I'm at a point where would like to migrate more things from SmartThings to Hubitat, but all I have left (devices and apps) have ties to presence control. From what I read, I understand that work is in progress on a Hubitat iPhone app which would offer presence management similar to what SmartThings does, and I understand that other options (like Life365 integration) are possible today.
Considering that a switch from the SmartThings app to anything else involves doing that on all the family's iPhones, and trying to minimize disruptions to other family members, I am wondering if I'm better off at this point waiting for the Hubitat native app (are we days/weeks/months/years away from its release?), or whether I should just go down the Life365 route (which I tested a few years ago as an alternative to SmartThing's presence when it was giving me troubles, and I didn't like much/at all) and stick with it for the foreseeable future.
I've been using Life360 on three phones in my family with great success since I bought my Hubitat Hub 5+ months ago. I have no idea when the Hubitat mobile phone app will be released.
Some folks have had to refresh the connection between Hubitat and Life360. This can be done manually, by going into the Life360 App within the Hubitat Hub's Admin Web page, and simply clicking DONE. A recent firmware update exposed a REFRESH command for this integration, that you can call periodically using Rule Machine. I have mine set up to call REFRESH on the "Life360 Refresh" Device each time my Garage Door opens (since this is how we leave and enter the house, 99% of the time.) I wasn't having a problem with Life360, but I figured why not make sure the connection stays up to date.
I created a virtual presence device for each person and use WebCoRE to update it based on multiple other devices. Then I have an anyone virtual presence device that is updated if anybody is home or nobody is home to trigger home/away states.
I use a combination of life360 and network presence to determine if a person is home or not. If either is home, the mark that persons presence as home, if both are away then mark it as away.
Neither method on its own I found is reliable.
I found life360 is pretty reliable but every now and then would either get stuck in a state for a bit or not refresh fast enough. And using network presence wasn't reliable because you may not get the wifi signal fast enough at your front door or in your garage, and (at least on my iphone 7 and 8) my phones would turn off their wifi connection when going to sleep for upwards of 15 minutes at a time. I'm still trying to find the sweet spot for this but right now it looks like they stay off for about 17 minutes at a time over night.
Using 2 methods together has given me the best reliability.
Presence was the most unreliable aspect of SmartThings for me, and I know that's saying a lot. But I discovered SharpTools (uses Tasker and Autolocation) implementation of presence by @josh and now it's nearly perfect.
It's Android-only and not yet available on Hubitat but the interface with ST still works well for presence to Hubitat.
I have been using Life 360 since the day I purchased Hubitat with great success. I have never had to refresh life360, and I don't remember it ever failing to notify of presence. We have a live in nanny that has it on her phone as well. It's also nice because using life360, IFTTT, and Hubitat, I was able to setup Sonos voice notifications of when things happen outside of the home. Example, When my wife arrives to work the house says "NAME has arrived safely to work." When she is at the gym, the sonos says "NAME is at the gym, working on that booty" , When she is 4 minutes away from home and moving towards home sonos says " Attention. Hide your kids. Hide your wife. NAME will arrive in 4 minutes." I have it setup so that Hubitat will only say the announcements if either my wife or I are present. Nanny doesn't get warning that we are about to arrive.
Lots of great ideas and advice here. I was so excited to have our phones as presence sensors in SmartThings, and lik everyone else, so disappointed that it stopped working so quickly after setup.
I use Homebridge with our iPhones to trigger virtual switches based on location, and a TP-Link Deco M5 WiFi presence detection to activate a secondary virtual switch via IFTTT for each of us. When both are active, we are confirmed present and vice versa.
Thanks for all the feedback; I've started using Life360, and it seems to work OK. Two things I don't like: a) It drains the battery way more than the smartthings app does - and that's surely something I don't need; b) It has a somewhat "stalkerish" behavior of showing the (2 days in free mode) history of the movements of everyone in the circle; that's a bit too much - and it may well be the reason for point a)...
I guess I'll keep monitoring its behavior a bit longer; but I don't think I'll "roll it out" to the whole family. I'd rather wait for a less intrusive hubitat app - or keep relying on the smartthings app for the time being. Of course it's just a personal point of view.
If you're an all iOS family, why not give the HomeKit to Homebridge automations a try? They reliably trigger virtual switches when anyone enters or leaves the zone. Far more reliable than ST presence detection.
It's really quite inexpensive to setup on a Raspberry Pi Zero W, and you don't need a monitor or keyboard attached. You need either a newer iPad or an Apple TV 4 to handle the HomeKit automations, but if you don't own either, what a great excuse to get one!
I have installed homebridge, along with tonesto7's homebridge plugin; and it connects fine to the corresponding hubitat app. How do I tell the whole setup to process a change in presence for one of the devices registered with homebridge to trigger a virtual switch change on the hubitat side?
I actually run mine on a old Macbook that I keep from going to sleep with Insomnia X. I prefer it for ease of adjustment and logging into it remotely via the built-in screen sharing. I know you can do the same with TightVNC, but the Mac setup is just a check box to get it going.
For that you need to use HomeKit automations. You'll need either an iPad capable of running the latest OS or an Apple TV 4.
Like I mentioned, great excuse to buy an Apple TV!
If you don't need 4K, you can pick one up on eBay for around $50 to $100. I paid $100 CAD for mine, but in the US you should be able to get it for less.
Fair enough. I bought an Apple TV 4 becuase it was a way for me to get my Insteon devices working with Hubitat via Homebridge, and I didn't really care about the new TV OS, but now that I have it, I really like it, my son loves the games he can play, I can watch Amazon Prime video on it now, and my wife likes the apps and additional content.
@SmartHomePrimer I reinstalled HomeBridge (Hubitat) a couple days ago specifically to try it's presence accuracy and thus suitability. HomeBridge (Hubitat) is under a cloud these days because of instabilities that can not be narrowed down. So far, I've no new signs of instability AND the presence side of it is awesome!
I have AppleTVs but the original time I used it for HomeKit, it would "fight" with Homebridge (running on a Mac Mini). Today, I have an iPad Mini performing that function and as I said, awesome!!
Great news! I'm glad to see someone else was willing to try this. It's been so reliable for me.
I originally was using just the presence to unlock my door, because the August Lock built-in Auto-Unlock feature would frustrate us by working flawlessly for weeks, and then just suddenly stop for one or all of us at once. The issue I had with using HomeKit presence alone for the lock was when I was walking near the top of my street, but only passing by, not intending to walk home yet, it would unlock my door.
So now that I have added the TP-Link Deco M5 WiFi presence as a second factor, it works fantastic to unlock my door as soon as my phone has tripped both the HomeKit presence switch and the WiFi presence switch.
I think I'll pass; I usually need stronger reasons to buy new/more toys...
