Feels like a popular topic at the moment, so thought it may be worth bringing our experiences together. Putting aside current issues, it would be interesting to hear peoples positive experiences as well, what platforms, devices or apps work well?
I'll admit I don't pay enough attention to issues I experience in my setup, and expect I am seeing a delay in my presence detection, but can't pin the blame on anything at the moment with any confidence. So let's take that approach and promote the solutions where people have had a positive experience.
I'm in a similar predicament, without the Wi-Fi.... Let's just say Wi-Fi is a positive in this story, and the name of some platforms can be an indicator for the timing to expect (going against my own suggestions)....
My wife and I have been using the Smartthings Presence Sensors with the AA battery mod in our cars for over 4 years now and they have been remarkably reliable. I have never changed the batteries.
I use Locative on my iPhone. It is incredibly lightweight, and does not have any "parent cloud server" connections. It simply allows one to create a geofence, and then call an http endpoint when arriving, or leaving. I simply use a Cloud Maker API endpoint to change the status of a Hubitat Virtual Presence device. It has been very reliable, and very responsive.
Samsung sensors (AA mod) in my wife's car and on my motorcycle.
Phone Wifi presence + Life360 for both of us.
I keep my HE presence and webCoRE presence on my dashboard for comparison and playing with exposed parameters (closest place and such). Not sure about practical use, but interesting.
I use the free version of Life360 and the Life 360 Connector app. It works fine better than 95% of the time in close to real time.
I do a Refresh: Life 360 Refresh every 10 minutes which I believe I did to solve some issue with the other 5% of the time, and that must have helped because I can't remember the last time it failed me.
We use Combined Presence with the Hubitat app (geo) and iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor (WiFi). It works pretty well for us and if geo isn't working, it only takes about a minute max when we connect to WiFi.
iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor works for Android phones and there's nothing to install. It just pings a device on the WiFi network and marks it present if it responds.
Using Life360 (free) (with BPTWorld's "Location Tracker User Driver") and Wi-Fi (with joelwetzel's "iPhone WiFi Presence Sensor", which works just fine with Android).
Presence turns OFF when both say "not present" and turns ON when either says "present". No problems in months.
For mobile presence, @jwetzel1492’s WiFi presence driver and Combined Presence app have been the base of a very solid solution for me too.
Like @ogiewon, I’m a big fan of Locative’s approach, since it doesn’t rely on an unnecessary, additional cloud server. Geofency works similarly, but is also iOS only AFAIK.
I have had to learn over and over that presence is harder than I would have expected. Everything is only pretty reliable at best, and some are outright terrible. I have given up on anything GPS-based.
I wrote an integration with a BLE beacon (like Tile or no-name iBeacon) that is on my keyring and in my wife's purse. There's a Pi that scans BLE a few times a minute and reports back to Hubitat. And an app on the Hubitat side that keeps a presence sensor updated (if the PI doesn't "see" and report the beacon for a configurable timeout, then it means you're not present).
It works, but it requires some changes to your routine -- for example, you have to take the keys every time you leave the house, and they have to be placed in a dish near the Pi when you return home so that you're more sure it'll see them as it scans.
That is the most reliable method I have used. I'm always looking for something better/easier.
I also use my UniFi Network driver for presence, and I go back and forth between combining that with my BLE presence sensor and just using the BLE one outright.
My setup is a bit more (over)complicated, but presence sensing has never been more accurate or timely.
Using a slightly modified version of [RELEASE] BTLE Presence Sensor (Tile Mate) that reports to a local node-red endpoint (3 Pi's arranged around the property). Additionally, using a Unifi websocket connection (in node-red as well), phone presence is reported.
These all populate a list variable and when the list has at least one entry, it updates hubitat with "Present" and "Not Present" when empty.
I even use it to track presence on my car (this is purely Tile though, no wifi). It hasn't ever failed to open the garage door right when I get to the end of the driveway (Pi Zero in the garage).
Every other way I tried ended up either unreliable or too slow. Admittedly, my way is probably overcomplicated.
Edit: So basically a lot like @tomw above, but with more sensing devices. It allows me to move around with my wallet, which has my Tile card in it.
