Geofence stopped working

Hello all,

I saw another user post that they were having a similar issue. Geofencing in the app is no longer working for me. If I adjust the size of the geofenced area, the app seems to immediately send an update, but it only works that one time. It had been working for a week or so prior to this.

I've tried rebooting my phone, and that didn't help. Is there anything else I should try? I understand Geofencing functionality on a phone is a tricky thing balancing functionality and battery life, but it was working better before. I'm on a Pixel 4a if that matters.

I know people are using the combination apps that combine the data from more than one sensor, and that's great and all, but since the app is already on my phone, and my phone is already on my WiFi when I'm home, could functionality be added to the app such that:

  • Phone Wifi Status changes / app is made aware

  • app checks if the SSID of WiFi is the one selected as "Home" WiFi or some such thing.

  • Geofence update is sent automatically to help speed up detection of location

It seems like that might be easy enough to do and would benefit geofence update times.

Thanks!

I realize this is an old thread - I came here simply to review for any ideas on the Mobile app before I put it in the circular file.

I've also had the same problem you describe since about June ish as well. When I open the mobile app, my icons in the geofence are on top of each other, as they should be - then i drag the slider a tad right, let go, then put it back.
Instantly on my dashboard at home it updates. (BTW - I no longer use HE dashboards either ...)
I worked sort of hard on this issue, and one thing I found (and noted somewhere here) was that if you change the device name on your local HE, the app gets in further trouble. Regardless, once I found that problem, for nearly 2 months it was working pretty well - I'd guess about 80% of the time.
I watched and read all the work arounds the community have created (geofency (drat - iphone only) Presence +, a few other things and moved on to using Owntracks and Presence Plus. Owntracks will let you create a sort of fence, and Presence Plus lets me group multiple sensors together which I really like.
I have unwound presence detection to get away from the mobile app and I now have confidence again that my 'Away' status works perfectly for me.

I still have been continuing to monitor my cell phone just for mild interest - and watch it get confused nearly every day. Today it began arbitrarily saying not present - while I was sitting in my office 6' away. This is a new thing, not related afaik to the other problem I experienced. It's now happened about 4 times in the last 4 hrs. I'm not interested in resolving it, just documenting wierd behavior in case others wonder if they are alone.

1 Like

it never really started working

1 Like

Did anyone else ever figure out the geofencing issues? I seem to be having the exact same issue for both myself and my wife the last couple months. The devices are stuck in a single presence, and the only way to trigger geofencing to change on the app is moving the pin (and that doesn't allways trigger the device to change). Clicking "send geo event" doesn't seem to do anything, and neither does selecting validate on network change. Debugging shows " Enter: error -". What is also interesting is the app can get stuck one way, and the device can get stuck in a difference way.

To my knowledge, no progress had been made as far as presence detection in the app goes. At least, none that made any difference that I can notice.

For the latest updates on the geofence issues, please check out below topic. The current Beta version available resolved the problem for most users. There is a small group who continues to experience issues, and our engineers are actively working to fine-tune the existing process, however, without being able to replicate the problem, they are having hard time identifying the root cause, which could very well be individual mobile phone's settings.