I’m new to Home Assistant, and started with an small installation with 2 Philips Hue light bulbs. All works fine, and I have created the first automations and scenes.
When I created the automations i noticed that i can also use device trackers to leave the lights after the scheduled time off on when somebody is out of home.
I have 3 user accounts all with an unique apple device (iOS 17). I noticed that all devices are always at home, even when they are not at home.
After that I started googling and I noticed that more HA users have dificulties with Geolocation. Is this still a bug or is it something with my installation? I have found this article:
I have checked the app, on all settings (always location etc). I have enabled push notifications and i’m getting messages on my iPhone when i’m back home. But in HA the latest status is still 2 days old.
When i update my location manually it works. Also the battery percentage is actual in HA.
My HA is not available from outside, so Life360 or Owntracks is not an option.
Because i’m quite new to HA i’m not familiar with other options, but they will be there i think. I’m still reading and viewing a lot of YT videos about the capabilities of HA.
Is there a solution to get geolocation work or is there another solution for geolocation / home detection?
If your HA install is not accessible outside your home network, then the app will not be able to update geolocation. You will need to either expose HA through port forwarding or reverse proxy, or use Nabu Casa, or some other service for location tracking/reporting (like Life360).
If you want just basic home/away without the actual geolocation, you could look into using something like NMAP tracker or other home network presence if your home network (router or other) supports it.
No. The companion app requires HA be exposed to the internet either as I explained or through a cloud service for accurate geolocation device tracking. But that is not the only option for device tracking. An integration like Life360 requires HA have a bidirectional connection to the internet, but that does not mean it is exposed to the internet (open port or other service accessible from the outside). The companion app may still provide basic device tracking when on your local network.