Notification based on presence of phone

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1

I've looked quite a bit to find out why this wouldn't work but haven't seen anything specific to notifications not working.

I have a notification to let me know when a phone leaves or when it arrives. They are in their own separate notifications.
Only the arrival works. The departure hasn't ever worked.

Is there something wrong with this?

Screen Shot 2021-02-03 at 5.37.00 PM
Screen Shot 2021-02-03 at 5.37.00 PM1572×1132 137 KB

2

@dummestguy There isn't anything wrong with what you have created. The problem is fundamental to how iPhones manage power consumption by quiescing the WiFi radio. When it is in this low power state it doesn't respond to most unsolicited requests (ICMP for instance [e.g. the protocol used by the ping command]). It does usually respond to Bonjour requests. Its an Apple protocol, go figure. :face_with_monocle:

It does tend to work for arrival because it sees your WiFi SSID and tries to establish a connection right away. When your leaving, it is quiesced and doesn't wake up until it loses the WiFi signal from your home. By then it's too far away to reconnect.

I have had better luck with Home kit. I set it up to connect to some devices that only talk Homekit. The moderately better presence sensing of our iPhones is a side benefit.

Many community members use Life360. It seems to work quite well, but apparently it isn't perfect either. I have heard some mention using 3 or 4 presence sensing methods simultaneously for each person's presence.

To sum it up, nothing seems to be foolproof. Hopefully some others will pipe up soon to share their experiences.

3

IMHO, there doesn't look to be anything wrong with your 'notification' rule above, Here is what I would check:

  1. Verify 'Momma's iPhone' device's 'presence' events in that hub's device's event log to insure that 'Momma's iPhone' is actually generating a 'not presence' status when it leaves the defined geo fence in her Hubitat iPhone's mobile app settings.

  • If No:

    • Make sure 'Momma's iPhone' 'Location' privacy settings' for HE mobile app are set to 'Always'.
    • Make sure 'Momma's iPhone' is logged into the HE mobile app under her separate account and selected for 'Momma's iPhone'.
    • Verify in the HE mobile client settings that Enable GeoFence is enabled with 'High Accuracy Presence'
    • Create a 'Send Geo Event' on 'Momma's iPhone' in the HE mobile settings page to see that 'Momma's iPhone' reports a 'presence' event in the 'Momma's iPhone' device event log.

  • if Yes:

    • Verify that 'Spenser's iPhone' device event log sent a notification
    • Verify that 'Spenser's iPhone' HE mobile app 'Notifications' log received it.

I personally use Life360 mobile app and complimentary user apps on Hubitat Package Manager which has been a much more accurate presence indicator than Hubitat's problematic solution and Life360 uses less daily battery (as indicated on the iPhone's battery page) on my Life360 tracked family members. It's a win-win!

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