Most successful presence detection?

[ogiewon]

@cdikland

Surely there is an easier way????

Hubitat’s built in HomeKit integration means that the RPi running HomeBridge is no longer required, especially for just presence detection.

I use a Virtual Presence with Switch device that I have shared with Apple Home using Hubitat’s HomeKit integration. I then created two App,e Home Automations, that turn on/off the virtual switch when I arrive/depart.

This does still require at least one AppleTV4K or HomePod Mini to act as the Apple Home Hub, which runs those two Apple Home Automations.

If you’d like an even simpler solution (I.e. less hardware), you can use Locative. Locative runs 100% locally on your iPhone, and simply make calls to Hubitat’s cloud endpoint for MakerAPI running on your HE to expose a Virtual Presence sensor. There is a great thread that explains exactly how to set this up.

Locative Presence app for iOS full setup

Locative is a great app for presence sensing but is only available for iPhones. I previously used Life360 free version for over a year without any issues. I noticed that it would typically consume about 1% of my iPhone battery per day. I was not concerned with the privacy issues of being tracked. About a year and a half ago I saw a post by @ogiewon mentioning Locative. The cool thing about Locative - your phone decides when it is inside or outside your defined locations and only when your pho…