I’m with you Charlie, I have my app open at all times and I’ve never seen an impact on my battery life. In fact, looking at my battery usage stats on my phone settings, the app has used a negligible amount of phone battery (<<1%) in the last 10 days. I pretty much have never opened it since I installed it.
Of course, people’s experience may vary but I am overall very happy with the OpenPath experience. For me, it basically acts as if there is not a lock on the door at all.
As far as the ajar alarm, I can’t comment on the timing as much. I generally close the door each time I re-enter, or prop for much less than 5 minutes. I think one thing that could benefit is a slower auto-closing mechanism. Sometimes when I bring in a large board or something and don’t prop the door, the door seems to slam shut behind me before I can get the piece through, and will hit the wood. If it was a much slower retraction, I wouldn’t have to prop it in the first place as it would give me enough time to get through before it closes.
Out of curiosity if y’all don’t mind sharing, what phones do you two have @cfstaley@gordoa40 ? One annoyance I have with my phone is that the near field range seems to really suck. If I have my phone in my back pocket further from the door, it won’t open (same thing happens with my car which uses my phone for the key). I have a second gen iPhone SE, which other than that I like just fine, but it’s a significant annoyance. I’ll have to checkout what the battery usage app shows for OpenPath. Haven’t paid attention to that.
@valerie I have an iPhone 13 Pro, but before this I had an iPhone X that performed similarly. Perhaps the BLE antenna on the SE is not as sensitive? Personally, I use my front pocket so that could be it as well. It’s possible that the back pocket thing is not necessarily that it’s further away from the door but rather that your (water filled and therefore signal attenuating) body is in the way.
No great way to solve that though, besides spinning around a bit or taking it out
I have a Motorola stylus 5g. It won’t always open if in my back pocket. Sometimes I have to turn my rear towards the door. Other times, it’ll open fine. Overall, it’s been reliable.
Haha, yeah I often find myself doing the butt bump to get it working. I did wonder if it might be more about human body interference than antenna being not as good
I just thought @cfstaley was doing a little dance jig because he was happy to be at the shop. @gordoa40 has a great point. The back door does slam on you. I’ll look to see if the closer is simply out of adjustment.
I did adjust the door readers to be quite short range to reduce the risk of a false-positive when somebody’s standing inside near the door.
I usually swipe my phone on the reader like a keyfob. it’s not always necessary but it always works
On my old phone I kept all the background permissions off, so I’d take out my phone, launch the app, and then bink my phone on the reader. On my new phone I left it all enabled and haven’t noticed any power problems.
re: the closer: there should be a setscrew or something on it.
Well, BLE is 2.4GHz and the human body is mostly water so, yeah …
A lot of “battery” issues may or may not be relevant depending upon the level of other phone apps you have running on your phone. I get 2 weeks+ out of a single charge, but nothing on my phone is allowed to phone home or do location tracking. OpenPath obviously causes a significant change for me. If you have something like weather or headline news apps that kick WiFi/Cellular on regularly, then you will never notice the BLE power consumption from OpenPath. (I also have a significant problem with the fact that OpenPath can collect all manner of location data and has been sold to Motorola Solutions who can correlate all manner of tracking but that’s a different discussion for a different day …)
One thing people might want to be cognizant of is that “proximity open” may NOT be such a good thing if you are working in the shop late. We have had people try to get into the shop after dark, and you might not want the phone accidentally popping a door open because you walked too close by on the inside.
The back door closer didnt slow down when I tried to adjust it.
I put a new closer on it and adjusted the sweep speed. It now shuts much gentler, and doesn’t slam shut.
Thanks @gordoa40 for your post, it reminded me to address this issue.
