At this point the geofence is a novelty. I would never have any critical automations dependant on it. If you have to keep going in and moving the pin to tell it you've left, what's the point?
Edit.
It's now working at the moment. Past experience with this tells me it will stop working in a few days.
That wasn't my point, I was telling you to do that to troubleshoot. You should see it update in the app and on the hub as you move the pin/radius. If it's updating then it isn't the issue I was having before. At that point you should double check location permissions (all the time is required) and battery optimization (unrestricted is required).
If it doesn't update when you move the pin, like if it seems like the app isn't talking to the hub, that's when you should uninstall and reinstall the app.
1.6.8 build 128 has been flawless for me since I've done this troubleshooting. I've been testing several apps and hubitat / smartthings were the most reliable.
I just upgraded to UI 4.1 on a Samsung phone, and it has the option to exclude certain apps from memory optimization, in addition to those locations specified in this thread (battery optimization, where I already had Hubitat included).
I've just added Hubitat to the list of memory optimization, and I'll see if it makes a difference.
I am also having this issue again as well. My location will clearly be far outaide the geofence but the app says im in the geofence and vice versa. Only way to get presence to change is to change the geofence radius but that only fixes it till the next time i leave/enter the geofence. Sending a geo event eith the button doesnt help. I'm on the beta version of the app, version 1.6.8 build 128. Im on the beta version because one of the many other times ive had this issue, support told me to install the beta...
I've been chasing this issue forever. I believe it's really the ability of your device to track your location. I set up a simple automation test that has been running for a few months. I set the geo fence and the app when I'm returning home it text me. Rarely does it trigger the text when I first enter the geo fence. In most cases I've been home for a few minutes before I get the text message. Sometime I never get a text because my device never knew I left fenced area.
Just a reminder that for our engineers to attempt to replicate issues with the geofence features, it is best if they know the exact device make and model, operating system version, Hubitat mobile app version, and whether phone's battery optimization as well as memory utilization tasks are turned off for the Hubitat app.
Failure to exclude the app from any and all optimization services that may otherwise terminate the background services that the Hubitat Mobile app is running, will result in unreliable geofence experience.
When posting feedback related to geofence, please consider providing the following details to help our engineers to narrow down the issues reported:
Mobile app version: 1.6.8. - build 129
Notes:
No 3rd party optimization apps
Battery and CPU/memory optimization services are disabled for Hubitat app.
Nice to see such clear and direct instructions on logging an issue...
Taking that suggestion a step further, could the Hubitat App somehow gather at least some of this information and provide it in a screen for users to copy to the clipboard?
EDIT - I say that, I only now just realise there is a debug screen in the mobile app.... Could these details be added and available to copy?
The issue is that Hubitat does not report as inside geofence when I'm inside. I open app up, and I'm smack bang in the middle of geofence, and it thinks I'm outside. I have to manually change the size of the geofence, and hey presto, it reports me as home. It cant be any of the optimisation issues, since I manually open the app, and it still reports incorrectly. It's been this way for at least 6 months.
It sure can be, the app is looking at location. If the app didn't see the change in phone's location until you forced the location to refresh, then it wouldn't be able to report that you are inside. This is good feedback and something that we can set up to try to replicate to see how else can the app force the location update in order to more accurately report the location change.
For reference, the above example is actually my production phone. I run Life 360, MacroDroid and Hubitat app in parallel to monitor our app's performance, and so far Life 360 and Hubitat have been neck in neck, with Life 360 using a lot more resources, which means that they use more battery and more data to monitor phone's activity. It is something that we are currently exploring.
If you can't get it to work Alexa can be an alternative. All it takes is a virtual switch and a basic rule. Alexa detects you inside geofence turn switch off. When your outside turn it on. Or vice versa, whatever you like. I prefer on/open/away or any alert to be on. The real trick that I haven't figured out is how do you track kids without phones?
I've read in a few stack overflow posts that another app which is requesting location can help speed up geofence events for your app. Meaning that this might not be a great test - having an app like Life360 which is doing lots of location updates could end up helping Hubitat get a more timely enter/exit notification. The same would be true if you're using Google Maps in the car.
On a separate note, I've been playing with geofencing on my own app a bit this week and it really seems device dependent.. I've got an S20, S10 and Pixel 4a - all running Android 12 and all geofencing the same area with no battery optimizations.
I drove outside the geofenced area and only the Pixel got an EXIT notification. After a few minutes of nothing from the Samsung devices I ended up reboot them which finally produced the EXIT notification. Then, several hours later driving back into the geofence - again only the Pixel got the ENTER notification. The S10 got the ENTER event this morning and my S20 never got the ENTER event at all.
So, all that is to say - I think Samsung is really locking down geofence events. So, in order to be reliable in any way on these devices I think the app's unfortunately going to have to be a lot more like Life360 and request location updates from the background -- which sucks because Life360 is constantly showing notifications (needed to request location from the background..)
Could these details be added and available to copy?
