Morning all, C7 hub utilizing 3x iPhones. Struggling with presence sensing. I know it’s a know issue for I phones and the hub additionally I have life 360+ app installed on the hub. Both versions of presence sensing has proved unreliable. Is there a reliable solution through another app or method I can try?
Quite a few threads on this. I have 2X Iphones and for me the best option was to use a combined presence sensor. I use Wifi Presence, Geofency, HE App, and Alexa app, discussed some in this thread.
That just seems like lots of work for presence sensing!
Life360 has been "on the nose" in recent times for their restrictions on third-party integrations, so might be best to give it a miss if it's not working for you.
Beyond that.... I have gone off presence myself, but that is largely because my circumstances don't call for presence enough to warrant too much attention. So I can't help beyond my suggestion around Life360. I may come back to it in the future....
I would be interested to see an extended discussion on people's choices of late in this space, particularly those in the Android space.... (If anyone knows ways to make Tasker GeoFencing more responsive, I'd be particularly interested... )
I am using Apple Home's built-in geofencing feature. I simply created a Virtual Presence with Switch device on my Hubitat hub. Then I exposed this device to Apple Home using Hubitat's built-in HomeKit integration. I then created two Apple Home Automations, one for arriving and another for departing, that simply turn 'on' and 'off' the Hubitat device. For this to work reliably, you will need an always on device on your home network that can act as an Apple Home 'Hub', like an AppleTV or HomePod Mini.
This has been extremely reliable for us.
You can also use Locative, as it works very reliably as well.
I use hubitat to present a virtual switch w/ presence to homekit. I use homekit to turn the switch on/off when i arrive/leave a location like my home.
For me it works 100%, easy to setup/test, and no extra apps needed.
Before that i used smartthings arrival sensors, as long as you have a strong zigbee mesh they also work 100%
Heck I brought in Home Assistant and BLE beacons to get presence sensing working reliable. I've had to set up ESPHome and then set up a whole bunch of BLE proxies around my house to make sure I got coverage for the beacons all over my house. It has been a huge pain in the butt. But it's also quite reliable now.
Ditto. Bigger plus is you never have the apple tracking warnings and periodic 'need to accept' like all other 3rd party apps require. It just works.
Most all of these seem pretty good lately. Back in the beginning with just using the HE app it was probably correct maybe 75% of the time. So I found out about combined presence and added the Alexa app and Wifi and that got me to about 90%. A few times the Alexa geofence quit working after one of their app updates. Then it would start working again after the next. Wifi is great for when you arrive but not for leaving, as the IPhone disconnects from wifi when is not used and no way to change that on the Iphone, that I have found. So I added Geofency. Geofency is probably about 99.9%. I do have occasion where the webhook will miss. It's been a while though.
It was a drawn out process but I am now confident in my presence sensors.
Having perfect performance with this HA solution for in/out of wifi presence.
What do you have your GPS interval set to in the tasker preferences? (Tasker > 3Dot > Preferences .Monitoring tab)
Under display on monitoring, I set my GPS check seconds to 120
Under display off monitoring, I set All Check Seconds to 120
I also went through the whole Battery optimiazation, never sleeping apps, etc that are recommended for Hubitat.
Also, I caught an interesting phenomenon. The geofence radius I had originally set happened to be almost identical to the point at which I break off from wifi and switch over to cellular. I also happen to be in an area with weak cell coverage. So, there was a time period where I had little to no network. This happened to throw an alert that Tasker could not contact the hub when it was trying to switch the Virt Presence Sensor off. I increased the radius so that I KNEW it would be at least 3 minutes away from home, and now I don't get that issue.
Makes me wonder if that isn't at play a little bit with the built in HE presence. I increased the radius on that too, and Tasker rarely has to toggle my presence. I have a built in check prior to toggle. If it has me already away or home, it stops the task. If the task actually has to execute, then I get a notification that Tasker toggled the presence. I rarely if ever get that with the larger radius.
I wonder if many happen to have a radius that triggers just as they lose signal, and then HE misses the changeover (since that is an instantaneous thing).
Display off was still set to 600. I'll see how 120 goes. Thanks.
Same here - I use virtual switches to HomeKit on two separate hubs plus HE's built in geofencing. Between the three I've seen 100% performance for more than a year. Only hiccup has been when HomeKit connections barf which I've found the only reliable fix to be a nightly hub reboot.
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