Refresh WiFi iPhone every few minutes

[user6580]

Hi all,

I’ve installed WiFi iPhone presence detector, trouble is every few minutes it ‘leaves’ then ‘arrives’. I don’t think it’s my router or where I locate my iPhone.
If I leave the phone in the same place for hours, overnight, it still changes state at random times thro’ the night.
I thought if I ‘refresh’ the phone every few minutes it would keep its presence. If I am definitely away I would delay for 10 minutes.
Has anyone had these issues & do you think I could use an app, maybe Rule Machine, to refresh the phone?

Thanks Sandy.

[rlithgow1]

It's the phone itself not hubitat. You need to turn off anything on the iphone that puts it in low power mode to keep the radio awake. That said, it's going to drain your battery very quickly

[marktheknife]

@rlithgow1

You need to turn off anything on the iphone that puts it in low power mode to keep the radio awake.

Not possible, as far as I know.

iOS will disconnect from WiFi if the phone is sitting idle after ~10-15 minutes, and no combination of settings can change that.

The developer of the iPhone WiFi presence sensor recommends against using it alone for exactly that reason.

From the thread I just linked to:

@jwetzel1492

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 iPhone may or may not be present. We don't know.

It’s only useful as one component of a mobile presence solution. Like with his combined presence app.

[ritchierich]

I use HomeKit for presence and it has worked great. There are several community posts with instructions going back a few years but here is one I found quickly. Basically you need to create a virtual device using the virtual switch with presence driver for every phone and setup the automations in HomeKit like @sidjohn1 shows in this post:

Presence sensing

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. [IMG_0883] Before that i used smartthings arrival sensors, as long as you have a strong zigbee mesh they also work 100%

[Bloodtick_Jones]

@ritchierich

I use HomeKit for presence and it has worked great.

Strong agree to use HomeKit on iOS for presence detection; mostly for the fact it is the only solution that will not have 'nag' popups warning the user an app is accessing location 'X times in the last Y days - do you want to disable'.

My household turns off the detection when that pops up; even when they know what it is for. The ONLY solution is HomeKit, all other 3rd party apps with 'nag' at some point if set to 'always allow'.