Home Assistant Companion Android phone tracking

My wife and I both have Home Assistant Companion installed on our Android phones and we’re showing on a card in the HA dashboard but in history it never shows us away from our home. Both phones are set to track in the app. Is there something I should be setting up in HA? How do I verify it’s working properly?

Do you have external access?

Did you tried to setup zones, home, work etc.

I’m connected to Nabu Casa. Is that what you mean?

I have a home zone. We’re retired so it’s either home or away. This morning we were several miles from home but there’s nothing in the phone history to indicate that.

Sometimes it take some time for mob to update location. You can use high accuracy but it will drain battery fast. There are things to check ie is location enabled on phone?
When you open zone you should see your phone in home zone.
If you go to integrations there should be mobile app integration. Check for enabled disabled settings in it.

What’s this link about? I don’t see Configuration > Companion App > Manage Sensors > Location Sensors anywhere.

Yes, I confirmed location is set on the phones. High accuracy shouldn’t be needed when you’re several miles from home should it? Yes, I see our phone location in the home zone. In Integrations I have the mobile app and the phones are shown. Both phones are enabled in mobile app.

Shouldn’t I see evidence of us being away from our home zone this morning for several hours?

follow these steps https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/troubleshooting/faqs/#device-tracker-is-not-updating-in-android-app

Configuration was renamed to Settings a release or 2 ago I believe

On my phone it’s not noticable.
If I recall correctly an hours drive with screen on, Waze running and high accuracy on took 10% of the battery.
I think most of these 10% was the screen to be honest.

This is something that is states in documentation.

Be aware that when this option is enabled, your battery will drain faster than normal because of the permanent usage of GPS

Yes you should see if your mobile is away from your home. In my opinion for some reason your mob didn’t update its location and/or reported back to ha.

Faster is not the same as fast.
Faster just mean faster than with it deactivated but it does not mean fast.

And whatever the documentations says, does it really matter? I have done a real world test, isn’t that more valid than some text?

I don’t say that you are wrong on this one. I just wanna point out what they said. Today’s mobs have much stronger batteries than they used to have.
I have it enabled but I never did an acutal test does it drain battery faster because I charge it every day.

Is Location Sensors now Entities? I get a little lost when I’m reading the docs only to find out that whatever I’m reading about has been moved or is now called something else.

No, location sensors do not show up as entities. Just follow the steps that I linked to up above, it guides you through making sure the setup is correct. There is even a link that takes you to the configuration page.

Would location reporting or the lack of it be in a log?

the logs are part of the linked troubleshooting step up above :wink:

Boy, sorry for being a pain here but in step #4, Companion App > Manage Sensors, I don’t find anything about Companion Apps or Manage Sensors. That link takes me to Settings which, I guess, was called Configuration.