ok guys, something I am missing in here … my daughter is currently almost home and the tracker still shows she is at the university :
she was at the university at least since 8am this morning …
she left around 12 … and the map is still showing here at the university, where she is now almost at home.
at 12h24, she was definitely not at the university anymore !!
and at 12h32 it shows like almost at home … the travel time is much more than 8 minutes …
And you also do not see updates during the traject …
Your daughter went into the UCL zone. She has an inZone interval in her configuration of 2 hours so the next location request would be done 2-hours after she entered the zone and would continue to be 2-hours until she exited it.
At 12:24:20, she exited the zone and her location was requested. iCloud responded with several old locations so iCloud3 kept requesting the location until a good one was received. It then look at her location and set the next request to 3-mins based on her location.
The problem is she does not have the Mobile App installed so there is no trigger to do an immediate locate update when she exits the zone. The trigger is the inzone interval of 2-hours.
Either install the Mobile App, change her inzone interval to 15-mins or less, or set up an automation that would issue the iCloud3 Action Locate when she disconnected from the UCL network. See Service Calls in the iCloud3 docs for more info about that.
Thanks a lot, @gcobb321 … so let me rephrase in my own words.
If a zone is defined in HA (like the UCL one), and so enters the zone, and its config has “Inzone” interval set to 2 hours, the next localisation request will be every 2 hours from the moment you enter the zone, and this until you exit the zone.
Something I do not understand … if Icloud3 continuously monitors de device to check when the zone is quitted (exit), why is it not then also continuously requesting the position (I mean this is the same resource consuming, no, as position needs to be known anyway ?)
Coming back to the explanation … if I enter the zone at 8:00, and exits at 12:24 … there would be a request at 10:00, then at 12:00 … then at 12:24, the zone is exitted so location is requested … but what happened then when you say “iCloud responded with several old locations so iCloud3 kept requesting the location until a good one was received” ?
Is it that location was requested but no location was returned ? Like for example apple would not have responded with the location ? And that would have been solved vy installing the companion app on the phone ?
I thought I installed and configured it, but let me check to be sure … but I am almost sure the companion app is installed …
iCloud3 continually monitors the mobile app triggers, not the device itself. It gets the location from Apple iCloud location by requesting the location and to request it continually would cause Apple to locate all the devices on each request ethics that will eat the battery. The mobile app is on the device and sends zone exit triggers when it detects it the device exits the zone. This has no effect on the battery since Apple is not involved. Also involved is Apple will report an old location when one is requested. It is sending back the last known location since it also only locates the device when the location is requested. Going to the FindMy app is a good example. When you locate your devices, you see a spinning wheel while it gets the location and displays the last one while it is waiting for one. And Apple might not be able to locate it if it is in a poor cell area or can not get a good gps signal.
When iCloud3 sees the location is old, typically more than 3-mins old, it keeps asking for one until it gets a good one. It starts at a 15-sec interval, then goes to 1-min, 5-mins, 15-mins etc to give Apple time to get it. Always requesting on a 5-sec interval doesn’t get it any faster and can slow down the handling of other tracked devices. It can get pretty complicated.
A Watch runs into the same problem since it does not have the HA on it that can do location updates. The default inzone interval it’s 15-mins so it will locate the device every 15-mins and respond to zone exits a lot sooner. If you are not using the mobile app, set her value to 10 or 15 mins and see what happens.
ok … I need to look more in details.
I just checked the Mobile app and it IS installed and configured.
What let you think in the log it is not installed ?
Is there a way I can test this ?
@cedricdelecole
The Results Line at the top of each tracking event (in red) shows NotUsed under the Mobile App heading. UCL is under iCloud and it changed to Away after the zone was exited. Check Stage 4 & 5 to see how the Mobile App Device tracker entity name is matched with the iCloud3 device that Is set up on the Configure > iCloud3 Devices > Select > Update Device screen.
