Geofencing, independent of Wifi

Configuration
1

Hi there,

I would like to let homeassisant know, if the phones are within the homezone. Homezone = 500m Radius around Ma House.

There are two people, one with iOS-Device, one with android.

I think, that recognizing the devices with WiFi isn‘t a good solution for me (for me / in my case).
So a geofencing-thing would be Perfect.
Something like „leaving the defined Location More then 500m“ or „I step into the radius“.

Problem: I don‘t use Home Assistant Cloud.

For the iPhone i could use Apple HomeKit.
But what could I use for the android device?

Perhapse there is one Solution for Both? Which also works without Wifi?

Cheers!

2

You have to pick your battles. If you were all iOS then HomeKit makes it dead simple and highly accurate, if not then you need something like Nabu Casa for $60/year. It’s one thing to get something that will tell HA where you are, something else entirely if what you want needs to work on two completely different operating systems.

3

I suppose you could put ESP devices on your cars that actively ping HA, that might get you 500m but I would be surprised.

4

Do you want to avoid the cloud in general or only exposing your HA to the Internet?

I’ve seen people use this: https://www.life360.com/.

5

I read that life360 was dead, somehow, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, the question is about a specific domain of HA: presence detection

Have a look at all the avaialble options, and pick the one that best fits you

I, personally, use

  • The HA companion app (available both for iOS and android), via a tailscale tunnel, which prevents exposing your HA to the whole world whether via Nabu Casa or other means
  • The Google maps integration
6

With Apple HomeKit it is very simple to implement this:

Define Sensor “xyz is at home” and an automation in the “home”-app of the iOS-device which activates the sensor while arriving and deactivates when leaving. No Tailscale, no VPN or sth else needed. And it works very stable.

Isn’t there something comparable for android, which works similar simply with homeassistant and doesn’t need VPN, Tailscale etc?
Unfortunately Apple-Home is not available for android devices…