The phone depends on how solid your service is around your home. Mine's rock solid here. I've used tiles, but range is the problem. I need my Garage to open "exactly" when I need it and my doors etc to unlock. This has been 100% perfect. This never has battery problem. It can't.
With Homeseer I used a long-range Bluetooth transmitter in my vehicles that could go almost a mile. I didn't need my phone. Mounted under the hood it triggered at about 300 ft. That was a really hard thing to write rules for though...especially if you just needed to move your car...it would trigger.
When indoors GPS becomes flaky. Admittedly when I set up the BLE beacons it was a while ago, and the app on my Android phone would report EVERY GPS "location", even if the accuracy was basically "somewhere in North America" because it was only picking up a single GPS satellite. So it would randomly get wildly inaccurate GPS "location" and report it to the hub and mark me as away even tho I hadn't left. Thus I added the BLE beacons to eliminate any possible 'false away' issues due to GPS.
I've never had that issue on my iPhone. It doesn't report a location at all unless the accuracy is also 100m or less. Presumably Android has been fixed and doesn't do this anymore, but I don't know as I have zero Android devices anymore.
Ya, I want to move to Android because I'm a Windows guy. I don't have the GPS issue because it takes my phone seeing a Beacon AND leaving or entering my geofence. Geofency has been stable for me...and I won't use things like Life360 that sells your tracking info to anybody that wants it. Including car insurance companies for seeing how you drive. I've got nothing to hide, but it's nobody's business.
Yep. They got caught and now they claim they're not doing it anymore, but the fact that they ever thought this was an OK thing is just nuts. No one should EVER use them.
Works great on cellular. In fact, it might work better considering it doesn't have to wait to connect to your home wifi to trigger it. No idea what the iPhone geofence distance is, but it's probably something like 500' or so based on my experience.
I've been using this method for quite some time. It's bullet proof. One thing you said confused me.
If one has any HomeKit hub, then I've found setting up a shortcut to call a webhook on Hubitat to be more reliable than toggling a virtual switch on and off, since the HomeKit App on Hubitat is very much not reliable .
Are you not using HomeKit to trigger a virtual presence sensor in Hubitat? Or, am I completely misunderstanding your point and you're just saying it's much more reliable than Hubitat?
I have HomeKit run a shortcut when I arrive and when I depart.
In that shortcut is a single action, which calls an http endpoint on Hubitat. That endpoint is from an app I wrote that does nothing other than mark a virtual presence sensor as home/away when the http endpoint is triggered.
The HomeKit app on Hubitat is fragile. If you have any device that sends 'nonsense' data to HomeKit it cause every device to report "Not Responding".
Example: device with battery has a miscalibrated sensor and reports -17% battery. Every device in HomeKit will be 'not responding'. Or let's say you have a window shade that goes from 100% closed to 0% closed, but if for some reason is extended past where it has the 0% mark set to will report negative numbers, since it's been moved past the 0 point. Again, HomeKit will have everything 'not responding'.
It's not that HomeKit itself isn't working... it's fine and it'll notice when you're home or away, and it'll run my shortcut actions without any trouble. It's just that everything on the bridge with a 'bad device' fails to work until that device is either removed or whatever 'nonsense' number on its stated is changed back to a 'sensible' one.
Yes, you can handle not allowing 'nonsense' values in your device driver, if you know how to program. But really the fix is at the Hubitat level and having it send 0 for anything negative that shouldn't ever be negative. And probably anything over 100 should be reported as 100 for things that shouldn't be over 100 too, such as 'percent light brightness', as I haven't checked that, but I'm guessing a device on Hubitat that sends 110% brightness on a light would also cause everything to go not responding.
So yes, I'm having HomeKit trigger a virtual presence sensor, just via an HTTP endpoint rather than the usual 'have HomeKit turn this virtual switch on and off'. A lot of people just make a "Virtual Presence with Switch" device on Hubitat and have their HomeKit automation turn it on and off when they come and go. I'm not doing that.
[BETA] Why not use PING with a virtual sensor?
Currently and when the built-in presence function in Hubitat app works, once the Departure switch is on, a rule monitors the change in presence, then double-check its valid by pinging to the device with the Hubitat app installed acting as a presence sensor. If the ping fails, then the rule sets the home to AWAY.
Since I want to move away from the unreliable built-in solution from Hubitat's app, I'm thinking of exclusively using the PING functionality with a SmartThings presence sensor as a fallback and use a virtual presence sensor. I'm going to build this out this weekend to test its reliability next week. What do you think of this approach?
I'll admit, points for ingenuity and thinking of a good double-checking approach, which has often been popular when combining multiple presence indicators such as Wi-Fi, GeoFence and others.
You may be interested in previous / current offerings in this space of multi-sensor options... I can find one or two if you are interested...
Thanks @sburke781 Simon. I'm always in the continuous improvement mindset at work and especially with my home projects. I'm always open to collaborating with other minds. So, I'm most definitely interested.
Call-back to the titular integration/question of this topic...I've found the new Owntracks integration to be so reliable I can't imagine not using it. Just sayin' (as they say).
Whether you're using single or multi-sensor approach to presence, omitting Owntracks is leaving a lot on the table. Particularly for Android users and mixed OS households (the horror! ), in part because you don't have quite as many other options w/Andoid.
You can start w/Owntracks at the basic presence level, and decide later if you want to extend/enhance w/additional functionality. Reliable, flexible/extensible, and can cover the entire family in mixed iOS/Android households. A lot to love there...(and admittedly I'm a fanboy for OT).
Good point, I was basing my comment on the weight of responses in this topic, without reading many of them that closely. Like many things, there is more than one solution...
Car presence doesn't work for me...I started to try to use it at one point (not w/Tesla, but w/iharyardi's car-based presence sensors) but my wife and I do swap cars once in a while, I travel w/out her a few times a year, I can be home while my car is at the shop, we're out in her car and my car is home, etc., so I couldn't rely on my car being home meaning that I was home, or that anyone was home, really.
Owntracks (and of course other phone-based options) solve that problem, as we always have our phones w/us.
I do use car presence changing to Home to open the garage door when either of our cars arrive home, and also use it to turn off vacation settings when we arrive home from a vacation, like those automations very much.
it was meant as tongue in cheek as a very expensive sensor.
anyway yes for me too its not perfect. but i do arm the house when both cars are gone or disarm when one returns and unlock doors etc..
the only time it doesnt really work is when we go out together to dinner (frequently) in that case if i remember i arm the house manually.
), in part because you don't have quite as many other options w/Andoid. 
