Google Home Presence Detection

I use Life360, OwnTracks, and now Google.

I can say I have yet to successfully get google to show away when all 4 members of my "google household" are away. Just haven't had the energy to figure out which phone(s) isn't updating correctly yet.

2 Likes

Now that's what I call "PRESENCE." :wink:

I mainly use Life360. My wife likes it, so I keep it.

OwnTracks has been working OK, too. Took a little tweaking to get it reliable - but it seems to work fine.

WAF is Queen. :slight_smile:

Once I had OwnTracks set up correctly (an initial stumble on my part) it has "just worked" which is the locaion/presence nirvana I have been looking for. :smiley:

1 Like

I have my cloud MQTT server in Linode that I pay for monthly. I should probably decide if I'm going to use it, or scrap it and save $5.

1 Like

I have yet to have Google presence trigger me arriving or leaving whatsover. I have it turning on/off a virtual switch that is synced with Assistant. Hasn't changed at all since I set it up.

@JasonJoel - Same here - I end up w/stuff like that, services I sign up for and then things change and I don't use them and I forget to cancel them. Worst was a $10 a month fee years ago to some relatively small outfit (can't even remember the name) for online file storage. They had actuall shut down their business/servers but were still taking my monthly payment. :scream: :man_facepalming: Luckily I found it and cancelled before the wife noticed...

@spalexander68 - try OwnTracks...I think you'll be impressed, just works for me w/out issue. For GH Presence you might try turning off battery optimization for the GH app if it is currently turned on.

@danabw yeah I installed OwnTracks. Still not as spot on as Life360, but I am still tweaking it. Since I turned off battery optimization for it and Location all the time, I have not left the house lol.

1 Like

That's cloud-based, correct? I'm trying to get away from that. I know OwnTracks needs my location from Google on my phone, but I'm already using Google for location services on my phone anyway, but at least w/OwnTracks I don't have to add a third-party to the mix.

I have battery optimization off on my phone for google and its working great. No missed events yet.

For me it seemed to work fine when there was only my phone in the household group.

As soon as I added all four of my family's phones I've never gotten an away routine firing yet.

All of them have battery optimization off. All of them show presence detection turned on. In history all of the phones show that they are coming and going as expected.

But the away and home routines never fire now.

Just an update to this thread. Knock on wood, the google home presence has been working flawlessy for me and my wife (Pixel 5/ iPhone 8) for about a month now. Its also nice to see when the Home goes into away and home modes in the event history in the google home app

Do you have to open the hubitat app for it to work? I have a pixel 3 and have a rule to open my garage when I get home. It only really works when I open the hubitat app. I have the settings set to always have hubitat know my location. Last week my fiance was home and 3 hours later the garage opened. She has a iphone 11 and I have all the proper settings for her as well. I was hoping this worked better than IFTTT but it seems like the same hit or miss with this app as well

I think you have this confused with the Hubitat mobile app presence detection. I have that set up on both phones as well and it is not even close to being as reliable. And I am on the Beta.

This thread is about the new presence detection in google home app

Yeah, my bad

1 Like

I just noticed this insult to Muppets. Apologize, please. :wink:

1 Like

With Life360 broken, I have been looking for an alternative for presence detection and found this thread about using google home for detection. However, I could not get it to detect presence at all.

I followed this instruction, except for the step " You've enabled your phone in presence sensing settings in the Home app" , which I can't find such setting in the home app?!

Anyone has any experience on how to go about getting it to work? TIA

A suggestion...

Yeah, thanks, will look into OwnTracks. I worried it'd follow the footstep of Life360, and having to keep changing and configuring new presence detection is really not fun. Was hoping google home will be straight forward because I already have it setup (not properly apparently because presence doesn't work at all lol).

I use google home for my wife and I and it works flawlessly so far.

No bells/whistles like Owntracks, I have been watching that thread and may use it eventually.