Life 360 isn't a hack. It is a native integration in HE...
Anyway, more options is always good - then people can pick which they want to use. I'm all for choices!
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For me it's about the wife acceptance factor. Having a single app that can be used opening the dashboards and for notifications makes it easy and clean.
On the Wink platform for example you can do widgets on the Android home screen. So she can pull up to the house, open the home screen and tap the 'Open Garage' icon. See my post from a while ago - iOS, Android and other client Apps
Yes that kind of functionality can be replicated using Pushover, cloud dashboards, and IFFT widgets but it's not nearly as nice. None the less I really like how Hubitat is progressing - just purchased my 2nd hub now 
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As for getting to things easily for your WAF, does she use an iPhone? In Safari, you tap the box with an arrow coming out of the top (share icon), then choose the + icon “Add to Home Screen” ( you may need to scroll left a bit to see that icon). This will let you set an easy and clean looking way to get at specific pages. Works great for dashboards too.
You can use Iconical for iOS to customize the icons if you wish. Not sure if there’s an Android equivalent for either, but there should be.
It's not full either, I wish it was. I still have my ST hub around doing 2 tasks...one of them is mobile presence with webcore. Why? Because I can do actions based on people arriving at locations I choose.
IF HE can open the Life360 driver a bit to report back on where/when people are arriving and leaving the location defined in the Life360 app....then that would be useful.
To give examples I do things like turn up the heat when my wife leaves work, set some things in the house when the kids leave school, etc. Set bulb colors while the kids are at school. All of this I know because the webcore presence supports it. Along with webcore supporting events for arriving and leaving. Heck Life360 itself supports "locations" for a reason. So people can set up alerts for when people arrive and leave.
I'm hoping the app will bring this to HE.
PRESENCE please, along with user settable locations (geofence) and the ability to act on arriving, leaving or how long someone is there.
I did some research on this, doesn't seem to be still an active project?
And to that point... presence built in to HE I think is pretty important. A lot of automation is based around presence. It should be integral IMHO. What if Life360 shuts down?
Your correct it is not, but you can still get the code for it and install it and it works 100% of the time, for me anyway. Just define a virtual presence sensor and hook that up to the makerAPI app and away you go. (It must be easy to do as I did it!!!!!!!!!!)
I have 2 geofences set up and get alerts for when I arrive/leave both.
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I've been using dashboards added to my home screen for a while and noticed that if the dashboard gets into a bad state (device not updated or I wasn't connected to VPN when I launched it) that state will persist for a while even if I force close the dashboard, so I'll close the dashboard opened that way and VPN into my network then open the dashboard and it will still show the message that it couldn't connect. As soon as I open a browser and go to the same dashboard it works perfectly in the browser. Seems to be some kind of home screen cookie issue as eventually it will start working again. Sometimes hitting Done on the error will fix it and sometimes I will have to click the Hubitat icon in the upper left to get it to update. The browser seems to work better but has less real estate due to the menus.
Something like this integrated into HE and part of the platform would be great!!!
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Why use VPN for Dashboards?
I find the Dashboard load faster via VPN than via cloud.
Interesting. Without consideration of VPN, if I visit a local link on WiFi, It is of course very fast. But if I visit the cloud link while on Wi-Fi it is significantly slower to load. However if I switch off my Wi-Fi and visit the cloud link via LTE it’s very fast loading.
@SmartHomePrimer
I had added the shortcut on my iPhone as you suggested earlier for the wife. Now turn off the Wifi on my phone and that shortcut will not load at all over the LTE, what am I missing here?
To be clear, only Dashboard Shortcuts will work over LTE without a VPN. The Hubitat web interface shortcuts will only work on your local network via WiFi or Ethernet, or on LTE via a VPN.
When you add the dashboard shortcuts, make sure you’re looking at the cloud dashboard not the local.
Thank you for the clarification, I appreciate the help, only been at this a week
Fair enough, and I use it as one option. But I don't like Life360 as the native solution, it's unreliable.
You're right, but it's still available on the app store and works fine when paired with the API.
However, I agree. Another third party solution.
Me too. I hate exposing anything I don't have to, to the cloud, especially dashboards.
I've tried so many geofencing solutions on two different iphones and found none of them to be 100% reliable. Some may work better than others but they all fail too frequently to rely on. I think android may have better luck.
I'm thinking its the phone itself and how it handles apps vs battery usage and the apps are just a little to restricted.
The most reliable of the bunch was locative. And that one I also like because it doesn't send your data to any other cloud service. But it still wasn't 100%.
Combining geofencing with lan presence (as long as your wifi reaches to the front of the garage or wherever you walk in/drive into) has been 100% reliable for me.
My modified version of the combine presence app, uses the LAN Presence. It considers it disparately from the other combined presence detection options I use on a threshold. LAN Presence present, definitely present. LAN Presence not present, might be gone, check everything else.
Pretty solid. However, I don't want to rube goldberg everyone's phone I'd like to offer access. I need a single solution for guests and such, that I can ask them to download and sign in, and that's that. We need something better.
Wow... I would have very few guests in my house if I tried to make them install apps on their phones to stay with me. No way my parents or in-laws would do that - hell, what am I saying, they don't even HAVE smart phones!
More of a selection of guests that are frequent. And that's not a bad thing if the in-laws don't come over. 
Good point. 
