check to see if a laptop is charging, or if it’s running on batteries. Also, I think it’d be awesome if you could make an action that can change the scan intervals (to help conserve battery when not charging).
Even if those don’t get put into it, it’s still awesome, and I thank you very much for having it be free. I will donate in the future
July 15th, 2007 at 9:54 am
Some odd behaviour with the network IP trigger.
I have two zones – one for home (if IP is 192.168.1.11) and one for work (if IP is 192.168.1.42) – both networks are 192.168.1.x but are not the same network.
At home – the home zone is enabled but the work zone keeps going enable/disable/enable/disable/enable/disable constantly.
Bluetooth detection is working fine tho (a third zone)
July 15th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I had the same problem with a Nokia 6230, so I tried the old version ( 0.8 ). That works very well. But it says it is expired when I start it, so I had to set back the system time. Then I re-started 0.9 again (just to try), and that one seems to work fine too now.
I like the idea behind this program, keep on doing the good work
July 23rd, 2007 at 2:59 pm
On my MacBook Pro, Home Zone is not realizing my bluetooth phone is within reach. I tried proximity (the not as smart alternative to this before I stumbled upon Home Zone) and it knew when my phone’s bluetooth was on/off… Any ideas? Would it matter that I am using a TMobile Wing (PocketPC) ?
July 24th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I want to behave “home zone” on my macbook pro as follows:
whenever it enters my home airport WLAN it should automatically connect to my powermac and continually recheck if the network volume is mounted – and automatically remount it when it has been deconnected for any reason.
is this possible?
at the moment it mounts the volume when I enable home zone – i have attached an apple script that mounts the powermacs volume.
but whenever i demount the volume “home zone” (or the mbp was in sleep moe) “home zone” does not recheck automatically if the volume is offline and then remounts it again.
br,
mm
July 27th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Peace be unto you
Hello Mr Witt. May I engage you to provide a version of Aurora that works well in Leopard, can start a movie as an alarm, and can be purchased?
Thanks
Carlyle
July 31st, 2007 at 3:54 am
Great idea, great product. Suggest you add a facility where bluetooth scanned more than once before triggering disconnected/connected. Home Zone between phone and mac works well at work, but drops in and out at home.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:14 pm
I would love for an action that activte my Ialertu when I walk away from my computer and desac tivates it when I come within range. Any ideas?
August 6th, 2007 at 9:16 am
Hey ein super Programm!
Folgende Aufgabenstellung bekomme ich allerdings nicht ganz hin:
Ich möchte das Bildschirmschonerpasswort nur setzen, wenn mein Handy außer Reichweite ist UND ich NICHT an meinem Homenetzwerk angemedelt (also unterwegs) bin. Ist mein Handy allerdings abwesend und ich bin zuhause, dann soll das Passwort nicht gesetzt werden. Ich bekomme dies auch nicht mit 2 Zonen hin. Cool wäre ein Feature, bei dem man negative Trigger definieren könnte; also “Handy ist NICHT da, Netzwerk ist da”.
Ein zweiter Feature wunsch wäre von mir: Bei der Aktion “Synchronizie iSync” eine Art Timer einzubauen, “Nur Synchonisieren wenn mehr als XX Minuten vergangen sind”. Denn wenn ich zuhause herumlaufe und alle paar Minuten eine Handy synchonisiert wird ist das schon etwas zu viel des Guten…
August 6th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Problems… I’m just testing Leopard. HomeZone is always asking me to update the beta and does not work. therefore I removed the program, but the message still appears when booting… How can I remove this nerving message ?
Kindest regards.
August 6th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Did you make sure nothing HomeZone related is in your Login Items list?
August 6th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
thanks for the tipp… now the problem is solved. Do you plan to release a leopard version … ? The tool is really great.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I plan to do that, time permitting.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Hi,
I’m a new mac user, and I just found your app. It’s very cool, and just what I was looking for … however, I was wondering if there’s any way to make the app automagically mount the drives I have shared on my network?
Cheers,
Thomas
August 8th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I can’t seem to get this to work with my *iphone*. I want my mac to lock down & mute when I leave my office and unlock when I return.
Sometimes it see the iphone – sometimes it does not. Is this an iphone issue? Or Mac issue? or software issue?
August 27th, 2007 at 1:23 am
Hi,
I appreicate the development of Home Zone very much. Which is great idea especially I always need to bring my MacBook Pro from home to office. However I found the application is still very unstable, all configuration would lose that makes it unusable in this stage. I’m looking forward for release update. Thx!!
Philip
August 31st, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Hi! HomeZone sounds like a really big piece of the puzzle I’m trying to solve: Automatically waking my MacBook Pro and syncing it with my PC when I come home from work.
Two questions:
1. The next big piece is figuring out what to use to trigger the Mac. Airport doesn’t support Wake-on-LAN AFAICT, and in fact neither does Ethernet when running on battery. Bluetooth, however, works. Does Bluetooth differentiate “host” vs “mobile device”, or could I set up a Bluetooth dongle that I leave next to where I put my backpack down, and have that trigger the wake? Anyone done something like that?
2. You mention that you sort Network before Bluetooth. But my understanding is that Wi-Fi sucks much more power than BT; is that no longer true?
September 21st, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Can disabling the password for the screen saver be separated from disabling the password on wake? When I’m at home it’s ok for both to be disabled, but if I sleep my MacBook Pro at home and then wake it away from home it wakes without the password before it can detect I’ve left my home zone.
September 24th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Hello,
Just found this app – thanks!
Just wondering if you could add a “Start Application” and “Close Application” to the actions.
This way I can have Transmission, Skype, Mail etc startup when I am in range of my home network, but not when I’m away.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks,
Shane.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Feature request: Could you add more triggers? When I have my USB printer plugged in, I want THAT To be my default printer (when my laptop is on my desk). When I am downstairs and cannot print via the USB laserjet printer, I want my default printer to be my wireless all-in-one. I would need an additional trigger that detects if the USB printer is connected or not. Thanks.
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:51 am
This was working great with my RAZR but now I have the iPhone and it doesn’t seem to work. Guessing it has something to do with the iPhone bluetooth. I can pair but then home zone doesnt see it. Any thoughts.
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:22 am
BUG-REPORT:
i registered a huge bug in homezone today. My network connection behaved very strange meaning that when I ping another server every ca. 5th. Paket needed 10 times more time to return as the other. Obviously streaming software or skype was unuasbale because auf this “lag” every second. I disabled homezone and it went away. I’m using osx 10.4.10 on an intel MB and and MBPc2d with the same buggy result running homezone.
Thanks for the program.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:36 am
As soon as I have more time, I’ll do that.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:37 am
I guess it has to do with the fact that the iPhone’s bluetooth is really only made to connect with headsets, but I’ll check it out.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:40 am
Yeah, that’s a known issue. Scanning Airport Networks always means you’ll have a delay in the network layer. It would be better to use a IP Address trigger instead.
October 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
BUG-REPORT:
(Or maybe I just have something setup wrong.) Using HZ on my MacBook Pro. I setup a zone “Home”: When “all” of the following are available. Kind “airport network”. Network: [ssid of my home wifi]. Entering the zone: Disable screen saver password (and some other stuff). Leaving the zone: Enable screen saver password.
If I shut down the computer at home and then start it up at a public wifi hotspot, the screen saver password is still disabled. I tried checking the “disable all zones on termination” preference, but that didn’t help.
Next, I tried adding a second zone called “AwayFromHome”: When “none” of the following are available. Kind “airport network”. Network: [ssid of my home wifi]. Entering the zone: Enable screen saver password.
Didn’t work. When I go to a public wifi hotspot, both “Home” and “AwayFromHome” are showing “Not Available”.
October 10th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Great app, thank you.
For me the last beta version does not works (it keeps searching for bluetooth or wifi but the list does not update) so I still use the previous one.
I used to use MarcoPolo, but your app is quite better and much more user friendly !
The only advantages of MP is to have more triggers possibilities.
It would be great if you could add USB, Bonjour any may be the hour too…
Nice job anyway
October 11th, 2007 at 12:35 am
It works for me and my Treo 650, but I can’t figure out how to disable the “Bluetooth connection in progress” alert sound that plays when Home Zone queries the Treo. It’s driving me nuts.
October 14th, 2007 at 4:30 am
Hi Jonas,
I’ve been watching and testing out this app for quite some time now. It’s ALMOST to the point where I would have it run on startup and keep it active all the time. The only real function I find missing, is the ability to
1. Enable the “Automatically log in as…” option in the Accounts control panel. That way when I am at home, I dont have to worry about logging in all the time. When I;m away from home, bingo – it locks and becomes somewhat secure.
2. Similar to #1, having the ability to have it send me to the Login screen – so I could essentially lock my mac when I leave home automatically.
3. Ability to run an application – or applescript. This would be awesome!
thanks for the hard work. I will keep a close eye on your progress
Andrew
October 14th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Hey Andrew, I guess it would not be too safe to log you out when you’re out since you could lose signal when moving to another room in your own house and be accidentally logged out. You could just use the “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” found in ‘Security’ in system prefs in OSX. Then get HomeZone to start screensaver when you leave and stop when you come back. Locked and secured Mac! Anyone else would need a password to use the comp while you just need to come home with your phone.
As for Applescript, you can duplicate an existing plugin, rename them, show package contents, change the applescript. restart homezone. And you’ll have another action ready.
October 14th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Oh, cool, thanks. That’s good to know.
I meant to switch to the login window, but actually log out.
Andrew
October 15th, 2007 at 10:40 am
“I meant to switch to the login window, but actually log out.”
U mean NOT actually log out, right?
Like with Fast User Switching?
I guess that will involve some scripting. And I’m not good at that.
Please let me know when you find out
Cheers.
October 19th, 2007 at 4:54 am
Not so much a bug as an annoyance. After I started using the program I was having a look at my system.log file for something else and saw a flood of this message: Oct 19 00:40:36 durandal kernel[0]: IOBluetoothL2CAPSignalChannel: family specific matching fails. This seems to happen 6 times every bluetooth check interval, and disappear altogether when I closed home zone so I know it is this program. Not sure what exactly causes it, google search didn’t turn up much on it.
October 31st, 2007 at 2:33 am
It works great with my iPhone
November 6th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
HomeZone b9 doesn’t seem to work very well with Leopard. Although the actions for the zones work, adding new actions does not work. Unless something is strange with my installation…
November 7th, 2007 at 4:46 am
I love this program!!!! What is the status of the next version? I would love to see the ability to run applescripts. I think that this would be the single best addition of functionality. I used Marco Polo before this but I love Home Zone so much better. One thing I liked about it was the ability to add light and time triggers. For example I had a trigger that after 11:00 pm and the lights were below 20% it would dim my monitor and switch to a blank screensaver, basically “put the computer to bed” i would love to see this added to home zone.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:51 am
I have the same problem in leopard plus it cant find any items, I am loving the idea of this app already and I haven’t been able to get it working
November 29th, 2007 at 4:04 am
Love the idea of this program but doesnt work on Leopard – HZ doesnt give you the ability to add actions to anything (sadly) making be current build useless in Leopard.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Fantastic app – do you have any plans for a Leopard compatible version ? Thanks.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Is this project dead? This has great potential but it seems that it has stalled. Certainly not quite right under Leopard. Worked pretty well under Tiger.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
I have some suggestions:
-Could you add an option on network ip address to force it is on wired network ?? or add it as another check to a new check rule.
-Could you add a force disable on a zone (on preferences)
- i have tried to add a bluethoot keyboard as a detection device, but it is not on the available devices, even if i am using it.
- Could you order zones with drag and drop to check rules ordered ?
- Could you add a duplicate zone button ?
Thanks in advance.
December 26th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Since there’s not been any replies in quite some time to questions on here, it looks like this isn’t in active development anymore. It’s a shame because it was a very good app.
January 9th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Great app. The network trigger input field (where you type the IP etc) is a bit screwed up in Leopard though. The focus moves on after a sec or so.
Wish list; support for shell script actions, or at least shuffling /etc/hosts
January 9th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Doh. Never mind my previous comment. Figured it could do shell scripts and what not now through Open File.
This rocks.
January 10th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Not sure if anyone else has seen this behavior-but occasionally Home Zone gets sort of “stuck” in that it is showing as taking up about 50% of one of my 2 intel cpu’s, and I have to force quit it. It makes me reluctant to use it, which is too bad, because I love it.
Thanks!
January 12th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Yes, I’m finding network address triggers are impossible to add. I get a character or two into the host address and *POOF* focus moved on to the ether and the field is blank.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
WOuld love this to be able to mount network resources on finding the location….
February 1st, 2008 at 12:43 am
I sent an email to the author inquiring the status of the project here is the response:
“I consider development paused. At the moment, Aurora is much more important to me, and when 4.0 is released I will continue to work on AppFresh. Home Zone has some technical problems (WiFi and Bluetooth polling) that very likely cannot be resolved in software, so I’m hesitant to continue to work on it.”
February 1st, 2008 at 8:41 am
I’d really love to get this working in Leopard — is it possible for others to get access to the CVS?
March 11th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Will there be a 10.5 version ?
March 13th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I’m using the current version of Home Zone with my iPhone and find that it works fine if I simply want to lock the screen when I walk away and unlock the screen when I return. However, if I try to execute any other command (pause iTunes, set IM status), Home Zone crashes and my screen saver flickers repeatedly.
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:03 am
I really enjoy the possibilities of this software and I have been utilizing it and it has saved me some time. Thanks!! I enjoyed it so much I opened up Quartz Composer and made something for you…. I did notice that I could not enter in numeric characters into the “Before Trigger is disabled” box only the up & down arrows would work. Leopard 10.5.2, 2.16GHz 1GB
Joe
April 1st, 2008 at 4:36 am
Home Zone is behaving very unpredictably for me. It will work for a couple days as I would expect and then it will appear to simply stop enabling and disabling zones. According to the logs it still sees triggers, but it doesn’t act on those triggers. I think the laptop going to sleep seems to trigger this behavior and Home Zone seems to end up stuck in a state where two Zones are enabled (the one I was in before sleep and the one I was in when it woke up). If I quit Home Zone and try to restart it, I will often have to try a number of times as it keeps dying. This is under Tiger (10.4.11).
April 6th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Hi Jonas, I just discovered your app. very nice! Some of the features I’d like to see are:
1. For Open file: give a hide option
2. Add a Close File option (to close certain applications)
3. Add a calendar option inside each zone (day of the week and time of the day):
So if I create a zone called home. I have two date/time sensitive behavior within that zone: one called home-office and another called called home-leisure so the triggers that take place are quite different. So If I fire up my machine on Tuesday morning my entourage calendar and newsreader will launch at startup up. If I fire up on Sunday morning my PandoraJam music app will fire up.
Also If I enter my office in Friday I can setup SAP to auto-launch because it’s the day I do my timesheet.
4. Add a connect to server (also give a hide option)
5. Add a Disconnect from server
6. Add a default webpage for internet settings (like Location X, but also more specifically definable by the calendar option)
7. Add Entourage integration (like Location X, but better!) with the following elements:
7a. Set the Send and Receive to specific accounts only For example form work I cannot connect to my personal email server, and from home I cannot connect to my office’s exchange server, can we have HomeZome make Entourage aware of that)
7b. Change default email account and smtp server based on HomeZone location
7c. Have the ‘work offline’ option available
7d. Turn on/off office reminders
8. Add an option to enable/disable Spaces
Thanks,
Gustavo
April 10th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Whoa. Nice app. I was toying with an idea like this myself, particularly for use with Synergy, and here this thing does everything for me. Glee! Many thanks!
I have two requests:
* Firstly, as people have pointed out, the network address entry field gets zapped periodically. Not sure why this happens, though it might be tied to the periodic polling.
* Secondly, it would be nice to have a local prefix detection option. That is to say, you’re in a zone when ifconfig/pcap/etc… report a network device that has an IP address in the range x.y.z.0/24.
Great job and keep up the good work.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’ve had trouble with triggers activating while I am in the middle of working on my computer due to bluetooth dropping out periodically.
Perhaps triggers should only activate when there is first no activity on the keyboard, mouse, etc. within a specified period of time.
April 13th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
cool tool.. my requests.. are already requested.. except.. perhaps i can help with a leopard release if you need some support. Thanks for releasing this.
– b