Displaying the location of the family members with HA

Configuration
1

Hello dear community,

I would like to have a map displayed on in HA that shows the location of all family members.
Now I have researched on the internet and came across several possibilities.

On the one hand, the possibility with Life360 and the Start Assistant is listed, then the option with “OwnTracks/NextTracks” and on the other hand, this could also be realized somehow with the HA app and the device tracking.

Now I unfortunately do not know which option, for me as a beginner, would be the best and which option is already obsolete.

I would be very grateful if you could help me in this regard.
Perhaps also immediately with the link to a current tutorial.

Kind regards

2

I’m using the built-in functionality. In my ui-lovelace.yaml file I have:

title: Home
views:
# Map
  - title: Map
    path: map
    icon: 'mdi:map-marker'
    badges: []
    cards:
      - type: map
        entities:
          - entity: device_tracker.sm_n986u
          - entity: device_tracker.janettes_phone
          - entity: device_tracker.katies_phone
        hours_to_show: 0
        title: Where is everybody?
        dark_mode: true

and it looks like this:

Where is everybody
Where is everybody803×1032 107 KB

One thing I’m not fond of: Whether I use the dark view (shown) or the light view, it can be hard to read the street names and other text.

3

ok, thank you for your quick reply.
now the question is: “how do i do that?”.
you have attached the code, but i don’t really know how to use it.

Do I own this file “ui-lovelace.yaml” when I installed HA as docker container? Unfortunately I don’t know the differences with HA yet and even more so “lovelace” doesn’t mean anything to me.

Please forgive my cluelessness :roll_eyes: :woozy_face:

4

Install the HA app and make sure your HA instance is accessible from the outside.
That will be the easiest solution and will give you more sensors than just the location.

5

How do I Do that?

This may be more trouble than you want right away because it involves setting your HA instance into “YAML mode.” You’ll find the instructions to do that here: Dashboards - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
Once you’re in YAML mode, you’ll need a way to edit the individual files. There’s a nice add-on called File Editor to do that. You’ll find the instructions to install it here: Advanced Configuration - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
Use the File Editor to edit your ui-lovelace.yaml file (which is, essentially your dashboards) and add in that code I have above. That will give you an additional dashboard with that map I showed. (You’ll have to, of course, replace the entities with your own device_tracker entities.