I use a self-signed certificate which does not work with the App, so can not use it, or I would. That aside, having a simple to use location tracking add-on would be beneficial to anyone that may not wish too, or can not use the HA app.
Are you asking to be able to track your, e.g., phone without using the HA app?
What about all the other integrations in the “presence detection” category, e.g. owntracks?
I’m well aware of the other options, I used Owntracks for some time years ago, but haven’t found any of them work as reliably as Life360 (did) and with low battery consumption.
Fair enough, but you will never get anything like that in “pure” HA.
The app relies on direct connection between the app on your instance, and any subset of the app would do the same, so the “something that just works OOTB and doesn’t require webhooks or ports being opened” won’t happen.
Apps like life360 rely on a cloud server. Maybe Nabu Casa might add that functionality to their services…
An alternative that I’m using is a VPN like Tailscale that allows communication from point to point (app to HA) without opening ports.
Good point. A standalone HA tracking app that is installable from the app store would be needed and could then serve the same purpose as something like Life360 did.
It’s a thought bubble but something I thought I would throw out there for consideration. Perhaps it’s not achievable.
Traccar, either using the webhook method or I use the Community addon Traccar thru a port is the option I picked to replace life360.
This looks like the best replacement. The webhooks doesn’t work for me, so I’ve had to open a port which I was trying to avoid.
I have used Traccar and ownTracks, none of them are reliable. Then I started using Google Maps location sharing integration, so far it’s close to Life360 in terms of reliability
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This would be fantastic!!
HA Lite - where for example my kids, mum-in-law etc don’t need the full companion app to control anything - but we do want some basic location telemetry.
Life360 is way too bloated for my use case anyway - personally I have no need for speed data, driving/walking, crash notifications etc etc.
Zones can all be done within in HA.
It would be pretty cool to be expanded down the track to have actionable HA notifications too - avoiding 3rd party messaging system integrations - but the first priority for me would be simply location data.
I’d happily pay a small fee for this - just as I do with Nabu Casa - and suspect many would.
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Was going to say the same.
I never used life360, but the functionality looks exactly what I get from the Google Maps integration
I think this is a good idea but personally I can’t see it happening for all sorts of reasons. Partly because the functionality is already available via other means.
I am going to add that I have been using Tailscale for ages now and in my experience it is almost faultless.
In fact maybe the only fault apart from the need to install on all devices and create users, is that (on android at least) it doesn’t start up automatically after a phone restart, although you do get a notification to that effect.
In addition I use the ‘exit node’ so that our mobile devices also go through my PiHole.
A similar alternative is ZeroTier.
Actually, the strongest point of Tailscale imo is that you don’t have to use “exit nodes” (exit nodes mean you use tailscale as a standard VPN where all traffic goes through the VPN).
My phone has tailscale and only the HA traffic goes through the VPN.
That (I think) makes so it is basically invisible as far as battery consumption goes…
I agree, that is true but I like to use PiHole (not just for the ads but for tracking too) and as far as I can tell battery consumption is still ‘reasonable’ (whatever that means).
It seems that the need for this requested HA Lite concept arises from the peculiar reality that HA does not yet have any sort of permissions granularity for users. Once the HA Companion’s power can be locked down against non-privileged users, numerous problems go away.
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Generally speaking, yes, I would agree. My use case (and it seems other are similar), is to be able to track people that are either not home all the time (adult children at college, extended family, etc), or young children.
In all cases, the desire is the ability to track these people, without them having full (or any) control over HA. As others have mentioned, there are several alternatives, but most if not all seem to have reliability issues. Life360 was surprisingly accurate & quick
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…and short sighted and greedy.
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Well duh, you just described capitalism as a whole.
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it does work actually you just need to create it properly and import it to the system properly.
heres a PR of a user who recently encountered an issue with a misconfigured self-signed certificate that may be of help.
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Would it be possible to create the option to use MQTT as a means to update at least just the location tracking info using the companion app on Android and IOS?
It would be nice if this feature restricts access at the server level rather than the client level. So from public access HA UI cant be reached but an https:// endpoint is open for receiving JUST location data from clients.
This way, the feature also increases security for exposed HA instalations.