Erratic Presence

[marktheknife]

@Tim-in-Ca

What settings would that be?

I do wish that iPhones had more configurable OS settings like android phones do, but in terms of what you can actually do:

Make sure your location settings for the hubitat app are set to always allow and not just when using the app. I’d also confirm that background refresh for the app is set to on. If you open the app and go to settings (the cogwheel in the lower right corner menu), you can enable high accuracy presence to see if that helps. It’s always possible that will result in unacceptable battery drain though.

Best bet is to aggregate a couple geolocation apps and use a virtual presence sensor for notifications and automation triggers. @doug’s Presence Governor is one great option, and @jwetzel1492’s Combined Presence is another.

In my experience, mobile presence is just inherently unreliable, so it’s often necessary to make use of multiple solutions to get an acceptable level of reliability.

[aaron]

Probably THE only “note”-worthy Droid.

[JasonJoel]

I see what you did there.

[jwetzel1492]

My journey to solving the presence problem is documented in these two threads:

[UPDATED] iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor

https://github.com/joelwetzel/Hubitat-iPhone-Presence-Sensor iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor for Hubitat A virtual presence sensor for Hubitat that checks if an iPhone is on the WiFi network. Note: iPhones can put their WiFi to sleep, so you should not use this as your only way of detecting presence. However, it can be used to augment other presence sensors. Interpret results this way: If this sensor shows "present", the iPhone is DEFINITELY present. If this sensor shows "not present", the iP…

[RELEASE] Combined Presence

https://github.com/joelwetzel/Hubitat-Combined-Presence Combined Presence app for Hubitat An app for Hubitat to combine two or more presence sensors to control an output Virtual Presence Sensor. There are 3 types of combiners: Standard Combiners (Use this for combining wifi and gps-based sensors for a single person. It is optimized for that.) Boolean-OR Combiners (Example: If Person1 OR Person2 is home, then the virtual SomeoneIsHome sensor should be home.) Advanced Combiners (All logic o…

It has been a success. I now have 100% reliability on presence by using:

• My wifi presence driver
• Homekit presence
• Alexa presence
• Combining them using the advanced option of Combined Presence

One of these days, I might write up a single post that gives all the answers in a single post. (How's that for humble! All the answers! /s) However, there are a lot of small details/options depending on what you're trying to achieve, so reading through my (and others) journey to solve it is probably the best way for now.

[jwetzel1492]

And to jump to some of the good stuff, here's the comment where I explained the advanced version of Combined Presence:

[RELEASE] Combined Presence

There's a huge update on Github that I wanted to document for everyone. Here are the major updates: Notifications There are two types of notifications you can turn on: Send notification when the output sensor changes state. Send notification if the inputs are inconsistent for a long period. (Useful for debugging or knowing if a presence sensor has gotten "stuck".) Notifications can be sent out two ways: To a notification device (such as the new Hubitat app w/ push notifications) To a ph…

And here's an awesome comment where @spotty shows how far you can take these ideas!

[RELEASE] Combined Presence

I love the ideas in this thread! I leveraged HomeKit geo, WiFi Presence, and the iOS version of the Hubitat app for geo. Then with the Combined Presence app, I have most of the presence devices I need for my wife and I, as well as our kids. Love it! [image]

[Tim-in-Ca]

Thanks all … yea, I guess I'm SOL with iOS Geolocation stability and will end up using something like Presence Governor to aggregate a few. Amazing in (almost) 2020 that this is not something that is more reliable / predictable. Once again this morning, the Hubitat app location status did not change from my phone unless I opened the app and send a GeoEvent. I have location services set to always with the app.