Presence notifications for no reason?

[stratmeister509]

So my second rule ever is merely a presence indicator just to see how it works. For no apparent reason I get notifications (iPhone) that I left my geofence, then within a minute I returned. Well I never left…

This seems to happen 2-3 times a day. How do I avoid these fake events because I certainly can’t automate this way?

[bertabcd1234]

A few ideas I can think of if you continue to use only the Hubitat app for thus:

• consider making your geofence radius larger; if your phone has problems locating you when at home (e.g., occasionally thinking you're farther away), this is less likely to happen with a wider radius; or
• consider acting on certain automations only if presence stays away for a minute or two (or more), not instantly upon generation of the event on the hub side
• instead o the above, use the "delay exit" option in the Hubitat mobile app (confession: I haven't used this, but I assume this is what it does; a similar idea except doing on the mobiel app side instead of in whatever apps/automations you're using on the hub, so they can remain unchanged)
• see if the Advanced > High Accuracy Presence option in the app makes a difference

Because some people consider the Hubitat app unreliable, they either replace it or supplement it with another solution (HomeKit/HomeBridge, OwnTracks, Alexa, and others I can't remember off the top of my head are a few I've seen on here).

Personally, I've only seen the problem you mention above once or twice, and it resolved on its own, so I assume I had a temporary phone, app, or GPS glitch. I've resorted to combining two different methods (the app plus HomeKit, in my case) and just taking the most recent event from either in a relatively simple app (formerly rule) I wrote to "combine" these things, as normally my problem is that the Hubitat mobile app just stops sending any events after a few days, but every once in a while my HomeKit "hub" (AppleTV) also just doesn't respond, so together, they're nearly perfect. This doesn't do anything do address your particular problem, though combining three methods and using the consensus from among them might, or even just two if (unlike me) you have good luck with them both. Yes, it would be great if I could use only one. It's possible the app on its own is better nowadays, but I haven't bothered checking...

[brad5]

Presence is my personal holy grail... I've played with geofency, life360, the HE app, presence fobs, iBeacons, and others. I've never found any of them to be 100% reliable. So I ended up using a combination of them along with, as @bertabcd1234 suggests, some generous timeout parameters to achieve what I want. And then I was defeated...

Because others in the household perceive apps like life360 as "tracking" them I've finally decided to go 100% agentless. I have three different methods I use to detect the presence of iPhones on the network: @jwetzel1492's iphone presence app, @thebearmay's hub ping app, and @mike10's unifi presence sensor. For reasons thaht have more to do with the iphone than any of the apps, none of these methods are 100% reliable but when combined they're as good as it's gonna get.

If all three of them show absent for 5 minutes then I assume the person is actually absent. If any show pesent I assume the person is present. There are a couple of presence combiner apps that do this nicely, including @jwetzel1492's Combined Presence and @bptworld's Presence Plus. In order for this to work the iPhone MAC randomization feature has to be off, and for 2 out of the 3 to work, the iPhone has to have a fixed (or reserved in my case) IP address.

It actually works remarkably well, though if the iphone's wifi gets shut off or the battery dies, the person is perceived as away.

[stratmeister509]

Where can I find out about these apps you mentioned?

[thebearmay]

[UPDATED] iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor

https://github.com/joelwetzel/Hubitat-iPhone-Presence-Sensor iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor for Hubitat A virtual presence sensor for Hubitat that checks if an iPhone is on the WiFi network. Note: iPhones can put their WiFi to sleep, so you should not use this as your only way of detecting presence. However, it can be used to augment other presence sensors. Interpret results this way: If this sensor shows "present", the iPhone is DEFINITELY present. If this sensor shows "not present", the iP…

[Release] Hubitat Ping

Had a few minutes so I wrapped some driver code around the Hubitat Ping endpoint. Driver returns the data packet loss percentage, as well as the avg, max, min, and mdev statistics from the command as attributes. As it takes a couple of seconds to run, there is also responseReady boolean that can be used as a trigger that the ping has completed. The Ping Repeat preference allows an automatic periodic ping (defaults to zero which is disabled) - probably shouldn’t use a value lower 15 seconds to…

[RELEASE] Unifi Wifi Presence

I have seen a few other Unifi ubiquiti api drivers but they required additional systems to run code on and I really wanted a driver that only ran on the hubitat. Now that the new ignore ssl feature is available it is possible. So you need to be running 2.1.8.117+. This is very early stages just been using it on two cell phones for now. Just wanted to see if others were interested in a hubitat only option? Working on adding a block function. Want to be able to block the kids devices, rea…

[RELEASE] Combined Presence

https://github.com/joelwetzel/Hubitat-Combined-Presence Combined Presence app for Hubitat An app for Hubitat to combine two or more presence sensors to control an output Virtual Presence Sensor. There are 3 types of combiners: Standard Combiners (Use this for combining wifi and gps-based sensors for a single person. It is optimized for that.) Boolean-OR Combiners (Example: If Person1 OR Person2 is home, then the virtual SomeoneIsHome sensor should be home.) Advanced Combiners (All logic o…

[RELEASE] Presence Plus - Creates a combined presence device

*** BPTWorld apps are no longer being developed or maintained. Thanks *** Introducing 'Presence Plus' Creates a combined presence device that can be used with BPTWorld Apps, Google Assistant, Rule Machine and More! This is a simple way to combine presence sensors. Built with other BPTWorld apps in mind, this will make it easier to expand the functions of other BPTWorld apps that rely on 'Last activity' data. Features: Combine sensors to make one unique device reflecting presence Uses Prese…

[stratmeister509]

This is awesome, thanks!

[brad5]

Start with Hubitat Package Manager if you haven't already encountered that app... makes life a lot easier. The Unifi app works only with Unifi's network controller...