Where Do You Stand On Presence?

I only use the Unifi wifi presence and it works for all members of the family.

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.

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Life360 free with the official integration. It is delayed sometimes when leaving but usually no more than 1-2 minutes. Arrival is spot on every time.

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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.

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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.

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Haha, we're basically exactly the same with the approach. UniFi websocket, BLE sensors and Pi Zeroes in multiple places. Great minds think alike, eh? :wink:

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Also, desperate minds! :laughing:

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I've thought about doing that buy how do you handle the cases where you go out together and only take one car?

Geofency. Rock-solid, cheap--think it was $4 for the family. Good configurability. Doesn't sell my data.

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In-home automations should only be based on personal presence, not your vehicles.

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After experimenting with many different things I ended up with
iBeacons + ESPresence + RPi with HA
Only this combination works very fast.
Detection speed is very important for my application which is
unlocking and opening my apartment door on arrival.

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I use HomeKit iPhone presence connected via Homebridge. It doesn't give down to the inch (mm for you @sburke781 and our other friends that have rightfully determined the United States customary system isn't logical) location :wink: , but it has been reliable for my needs. I haven't noticed any issues with it.

YMMV, Batteries not included, some assembly required.

EDIT: I suppose I should have said 25.4 mm to be consistent with the inch reference. lol

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We use a combination of Hubitat, SmartThings (pretense is the only thing it's used for now), Life360, OwnTracks, and HomeAssistant (used for the interface and presence) presence sensors, all of them have been pretty reliable lately on iPhones but we tie them all together with the combined presence app in case on or two of them don't switch states as expected.

I tried OwnTracks on my parents Android phones and that didn't work at all as it would only work with the app open, Hubitat didn't work well either, Life360 is the only one that worked well on their Android devices, although I didn't setup HomeAssistant there to try it and they never had a SmartThings.

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I have been using the free version of Life360 on my iPhone for over a year and a half I guess. I used it before the HE app had the built in function and then switched back after a few months. I have read the concerns about Life360 tracking but have stuck with it because it works. I had not heard about Locative until seeing your post.

I installed it yesterday and have set it up with the same radius around my house. I added two rules in HE with cloud endpoint triggers and just have it logging right now. I then configured locative to GET the cloud endpoints. I only went out once yesterday after setting it up. On departure it was three seconds after Life360 and on arrival it was one second ahead. Neat.

I won’t touch it for a couple of days and monitor battery usage on my phone to compare with Life360.

I have never found the need (yet) to use Maker API. I have been reading a little about it recently wrt the hubiVue dashboard app but have not taken the plunge. But I don’t think there is any benefit one way or the other between maker API and cloud endpoints, right?

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Good question. I guess you're correct in that Rule Machine's Cloud Endpoint Triggers are also a very viable option. I use MarkerAPI for a few things already, like my Homebridge integration for Apple HomeKit, NodeRED for hub health monitoring and InfluxDB data logging, and for HE to HA integration. Thus, I actually am running multiple instances of MakerAPI.

But for simply using something like Locative, a RM Cloud Endpoint trigger is just fine.

Thank you for confirming that I wasn’t missing something. I am also using the same method for my six iOS shortcuts.

I have been reading about Homebridge and I saw that one of the two options uses maker API. I just haven’t figured out yet which path to choose.

Same here, plus a second wifi presence using @snell Unifi netwrk drivers (plus the same setup for my wife). Ive just started to track these so i can determine which ones respond more quickly for arrival & departure

However i also use a tracker i have in my car, which sends me a message when i leave/enter the geofence. Gut feel says it's faster and more reliable than any of the others. I just need to figure out how to get it to feed HE. Tasker will be my first port of call

I believe both options work pretty well. I chose the MakerAPI based Homebridge integration as it does not require any custom code on my Hubitat hub. It’s been running very well for a couple of years now. I actually run HomeBridge on my always-on Windows 10 “home server” PC. This PC also runs InfluxDB, Grafana, NodeRED, Plex Media Server, and Channels DVR.

Cool. Thanks for the direction. I have an always on pc running Plex as well but I was considering using my Synology DS220+ for Homebridge. Now maybe not :wink:

I won’t hijack this thread any further.

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