Dog Walk

How It Works

Departure Detection (combo triggers + GPS fallback)

Departure uses combo triggers for fast detection (~1 min), with a GPS geofence fallback.

Combo Trigger 1: Ring + Fi Base Disconnect

1. Ring doorbell detects human motion → timestamp stored per location
2. Polling immediately switches from 3min to 30s intervals
3. When Fi collar disconnects from base station AND recent Ring motion exists (within 5min) → departure confirmed immediately

Typical latency: ~1 minute

Combo Trigger 2: Fi Activity Rest→Walk + Base Disconnect

1. Fi collar activity transitions from Rest to Walk (Fi detects the dog is moving)
2. Base station is already disconnected (dog left BLE range)
3. Both signals together → departure confirmed immediately

This trigger works without Ring (e.g., leaving through back door at cabin) and fires as soon as Fi recognizes the walk activity.

Typical latency: ~1-2 minutes

Fallback: GPS Geofence

If no combo trigger fires, the GPS-only path still works:

• 2 consecutive Fi GPS readings outside geofence, confirmed after a time threshold
• Both readings must be < 10 min old (not stale)
• Only during walk hours, using the last home geofence Potato was inside as the departure anchor
• Only when no walk is already active

Typical latency: ~5-7 minutes (normal), ~2 minutes (accelerated)

Acceleration: When the base station is disconnected OR Fi activity is Walk, polling switches from 3min to 30s and the confirmation threshold drops from 3min to 60s. Backyard time does not trigger departure — the 30m geofence (Crosstown) / 75m geofence (Cabin) is large enough that GPS still shows Potato at home even with base station BLE out of range (~30-50m).

Walk hours: 7 AM-12 PM, 12-5 PM, 5-9 PM

Pre-checks:

• Time-of-day filter: only active during walk hours
• Base-station echo filter: when Fi API is slow to transition from Rest to Walk, it returns base station coords as pet position. If pet coords match a home location within 5m and connection is not "Base", the reading is discarded as stale.

Per-location Roomba commands:

Fi GPS geofences:

Return Detection (multi-signal)

After departure, the return monitor uses three signals — any one triggers Roomba docking:

• Departure GPS point is seeded as the first route point for dashboard maps
• 2 minutes after departure, a network scan identifies who left
• WiFi return signals are suppressed for the first 10 minutes (phones stay connected at front door)
• On return, the full Fi OngoingWalk path is fetched (dense polyline) and merged into the route file
• Fi walk enrichment queries activityFeed for authoritative walk timestamps and distance. If Fi hasn't finalized the walk yet (common — feed still shows the previous walk), a background thread retries at 5, 10, and 20 minutes. Only applied when the detected departure falls within the Fi walk window (fi_start to fi_end, ±5min tolerance) — prevents matching wrong walks.
• A final Fi GPS point is captured before docking (for route completeness)
• An iMessage notification is sent on return with walk duration and which signal triggered it
• Safety fallback: auto-docks after 2 hours if no return detected
• Resilient finalization: once a return signal is confirmed, the loop always exits. Walk path capture, dock, iMessage, and state updates are each wrapped in individual try/except blocks so a failure in any step cannot cause the monitor to loop back and re-trigger
• Dock sends stop first: the crosstown-roomba dock command sends stop before dock because iRobot's MQTT dock is silently ignored during active cleaning
• Post-dock verification: 3 minutes after the dock command, a background thread checks if roombas are actually on the dock (Charging (on dock) in status). If not, it retries the dock command up to 2 times (3min between each). If still not docked after all retries, sends an iMessage warning. State is updated with dock_verified: true/false and dock_retry_count.

GPS Tracking Mode (Lost Dog)

On departure, the collar switches to LOST_DOG mode for high-frequency GPS (~15-30s updates vs ~3-7min in NORMAL). This produces dense route data for dashboard mapping.

Battery protection: If consecutive GPS readings show car speeds (>30mph) for 6+ minutes, the collar switches back to NORMAL to avoid unnecessary drain during inter-home car trips. Speed resets if Potato slows to walking pace.

The collar always resets to NORMAL when the walk ends (via the return monitor's finally block). On listener startup, the collar mode is checked and reset to NORMAL if stuck in LOST_DOG (safety net for crashes/power outages).

Roomba Snooze

Roomba automation can be temporarily disabled per-location via the Roomba Dashboard (port 8553). When snoozed:

• Start commands are skipped — Roombas won't start on departure
• Dock commands still execute — Roombas should never be left running
• Walk tracking continues — GPS, return detection, and route data are unaffected

Snooze state is stored at ~/.openclaw/dog-walk/snooze.json and expires automatically.

Dashboard UI: Snooze bar on the Roomba Dashboard (port 8553) with 1h / 3h / 8h / Indef presets per location, plus a Clear button.

API: POST http://localhost:8553/api/snooze with {"location": "crosstown", "minutes": 60} (or "all", 0 to clear).

Roomba Cooldown

Start commands have a 2-hour cooldown to prevent re-triggering. Dock commands always execute immediately — Roombas should never be left running because of a cooldown.

Manual Trigger

dog-walk-start <location>    # "cabin" or "crosstown"

Starts Roombas and signals the listener to begin return monitoring via inbox IPC.

State Tracking

• Current state: ~/.openclaw/dog-walk/state.json
• Daily history: ~/.openclaw/dog-walk/history/YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl
• Per-walk routes: ~/.openclaw/dog-walk/routes/<location>/<YYYY-MM-DD>/<walk_id>.json
• Inbox (IPC): ~/.openclaw/dog-walk/inbox/

LaunchAgent

The listener runs as a persistent KeepAlive LaunchAgent (ai.openclaw.dog-walk-listener).

To check:

launchctl list | grep dog-walk-listener    # should show PID
tail -f ~/.openclaw/logs/dog-walk-listener.log

To restart:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.openclaw.dog-walk-listener.plist
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.openclaw.dog-walk-listener.plist

Deploy Notes

Recent dog-walk changes touched these paths:

• openclaw/skills/dog-walk/dog-walk-listener.py
• openclaw/bin/dog-walk-dashboard.py
• openclaw/bin/roomba-dashboard.py
• openclaw/skills/fi-collar/fi-api.py

If deploying to the Mac Mini, make sure the updated files are present under ~/.openclaw/, then restart:

launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/ai.openclaw.dog-walk-listener
launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/ai.openclaw.dog-walk-dashboard
launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/ai.openclaw.roomba-dashboard

Quick verification:

tail -20 ~/.openclaw/logs/dog-walk-listener.log
tail -20 ~/.openclaw/logs/dog-walk-dashboard.log
tail -20 ~/.openclaw/logs/roomba-dashboard.log
curl -s http://localhost:8552/api/routes?days=30 | jq '.meta'
curl -s http://localhost:8553/api/roombas | jq '.'

Skill Boundaries

This skill handles dog walk detection and Roomba automation triggered by Fi GPS departure.

For related tasks, switch to:

• ring-doorbell: Check Ring doorbell status, events, video, health (CLI only)
• fi-collar: Direct Fi collar GPS/battery queries
• roomba: Direct Roomba control at the Cabin
• crosstown-roomba: Direct Roomba control at Crosstown
• cabin-routines / crosstown-routines: Full home routines
• Vacancy automation (com.openclaw.vacancy-actions) is separate — starts Roombas on vacancy