Life360 Broken

[ogiewon]

@bill.d

It's pretty easy. In Hubitat add a virtual switch with presence (built in driver). Share that switch with Apple Home (built in HomeKit app or 3rd party Homebridge app). In Apple Home program 2 Apple Home Automations. 1) When person arrives turn switch on, 2) When person leaves turn switch off. Repeat for each person.

This is exactly what I do as well. Using Apple HomeKit for geofence-based presence has been 100% reliable for us.

[cznkane]

@bill.d

It's pretty easy. In Hubitat add a virtual switch with presence (built in driver). Share that switch with Apple Home (built in HomeKit app or 3rd party Homebridge app). In Apple Home program 2 Apple Home Automations. 1) When person arrives turn switch on, 2) When person leaves turn switch off. Repeat for each person.

@cznkane

before spending $5 a person

The purchase is sharable if everyone is in the same Apple Family.

Appreciate it, I think that sounds simple enough and a lot like other setups I've made with virtual devices (just never messed with HomeKit) I'll check out the family shared purchase as well, we do that already with other apps / services.

[WMarcolin]

This is an excellent alternative for iOS, I use it as a complement to Life360. Now a feature that has always been useful is the distance feature that Life360 has, i.e. I have a rule that when the person is more than 100mi from the house, I consider that they are traveling, or when they are 1mi then and the displacement is in the direction of the house, idem I trigger rules that they are arriving and turn on the air conditioning for example. In short, there are alternatives, which may not cover all the features that Life360 provides in a single connection.

[jasonbalsor]

I use Google presence in the google home app much the same way tied to a virtual switch in Hubitat. It works well. I use it in addition to Life360.

[bill.d]

You should be able to set up multiple monitored points with independent radii. I imagine it's probably more work than Life360.

[WMarcolin]

It would be a possibility, but mapping would be difficult. We have 3 users at home, all 3 of whom travel frequently to different destinations. It would be difficult to set up an entire map, and would require frequent updates of the points. So Life360's feature of informing X distance from the main point is extremely useful. Another item I'd forgotten is that it informs you of the device's battery, which is also useful for triggering warning rules, especially when you have a teenage child whose battery is always at 1%

[jim6]

I just got notice that they reset our password because of a security issue. And they changed to a one time use pass code outside of their own app. So, they just effectively killed it's usefulness for presence outside of their app.