version 1.0.2145 (beta)
- add support for sending device location to hub
- add help setting which opens support page in browser
- Location: add option to disable showing other locations on interactive map
- many misc map changes and fixes
Most of these changes are related to location / presence tracking in HD+. The biggest is a new feature, Location Tracking, that will send your device's location to the Hub.
Location Tracking vs Presence Tracking
I imagine these features can look similar to a lot of people so I'll try to explain the differences:
Location Tracking will send the device's coordinates (lat/lng) to your Hub. Similar to Apple's "Find My" service or Life360 -- except no 3rd party server involved. The location is only sent to your Hubitat Hub.
Presence Tracking is for setting up 1 or more geofences (areas) and only notifying the Hub if your device enters or exits those areas.
Generally speaking Presence Tracking will work for most people. You can have it monitor your Home and when you arrive or leave it'll update a Hubitat device, which can then put your Hub into 'Away' mode, enable security/etc.. and vice-versa when you arrive home.
But, if you're interested in having a devices coordinates on the Hub, this is where Location Tracking can be helpful
Setting up Location Tracking
- Install the "My Location" device driver on your Hub. @wecoyote5 wrote a driver which you can install either from HPM (it's not there yet but should be soon) or manually from here
- Create a new virtual device with "My Location" device type.. give it any name
- Add the new device to MakerAPI so HD+ can see it
- In HD+, open More Settings -> Location Tracking
- Make sure HD+ has all of the permissions it needs.. including Location (allow all the time), Physical activity and unrestricted battery.
- Select your "My Location" device to notify
permissions needed:
How it works
For now HD+ is relying 100% on Android's Physical activity API (side-note: I'm not even sure this is available on all versions of Android). It'll notify HD+ when the user is doing some kind of activity like driving/walking/etc and HD+ will fetch & send the current location to the Hub.
I tested on a Pixel 7 and was a little surprised to see fairly frequent updates being made. It's entirely possible this won't work as well on a Samsung phone but I will keep testing and can adjust the logic from there.
Because I'm relying on the Physical activity API the battery drain should be low. I'll try to add more options which can increase the frequency of updates -- but at the cost of battery life. Either way though, this feature is still a work in progress.
The other change in this version is also related to location devices. If you long-click -> edit a location device (Life360, OwnTracks, My Location) it'll give you a couple of new options:
- Interactive Map - if checked (default) when you click on a location device it'll open an interactive Google Map where you can zoom in or change views. If unchecked, HD+ will just open a full screen static map (the same one you see on the main dashboard)
- Show All Locations - if checked (default) when you open up the Interactive Google Map, HD+ will also show any other location devices on the map and let you switch between them. But, if you don't want to see the other devices on the map, uncheck this
Finally, I'm starting to add a new "Help" setting which will open a browser to the relevant support page. Just trying to make it a little easier to find/use.
