I've been having a real rough time with hubitat lately and cannot seem to get my geofencing to work correctly with my hub. Either my front door doesn't lock when I leave or it doesn't unlock when I get home.
I had a C5 hub with life360 for years and not a single issue - flawless and wonderful.
Now I have a c8 hub and A) life360's built in native app won't login. B) Life360+'s custom app in HPM doesn't log in anymore and C) Even the native hubitat app won't update my presence in the background and RARELY does it even with the app open and me choosing arrived in my device's buttons inside the app.
Does Hubitat plan on removing the Life360 integration since it doesn't work and is false advertising at this point - and what can we do to get native geofencing working reliably? I took the time to set up the darn app on all of my familys' phones and would prefer to only use hubitat so we don't have to rely on a 3rd party service like life360 - however, if I could get life360 to work again without special tricks every month from them blocking API stuff - I guess that would suffice too.
I know a lot of people are switching to owntracks but I don't have interest in yet another service that will probably have issues down the road too - I'd much rather rely on the native functionality of the hubitat itself, since it is the hub of my choice for home automation.
HE I note also on the ad for the new C8Pro aay you can integrate with Google Nest. I dont see how that is true either.
I have tried the native presence and its poor. 360 dead. Using Owntracks but honestly its pretty much as bad as the native sadly. It works but updates are too slow to be of use.
Right now I dont think HE has a reliable presence offering.
Technically not something they could claim to be supported by the hub / platform, given it is a Community app, but I still expect the reference in the marketing is talking about what was (is?) the Google Home integration.
“This integration allows Google Home to control switches, dimmers, thermostats, RGB, RGBW and ColorTemperature bulbs that have been joined to your Hubitat Elevation hub, but the reverse is not possible. Devices that have been added directly to Google Home or Google Assistant cannot be shared with your Hubitat Elevation hub.”
I gave up on using HE’s native presence a long time ago. I use the Apple HomeKit integration with a virtual switch for each person. The Apple presence and geofence is rock solid and super reliable. So when a person arrives or departs, the virtual switch is flipped using an Apple automation. On the HE side a rule monitors the virtual switch and triggers the arrived or departed command on the presence device. I’ve had 100% success using this approach.
Tell me more about this - how do you get the iOS presence for each user in the homekit home to show up in hubitat for rules?
I can create a virtual presence device in hubitat but do not see a way to tie it to anything in homekit, as the homekit integration is one way - it ports stuff from hubitat to homekit as an accessory.
What do you use as a device driver or app to see the iphone presence that the home.app uses for geofencing?
Create an automation in Apple Home that turns on a virtual switch in HE when present. Then another automation that turns the switch off when not present. Or vice versa what ever your prefer. Then a rule in HE to set the presence based on that virtual switch. Or whatever you want it to do.
Hubitat's geofencing is awful and unreliable and has been for all 6 years that I've owned it. I am not sure why they can't get it working when every other app I have on my Android that does geofencing does it perfectly. I agree, it's extremely annoying. Presence should be an absolute mandatory feature for any home to be considered "Smart" and it should work properly.
That said, I fixed it using SmartThings arrival sensors (no longer available easily/cheaply) and that solution has been working flawlessly - for my wife and I who have sensors on our keys. I still have no reliable way to detect my housekeeper, babysitter, or anyone else. Wifi works OK for these purposes once they have been here for a minute or two, except for people with iPhones for some reason. It seems iPhones either work fine or not at all and I don't know why.
Probably MAC randomization. iOS is more aggressive about it than Android. Android will set a random MAC the first time you connect to a new SSID but that one doesn't change unless you manually forget the network. If I'm not mistaken iOS will regenerate the random MAC periodically.
Unlike Life360, OwnTracks is an open-source solution and is unlikely to have the same issues for that reason. It's free, and will provide the same functionality as the paid version of Life360. I think it's an upgrade, actually, and recommend that you try it out.
I too would like this. But it does not seem as though it's likely to happen, given that the native presence has had issues for quite some time. Not sure what to make of it, but I've come to terms with it and have been happy with the 3rd party options available. Frankly, the custom apps for this likely provide more functionality than what a native solution would offer. For example, I doubt anyone would expect a native solution to provide geo coordinates and reverse geocoding like Life360 or OwnTracks.
That's not been my experience. I've been very happy with it.
Life360's most recent troubles haven't been going on for THAT long. And it especially hasn't been that long since Life360 actually revealed that they are no longer supporting others' access to the API. I suspect Hubitat will remove the built-in app and update marketing materials soon enough. Claims of false advertising might be a bit harsh and premature at this stage, IMO.
