How are you using homekit?

HomePod mini $50 bestbuy

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Thanks @csteele @Ken_Fraleigh. If I understand correctly this approach uses HE presence which I do not want because of it's flakiness.

I want to use Homekit presence exclusively but still have Mode in HE reflect Hubitat's presence.

No, I’m sharing the Virtual Presence with Switch via Homekit beta to use in presence routines in the Home app. HE then can use the “presence” for rules that need presence without having to create additional rules to turn a switch state into a presence state. I use it in the “Combined Presence” app by @jwetzel1492 with the addition of a wifi presence sensor to increase its reliability.

Right so you're using Hubitat presence and sharing it with Homekit. I am using Homekit presence and sharing it with Hubitat (in the clunky way described above). I don't need to use presence in Homekit since all of my automations/rules are in Hubitat.

I could not get a reliable native Hubitat presence setup and my use case is the most straighforward it can get: I live alone and have 1 iPhone.

I don't know why Hubitat can't figure this out, very frustrating to waste so much time with it only to get nowhere.

No I’m not.


I combine Apple Home presence with Wifi presence on HE using a combined presence app. I have found the native Apple presence to be the most reliable and most battery friendly solution.

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I don't understand but that's ok. All I know is Homekit presence is the only one that seems reliable so I'm avoiding HE presence entirely.


I use this in the Home app to turn presence on/off =present/departed.

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We are using the "Virtual Presence with Switch" to copy HomeKit Presence into HE.

Go ahead and create a virtual device in HE. Name it "wj72's Presence" and via the HomeKit integration, share it to Apple. In Home, create an Automation that uses "When Someone Arrives" to turn ON the switch portion of "wj72's Presence". Create a 2nd Automation using "When Someone Leaves" to turn OFF the switch portion of "wj72's Presence".

Back on HE, add "wj72's Presence" to a Dashboard using the Presence template. When you leave the geofence that Apple has, the presence indicator on the dashboard will change to Departed. When you get home, it will change to Present.

Now that you see Apple's Presence is copied to Hubitat, you can use the Presence portion of "wj72's Presence" in Rules, etc. to change mode to Away, for example. Then you can copy Mode to Apple and have the current mode display in Home App.

Look at @Ken_Fraleigh screencap... the top Automation is when "Emma" leaves Apple's geofence... the bottom 3 are when Ken (I) or Kandy enter or leave Apple's geo fence. Three independent Apple Geofence conditions are copied to Hubitat to be used in individual Presence indicators.

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Ok I see now thanks @csteele.

I guess it's still missing something that I have in my similarly clunky implementation, "Night" mode. I realize that's not technically "presence" but it's certainly a mode that I would like to have use of.

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Have a virtual switch turn on that mode and link it to the presence routine on Homekit :slight_smile:

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I'm NOT saying what you're doing is wrong, just noting that Apple's Automations are very weak. Hubitat's tools are not. The concept of using Apple to copy into Hubitat and then doing the work in Hubitat is quite a bit more common.

Please note I use BOTH Hubitat's integration AND HomeBridge simultaneously. HomeBridge came first and so I have no massive incentive to tear it out. Not Broken Don't Fix It. :smiley: Also, I aim for a fully automated home. If I have to pull out a mobile device to check a dashboard or Home App, I consider myself to have failed and need to fix it :smiley: Not everyone desires that. :slight_smile:

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@csteele I agree Apple automations are no good, I'm not using them except to map Homekit presence changes to HE via the virtual switches.

I'm actually surprised Homekit doesn't include the concept of a Night mode.

Yep @rlithgow1 that's what I've done for Home, Away, and Night... one virtual switch for each.

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You're not using Mode Manager to set Hubitat's Mode? And then "exporting that" to Apple?

Not quite I guess, I'm using Mode Manager in HE but I'm not using HE presence to change modes at all. My mode only changes via a virtual switch for each of Home, Away, Night (I ensure only 1 can be "on" at a time with rules), and of course any change to one of those switches in HE maps to HK and vice versa.

My HE modes:

My "mode" virtual switches:

One of these rules for each "mode" virtual switch:

image

I have no interest in Mode personally, but in order to occasionally offer advice, I have it set up both on my Production hub and my Development hub...

This is from my Development hub where I have a "Virtual Presence with Switch" named "pseudoPresence" which is connected to nothing. I can use the Device Info page to change presence and watch what it does to Mode. As you can see, "Away" tracks the Presence.

app:878 2023-02-02 08:50:42.208 AM info Mode set to Day from Away by pseudoPresence Returned
app:878 2023-02-02 08:50:25.131 AM info Mode set to Away from Day by Presence pseudoPresence departed for all left
app:878 2023-02-02 08:50:16.482 AM info Mode set to Day from Away by pseudoPresence Returned

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