Catching enter/leave events

Third party integrations AppDaemon
1

How do I listen to enter/leave zone events fired by a device tracker? I’ve zones set up, it works fine as a part of an automation rule:

- id: '1569482179999'
  alias: Check zones
  trigger:
  - entity_id: device_tracker.life360
    event: enter
    platform: zone
    zone: zone.work
  condition: []
  action:
  - data:
      message: Entered work
      title: Zone changed
    service: notify.myself

I was trying to accomplish the same thing using AppDaemon with no luck. If I run the code shown below (assuming every event should be captured), it catches some events from a Xiaomi button and HA internals like call service, but none related to zones:

def initialize(self):
    self.listen_event(self.catchall)

What am I doing wrong?

2

I don’t use the zone integration myself, so probably can’t help you much.

Does the device tracker “device_tracker.life360” have an attribute, which shows in which zone the device_tracker is in?

Or does the state of the device tracker change to the name of the zone when you enter a different zone?
So for example if you leave home and enter work, does the status of the device tracker change from “home” to “work”?

3

Yes, I can track changes to tracker entity state, that works. Just curious why zone events doesn’t work in AD.

4

If you enter the zone “work”, what is the state of the “device_tracker.life360”, is it “work” or “not_home”?

5

I’ve read some posts of people with a similar setup and as far as I understand, if the device tracker changes zones, the device tracker will show the name of the zone as the status of the device tracker.

If this is correct, you can use “listen_state” on the device tracker, something like this:

def initialize(self):
    self.listen_state("device_tracker.life360", self.zone_changed)

def zone_changed(self, entity, attribute, old, new, kwargs):
    if old != new:
        # notify that zone changed for device tracker life360, old=previous zone, new=current zone
6

The new state is “work” so yes, your approach will work, thank you for the comprehensive answer!
But I’m still wondering why listen_event approach does not work. :thinking: