iCloud3 v3 iDevice Tracker - Version 3

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Apple
448

@gcobb321 I don’t have any errors and everything seems to be configured and working properly, so this may be a silly question. But, in the Event Log all of my devices, the actions dropdown, refresh arrow, refreshed time, the help (?) icon, and the first and last line in each update block are colored red. Is that normal or should I be looking somewhere else for issues?

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Thank you for great component. Good documentation also! Looking forward to test and play with v3.

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ah, ok. I’ll have a proper look at all the device trackers that I have and see what I can find for those phones. 2 of the phones have never had the iOS app, so not sure why it’s happening. My phone does have the app, but continues to error after adding the prefix to the entity name.

Mayber there is another device tracker with the same name. Not sure, but I might have to have a look at the old known_devices.yaml file.

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The problem was solved by sending a share location invite to the email address of the fmf person instead of the mobile number. Thanks, Gary, for all of your help.

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@garygcastleberry
Glad you figured it out. In v3, you will select the fmf device from a list of FindMy devices tied to the account. Both email and phone numbers are shown in the list.

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I have a location update issue and am a bit puzzled.
The documentation says

iCloud Account → iCloud3 ← iOS App

iCloud shows that I am at work, I can see that in the “where is” app on my iPhone.
The iOS app correcly updates that I am at work, that is the device_tracker.doephone_app, also maintained like that in the icloud3 config (app suffix added, as suggested in the documentation).

devices:
  - device_name: DoePhone
    name: John Doe
    iosapp_entity: device_tracker.doephone_app

But even though both sources are correctly, the device tracker device_tracker.doephone being updated by icloud3 remains at home and has not even noticed a status change at all
grafik
Even 6 hours after arriving at work, icloud3 still thinks that the iOS app says that I am home, but the app isn’t, the app device tracker reports work since hours.
When I restart icloud 3, it finally fetches all status correctly and iOS app and IC3 zone get in sync, but only then. So while technically it seems to generally work, the update mechanism in this specific case is broken.

In other cases everything works fine, it is not that icloud3 overall seems to be broken for me, but at least in the cases of my work location this has now already happened multiple times in a row, and I do not see what is different here (and why a manual restart solves what is not being triggered otherwise).
Any clue how to solve that?

I see this in the log from the night
grafik
I guess that is because I always put my phone into flight mode at night. Could this be related and it actually stops polling and does not start it anymore by itself? But then icloud3 should never work, as I always do this.
And even after selecting “resume polling”, while it then correctly displays the iOS app location as being at work, it does still not update the icloud3 zone:
grafik

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@flobidan
When the phone is in flight mode, the iOS itself phone does no/can not update its location in your iCloud account. When iCloud3 requests the location, it gets it from your iCloud account and it is considered old since the time associated with it is when you took it offline. iCloud3 will keep requesting the location and then shut down polling because of an excessive number of errors.

I’m not sure why you put it into flight mode but that is probably causing some of your issues.

I’ve been in some office buildings and medical offices and have lost all cell coverage. It’s like I’m in a dead zone and a similar thing happens. Part of the solution is to create a zone for the location with a 2 hour inzone interval.

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Thanks, but:

  1. Last night it behaved differently, even though the phone was for a longer period in flight mode. Where in the previous night it stopped at 3:00 due to excessive error counts, last night even at 6:00 it just displayed a warning:
    iOS App Alert > No iOS App updates for more than 6 hours > Device-device_tracker.doephone_app, LastTrigger-Signaled@22:53:29 (7h6m31s), LastState-home@22:40:36 (7h19m24s)

  2. I understood that iCloud is just one of the two data sources, besides also the home assistant app. So I would assume that it should at least get the correct status from there.

  3. Today it updated correctly both statuses when arriving at work, where yesterday even a manual polling resume did not correct the inconsistency as shown in the previous post, only a restart of iCloud3 did.
    Why is that? Wouldn’t it make sense, if e.g. iC3 and iOS app zone differ for a certain time, to force that update because that is obviously not intended?

So all in all it is for me still a bit “sometimes it works, sometimes not”, which must not be in informatics :wink:

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Any ETA on v3 ?

Would be great if we could ‘Trust the browser’ to stop the consistent MFA prompts but appreciate that isnt in your control

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@Kingy444
Maybe July for beta. I’m not home now and still have some things to wrap up.

I’d like to stop it to. And the emails about logging in and being used on a device but Apple controls that.

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Hi @gcobb321 I’ve just started looking at this integration and it looks awesome. I have not even scratched the surface yet I don’t think and apologies if im missing something, but one thing I’ve noticed is that if zones contain two words, then the state of the device tracker shows the name but without the space in it, it makes for really ugly appearance in one of the cards im using. I note there are two sensors, zone name and zone fname, and the fname is correct with the space in. Is there a way to make it use the fname instead of this other name without the space to update the state? Thanks!

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@tcork
Use the display_zone_format parameter to specify how it should be displayed. See iCloud3 docs here

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@chrisryn are you using room-assistant? I’d love to move into icloud3 if I can retain the triggers I have with my room-assistant > MSR.

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I have a couple close friends who share location with me via Find My. What I’m looking to do is be able to use their location as a trigger for entering my house without them having to install anything at all on their phones.

So a question for the collective: will icloud3 allow me to do this?

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No I am using Esp presence. With the current cost of pi’s that was the easier option for me.

1 Like
463

where do I place this

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@gwp1
Yes, iCloud3 will let you monitor your friends location and set up automations based on their location when they enter your home zone. It will work without the iOS app but then you need to have a short inzone interval to know when they leave a zone.

You can also trigger iCloud3 to update its location using an iCloud3 service call that is triggered by some other device or sensor.

2 Likes
465

Couple questions and/or observations:

  • Do I need to add my Apple Watch as a device in config_ic3.yaml or is it picked up as being a part of my iCloud account?

  • I still see iC3 picked up CurrZone-Home when I renamed that zone to something else. Same with a FMF, I’d originally typo’d the zone spelling and corrected it - but it still shows up with the old spelling in the iC3 Event Log. What makes it pick up the changes (I’ve restarted HA as a whole as well as the iC3 app)?

  • I’m having a real issue with the renaming of the app entities as I cannot find entities with the correct device_tracker entries under Mobile App . I’m getting this error in Event Log:
    image

  • I don’t have my iPad listed in config_ic3.yaml but it’s been located. It does have the HA app on it.

This is about my third try to get this installed as I had serious problems with the Event Log card - it did finally give in though I’m not 100% sure which of my changes resolved it.

Thanks very much for guidance - I’m looking to remove Geofency and OwnTracks from my iPhone if this works as I hope (had too many falses with just one or the other and ended up doing a Bayesian sensor to hold me over until I found a better way.)

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@gwp1

  1. The iCloud account can contain many devices. When a location request is made for one device is made, iCloud updates the location and other data for all the devices. iCloud3 only tracks and reports the information for the devices that are specified in the iCloud3 configuration file. So yes, you have to add the Watch to the configuration if you want to track it.
  2. HA stores the zone info in two places, the core.entity_registry and zone files in the configuration/.storage directory. When you change the zone name, HA changes it in the zone file but not the entity_registry file. iCloud3 looks at the entity_registry file to get its info. The only way around this is to delete and read the zone. Also HA makes the actual zone entity name from the original entry and that it’s not changed when you change it.
  3. The iosapp device names are listed on the Event Log when iCloud3 starts. iCloud3 looks for a mobile app device that starts with the iCloud3 device name. See iCloud3 docs here for more info about this.
  4. The iOS app also creates a device tracker entity. If you are not tracking it with iCloud3, the device tracker and sensor entities were Christen by the iOS app.
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Couple further questions, and thank you for the prompt responses btw:

  • If the phone name (General>About>Name) is changed, how does that impact iC3, ie will it read in the change?
  • What is the relationship between the phone name and the name in the iOS HA app? I think I’m getting confused there.