Hello all
I am running owntracks as an addon in HAOS.
Latley sitting at my desk at home my geofencing automation can set me to “home” and to "away and back to “home” several times withiin 30 seconds.
This can happen several time per day.
I can understand whr there are clouds, rain or thunderstorms, but it also happen when there is a beauatiful sonny day out.
Since many updates to ha and owntracks and possibly i did not adjust something.
Any thoughts?
thank you in advance for your time and help
If you are using only the GPS app to track your location, something more stable like a sensor on your home WIFI that knows when you device is connected to WIFI can be added to possibly provide more stability while home. People can have multiple sensors.
Otherwise the actual GPS data interaction with the device and app itself has more to do with the location report than HA.
Thank you Sir_Goodenougf for your reply.
In the near past (2 months ago) all was working fine.
Yes i am using the GPS for tracking.
As im using geofence to control lights, HVAC, property entrance gate and media.
I could use an additional sensor for when i leave the property (any recomendations) and use the gps when i’m arriving.
Once again thank yuou and have a great weekend Sir
My router has sensors for things that are online or not. So do many others.
It’s not that you use one sensor for one thing and the other sensor dor the other thing. Apply them both to the user and HA has more information as to whether you are home or not.
Are there faulty or missing location values being reported from your phone for other apps such as Google Maps? Has there been any recent firmware updates or fixes released for your phone? Have you applied them?
Have you tried apps on your phone that report the current GPS values? Do they jump around when it is stationary? Try to isolate the issue to whether the phone, GPS, owntracks, or HomeAssistant, or transmission data corruption is where the fault lies.
Are you located in or near an active war zone where GPS accuracy is being actively scrambled for military reasons? If so, you may have little recourse over data accuracy and should seek alternate methods of detecting your location.
Are you using the HTTP or MQTT method to get your owntracks data into HomeAssistant? Are there any errors being reported in the logs?
Are your geofencing thresholds too close together, such that home and away distances are too close together and don’t allow for bordeline jumps between adjacent locations? The accuracy being a little too narrow?
Is your phone battery savings software being a little too aggressive to allow regular updates?
Thank you IOT7712
No faulty or missing values locations. Google maps shows me at my location with similar Coordinate than in owntrak.
No fixes or update on phone.
I installed traccar client and gps logger (for the moment all is stable)
Using http. No error logs visible
My thresholds are an interesting subject.
Current the threshold for away and home is sert to 250 meters. I always wanted to have 2 thresholds one for away (i would like to set it at 200) and home at 500 however i could never seem to have it work properly.
My objective is to secure the house as soon as possible and to “wakeup” the house in time to asctivate the hvac sistem an to have the house confotable for when i arrive.
Thanks to SG I started to investigate gps deveics to put onboard permenantly my car, bike and key chain. These devices i would like to integrate into HA.
I am still debating on the “logic” to apply to my automation.
Thank you all for your help
It would appear your GPS data is accurate and reliably being sent to HomeAssistant. You should check your automation settings for how you interpret it in the geofencing software. Are the algorithms correct to trigger the home and away status changes? Temporarily turning on debugging may assist to narrow down the issue.
Alternate forms of position data could involve cheap BlueTooth trackers, invoking a status change as they move in and out of range, as well as signal strength values. You could monitor your phone BlueTooth or WiFi connectivity status, but be warned that is not often reliable, as many threads on this issue posted regularly will attest to.
Thank you for your prompt reply
IN home assistant I use node red to build my automations.
In my trigger i only have the option to set (as you know) name, server, entity (person.william_bravin
event and zone
In Owntraksinacurate location i have “5 meters”
In minimal location displacementi have 100 meters
Location interval 60 secondsand location interval move a 10 seconds
I am looking into trackers dongles (from TKmars and auto vos ait tag) and trying to find one that i can integrate to HA
Thank ounce more for your help
Any specific reason you’re not using the HA Companion app? It’s got GPS tracking built in & integrates perfectly into HA
It would appear the data coming into HomeAssistant is accurate (whether by owntracks or the HomeAssistant companion) but how it is configured and interpreted and the automations may be the issue.
Hi
I am using the companion app
Then try switching to using the companion app’s device tracker instead of owntracks for a little while & see if the issue persists.
Thank you for this suggstion
It eas my understanding that i needed owntrack (or life360) to communicate with HA to trigger geofencing
You don’t need owntracks or life360 for geofencing, especially if you have external access to HA. The companion app will handle all that on its own.
Thank s an wow i did know this … one less app to worry about
Welcome!
Before you switch everything over, heads up. There apparently was an issue in HA with GPS accuracy which has been merged in and should be released with the next hotfix on Friday or the next Core release on the 6th of May.
Not sure if this is what’s affecting you, but you might wanna hold out before making any further changes in case your issue is resolved automatically.
If you still wanna go ahead with the companion app location tracking & get rid of Owntracks anyway, the docs are here.
Hello all
Just to provide an update.
I configured the ha app for android as indicated on the net, and dissabled owntracks as mentionned the gps not always works. the the geofence automation faills.
I therefore re enabled owntracks. GPS trigger work much better that using just the companion app.
However in both cases I noticed that my “home” and “away” stated jumped back in forth just the same. This did not happen every day or hour
I concluded that this had nothing to do with HA, the app or owntracks. and could be caused by the area in live in and the cell tower triangulation.
I minimised this issue by adding a 45 seconds delay to my automation “away”.
I hope this will miniise substantially the the issue
Thank you all for yout assistant
Out of curiosity, what is the radius of your home zone? Maybe it’s just too small.
Have you monitored the “gps accuracy” attribute of the HA & Owntracks device tracker entities? This attribute tells you how “accurate” the GPS fixes are. I.e., it defines the radius of a circle around the device that indicates where the device might actually be (since it might not, and probably isn’t, right in the center of the circle.) I say “accurate”, because the bigger the value, the bigger the circle, and hence, the LESS accurate the location fix is. In my experience, about 15 meters is common.
Have you considered “combining” the HA & Owntracks device tracker entities, which might provide a more consistent/accurate location? You can do this with the built-in Person integration. Or, you could try out my Composite custom integration (which actually has existed since before the Person integration was created.) Either way, you’d use the resultant entity in your automations instead of the HA or Owntracks device tracker entities.
@pnbruckner for your response and availability.
My current radius around my house is set to 200 meters. I do monitore the gps accuracy on the map (both in HA and in owntracks) it is jerky however i beleive that this is due to the one minute day…
To be precise the radius circle “W” (me) does not move, i only see a blue dot moving.
15 meters is too tight in my sittuation.
I did use both the HA and owntracks entities . They are both configured similarly. as part of my testing to improve my geofence solution I even tried to use iether or device trackers and created a user with both taker for good measure.
The tracking of the device is not the issue because 90% of the time it is accurate.
As menionned i guess my issue is cause by the erratice reception og gps signal.
For example as i am writing this HA notified me that i am “away” my music stopped my hvac and all lights are turned off. Yet i am still at my desk. before i finished typing this sentence all turned on as it was
To minimize the number of occurences of this sittuation i am tryinng to add a delay between the trigger and the action hoping that i could cover such occurences as much as possible.
I am still trying to develop a sittuation whereby the house shuts “away” down within a 200 meters radius and comes alive whn i wnter a zone "Home"of 500 meters. In this way the HVAC will have time to make the house environment comfortable.
As far as i con see the only way to do this is to have an “away” trigger to leeave the house and a different "Home " trigger to cause the housae to turn on. To do this i am considering installing a GPS tracker in my car that will cause the away automatioon.
Thank you once againg for you help
Hello all
Since my last post i ditch owntracks and i only use the android acompanion app as part of my Geofencing automation.
Thank you for all your help and recommendations.
I still have a lingering problem with this automatiion.
When i receive an "away" notification on my android phone from home assistant and i am still sitting at my desk at home, i go to the gui and select map and i see that my phone shows away from my home.
I then go to settings- developers tools- states and edit my S20 tracker to the exact coordinates of my house and then hit set state.
I restart HA
on the map my phone is alligned with the home and all is well.
after a while i get a notification saying i'm away
i go back to Developer toos and see that my phone coordinates are changed
What could cause the
Hello all
Just wanted to give you all an update.
I ditched owntracks and am relying on the companion app. It works fine.
However i still have my tracker (android phone) "jump" ro an other location *without moving an inch".
So a i increased the radius of my zone from 100 meters to 350 meters and enter exactl coordinate , and i ensure that the coordinates on my device are identical to the zone settyings in settings - zones.
To fix this i then go to the developer tools and change the coordinate =of the device manually. this will immediatly set me to "home"
I even increased , as i mentiopned the radis of the aone to 350 meters and in the settings -developer tools i set the gps accuracy for the device to 50 meters thinking that if the device position and radius is less that the sone radius the occurances of the jump would reduce . to no avail
If there a way to refresh, create a function /process that i can use to:
A: "fiX" my home coordinates on my comanion app that would increase the refresh of the coordinate on the location of my phone
B: refresh the geofencing automation more oftne to locate the phone
Thank you all
