Handling GPS vs. Wi-Fi states separately for an apartment above a shopping mall (No Companion App)

Configuration
,
1

Hello everyone,

I'm looking for some advice on how to optimize my presence detection for a specific living situation by separating GPS and Wi-Fi tracking.

My Setup: Right now, I am using HomeKit automations for basic presence tracking. When an iPhone arrives or leaves, HomeKit toggles an input_boolean switch for that person in Home Assistant. This part works perfectly. I am not using the official Home Assistant Companion App, and I do not want to install it (especially on my girlfriend’s phone) to keep things simple and native.

The Problem / My Living Situation: My apartment is located directly above a shopping mall. Because of this, my physical location remains inside the standard GPS Geofence even when I leave my apartment to spend time downstairs in the mall. If I go down to the mall, GPS still thinks I am "Home", but I am obviously not in my flat.

My Idea: Two Separate Entities Per Person To solve this, I am planning to track two distinct states per person instead of forcing everything into one single "person" entity:

  1. input_boolean.person_gps_home (via HomeKit geofence)
  2. binary_sensor.person_wifi_home (via local Ping/ICMP, with a 15-minute delay_off to bypass the iPhone's aggressive Wi-Fi deep sleep behavior).

How I want to use this logic:

  • Arriving Flat: As soon as the local Wi-Fi reconnects (on), I am back in the flat. (e.g., turning on welcome lights).
  • Leaving Flat (but staying in the mall): My iPhone drops off the Wi-Fi. After 15 minutes of Wi-Fi absence, HA should know I left the flat, even though the GPS Geofence still says I'm "Home". (e.g., ideal time to run the vacuum robot).
  • Leaving Area completely: Both Wi-Fi and GPS change to away. (e.g., turning down the heating).

My Questions to the Community:

  1. Does it make sense to keep these two entities separate for automations, or is anyone successfully merging a Wi-Fi state (with a 15-min delay) and a snappy GPS state into a single, reliable template binary sensor/person entity?
  2. If you keep them separate, what is your preferred way to structure the conditions in your automations (e.g., using Template Sensors, complex AND/OR blocks, or specific helper combinations)?
  3. For those without the Companion App: Is a 15-minute consideration time (delay_off) for local Ping tracking enough to counter the iPhone’s Wi-Fi sleep cycles, or would you recommend a different threshold?

Looking forward to your ideas and how you solved similar "mall/apartment" tracking challenges!

Thanks!