| name | dog-walk |
| description | Automated dog walk detection and Roomba control. Detects departures via Fi GPS collar, starts Roombas, and monitors return via Ring motion + WiFi + Fi GPS. Use when asked about dog walks, Roomba automation during walks, or walk tracking. |
| allowed-tools | Bash(dog-walk:*) |
| metadata | {"openclaw":{"emoji":"D","requires":{"bins":["fi-collar","crosstown-roomba","roomba"]}}} |
Dog Walk Automation
Detects dog walks via Fi GPS collar (departure) and manages Roomba automation with multi-signal return detection (Ring motion + WiFi + Fi GPS).
Current Model
- Departure detection is Fi-only. Ring and presence no longer decide whether a walk started.
- The listener uses Potato's Fi GPS/geofence result to choose the home, and stores the last confirmed in-geofence home as
home_location.
- Walks now get immutable
walk_id and origin_location fields at departure.
- Route files are persisted atomically during return monitoring at
~/.openclaw/dog-walk/routes/<location>/<YYYY-MM-DD>/<walk_id>.json; per-route locking keeps concurrent polling, finalization, car marking, and delayed Fi enrichment from dropping one another's fields.
- Route files include
distance_m, point_count, inferred end_location, and is_interhome_transit.
- Inter-home transits are filtered out of the dashboard route-summary API, so future map views only show same-home walks.
- Walk hours now cover the full day in three contiguous sections:
7 AM-12 PM, 12 PM-5 PM, 5 PM-9 PM.
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
- Ring doorbell detects human motion → timestamp stored per location
- Polling immediately switches from 3min to 30s intervals
- 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
- Fi collar activity transitions from Rest to Walk (Fi detects the dog is moving)
- Base station is already disconnected (dog left BLE range)
- 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:
| Location | Start | Dock |
|---|
| Crosstown | crosstown-roomba start all | crosstown-roomba dock all |
| Cabin | roomba start floomba + roomba start philly | roomba dock floomba + roomba dock philly |
Fi GPS geofences:
| Location | Radius |
|---|
| Crosstown (Crosstown residence, West Roxbury) | 30m |
| Cabin (Cabin, Phillipston) | 75m |
Return Detection (multi-signal)
After departure, the return monitor uses three signals — any one triggers Roomba docking:
| Signal | Interval | How it works |
|---|
| Ring motion | Event-driven | Person detected at doorbell during monitoring |
| WiFi / network presence | Every 30s (after 10min) | Read-only presence-detect.sh observe <location> via the MBP (Crosstown) or locally (Cabin). Detects phone reconnecting without writing correlated presence state, pushing Taildrop, or triggering vacancy automation. Ignored for first 10 minutes — phones linger on WiFi at the front door. |
| Fi GPS | Every 30s | Polls Potato's Fi collar GPS. Docks when Potato re-enters home geofence. Base-station echo detection prevents false "at home" readings. |
| Fi GPS (inter-home) | Every 30s | If Potato enters the other home's geofence during monitoring, the walk is auto-finalized as an inter-home transit. Roombas dock at origin, home anchor updates to the new location. |
- Departure GPS point is seeded as the first route point for dashboard maps
- 2 minutes after departure, the same read-only network observation identifies who left. Missing, stale, malformed, or incomplete observations fail closed: they neither dock Roombas nor infer walkers.
- 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 timestamps and distance, then merges all Walk segments that overlap our outing window ([our_started_at - 5min, our_ended_at + 5min]). Fi splits a single outing into multiple Walks when the dog pauses for Play/Rest (sniffing, yard time); the merge takes the earliest start, latest end, sum of distances, and records fi_walk_count for transparency. A background thread retries at 5 / 10 / 20 min after return to catch Walks Fi finalizes late — retries are idempotent and always scheduled so late segments can be merged in.
- A final Fi GPS point is captured before docking (for route completeness)
- Safety fallback: auto-docks after 2 hours if no return detected (sends iMessage)
- Resilient finalization: once a return signal is confirmed, the loop always exits. Walk path capture, dock, 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. The CLI now skips stop+dock for any robot whose phase is charge (already on dock), so the verify-retry path doesn't re-stop a docked robot when only one needs a re-dock.
- 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:
- Automatic start commands are skipped — both dog-walk departures and
vacancy automation honor the same per-location policy
- Dock commands still execute — Roombas should never be left running
- Walk tracking continues — GPS, return detection, and route data are unaffected
Manual CLI/dashboard start commands remain explicit operator actions and do
not consult the automation snooze.
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>
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
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.pyopenclaw/bin/dog-walk-dashboard.pyopenclaw/bin/roomba-dashboard.pyopenclaw/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
