[RELEASE] OwnTracks Presence

erktrek · January 2, 2022, 6:12pm

I'm not sure I understand exactly - I would think you'd need to post to the same place with the same URL (but as a different user). I only have experience with the MQTT side of things though running my own Mosquitto broker..

https://owntracks.org/booklet/features/friends/

and waypoints (regions)...

https://owntracks.org/booklet/guide/waypoints/

Then you'd check to see who was inside the region.. after an in-region (location) event fired?

edit: I am running Android as well and can set up multiple "regions" using the app.

Terk · January 2, 2022, 7:50pm

I haven't been able to figure out how to use OwnTracks at more for presence at more than one location either, I'd be interested in doing that as well if you do find a way.

tbales68 · January 2, 2022, 8:16pm

I think it must be an OT app problem. My iPhone lets me put the URL thingy on each location... but his android screens don't look the same - he only has one place to put the URL thing.

erktrek · January 2, 2022, 8:32pm

There is a difference between server config where you put the URL and region... or am I missing something? I just added "another region"... but haven't done anything with it yet...

maxq10 · January 3, 2022, 4:10pm

So I just set this up on my phone (Android) and my wife's phone (iPhone). My Android phone seems to be reporting correctly, but my wife's iPhone is not showing a presence attribute...and I don't know why. Her iPhone is showing all the other attributes (region, battery, ssid, lat/long, etc.).

How do I get the presence attribute to show up for her iPhone?

erktrek · January 3, 2022, 4:13pm

I don't have an iPhone so cannot say.. maybe check to make sure the region on her phone is defined properly? Maybe it's an app permission thing?

maxq10 · January 3, 2022, 4:17pm

That's what I initially thought. Region is set up and looks correct. I have her Location Services set to always allow access to the Owntracks app. Other than that I'm not sure what to set?

erktrek · January 3, 2022, 4:18pm

Maybe it's as simple as having to trigger it to get it to report?

maxq10 · January 3, 2022, 4:19pm

What do you mean? Leave the region and then come back? Or is there something I can do on the phone?

erktrek · January 3, 2022, 4:23pm

I was thinking going outside the region although there might be a location spoofer you could install to test..

My experience with Apple stuff is relegated to my iPad and MBP...

erktrek · January 3, 2022, 4:24pm

Do an iPhone reboot and see if that works..

github.com/owntracks/ios

No locations sent in "significant"-mode from iPhone

opened 04:18PM - 01 Dec 21 UTC

closed 02:04PM - 14 Dec 21 UTC

rallyeaon

question

Hello ! IWe (my family & I) were using owntracks on Android mobiles with almost …no/minor issues. Recently (2 weeks ago) we changed to iPhone 12 (2x pro, 1x max) running IOS 15.1.1 with owntracks 14.2.2/de_AT The phones are clients to an MQTT-Server (MQTT2 in FHEM home automation). Requesting a manual transmission of the phone's location results in an location update on the server of the respective phone. However, in neither "significant" mode, nor "move" mode any update is sent. This is true regardless of owntracks in the foreground or in the background. A couple of days ago new locations were sent occasionally however, since a while only manual mode ist working. I'm not sure wether update of IOS had an impact. For your convenience I have uploaded my exported configuration (anonymized somewhat) and appended a ".txt" to comply to the upload-rules. Any help is highly appreciated. In case this is not the right place to post my issue please point me to the right address. Thank you very much rallye [config.otrc.txt](https://github.com/owntracks/ios/files/7635485/config.otrc.txt)

maxq10 · January 3, 2022, 4:58pm

Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried that, but no joy. Here is what I see in Hubitat for her iPhone virtual presence device:

OT-iphone

No other attributes have shown up so far. I notice that my Android has all of the above, plus a "switch" and the "presence" attribute.

erktrek · January 3, 2022, 4:59pm

But it's showing "Home" that indicates it is within the region.. that's weird unless it really needs a trigger.

tbales68 · January 3, 2022, 5:03pm

my boyfriend thought there was case sensitivy on my iPhone. We got it after we got my name and my region in the hub device perfect with the phone. Also set the user exactly - I originally put Christina but he Tina in the hub device. We made both lowercase tina then, made sure the user after /location/xxxxxxx was tina and button mashed the quiet, significant ... theres also some Background message I got we found a setting for... maybe that helps?

erktrek · January 3, 2022, 5:24pm

I think that might be "background location services" or something?

maxq10 · January 3, 2022, 9:05pm

Do you mean "Background App Refresh?" Yeah, that is already enabled.

erktrek · January 3, 2022, 9:13pm

No I meant location services which you've already enabled..

maxq10 · January 4, 2022, 12:26am

I think I have the iPhone working now. I feel kinda dumb, but here is what I did:

On the device page, there is an ON and OFF button there. I just decided to see what they did, so I clicked on the ON button and all of a sudden now presence is working! Not sure why I had to do that, but there you go...

jshimota · January 4, 2022, 12:38am

hey all. So I've been working with my GF on her hubitat - she's an IPhone user. Each of her 'regions' have a specific line you can add the 'cloud.services.xxxx blah blah' line.
On my Android, I can only enter that line once - under Preferences - connection - host. (i'm using the recommended HTTP not the MQTT broker).
Her phone lets her put that string for each map location, which is nice since my HE and her HE obviously have a different URL string. I could not get my cell onto her HE without blowing up what works in my house... Maybe I'm missing something.

In regards to 'background App refresh'... yes. that was what she saw and told me about. Indeed there is a setting in the iphone where you set what apps are enabled.
Her Location setting also was per app. It started working when we toyed with it - I think that the reboot previously suggested may have some merit.

I want to add that since about 6-7 days ago my logs keep showing 'cloud.services.hubitat not found'. It goes into this state for about 10-15 minutes at random times. It is clearly not the app. I think something is going on in development at HE on the mobile app and their rebooting servers or something. Who knows! But if you check your log files on your androids, I've been seeing that for about a week now - since the announcement of the beta mobile app tests etc.

syhnthetik · January 9, 2022, 1:32am

Hello all, first time posting, but a long time home automation user. I recently switched over to hubitat after many years of frustration with SmartThings. Mainly presence related issues. I was extremely disappointed in the built in hubitat presence reliability, so I went off in search of another solution. I know that many of these issues are due to the way phones work with GPS, and decided to move away from GPS all together. I purchased an iBeacon and my intention was to have my presence based on that. From what I understood it was just a matter of purchasing an iBeacon and configuring with OwnTracks, then when my phone connected to it, I could show present in hubitat. Unfortunately I have a mixed use household of both iPhone and Android, and it looks like beacon support was removed from Android. Of course I didn't find this out until after I purchased a beacon and tried to set it up

My question is, can anyone direct me to a solution that is NOT gps based? Or that has better reliability than GPS based apps? AND that would work on both Android and iPhone alike?

I was really bummed that there is no beacon support in OwnTracks for android. BLE connection really seemed like an elegant and reliable way to do presence detection.