New full release is the 1st Wednesday of each month.
Patch releases are as and when patch releases are required.
Typically Home Assistant often reaches 2023.X.5 before the next release. But it’s the run up to Christmas and the guys have been very very busy.
Life360 has more than a decade of experience focused only on location tracking. Most likely the Companion could employ some of the same tricks to be more accurate on iOS, but that’s just not their main task.
There have been times where the Life360 server has been inaccessible. That still happens from time to time. However, what is preventing the HA life360 integration from working this time is an actual change to the server’s API. The change on the HA side is to compensate for that. Without that change it will not “just work” again. You’ll need the change, which should be in 2023.12.4.
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Same here.
And I’m not skilled enough to use fixes .
I ‘ll wait for the update hopping to work .
Although there may be “workarounds” and “fixes” for Life360, anyone thats been using HA and intergrations for years knows, this is often just delaying the inevitable. Or it’ll be hit or miss and buggy as hell. When it comes to user tracking, i dont know about everyone else’s HA setup but this is not something i can afford to “have bugs” or “sometimes work”, or really slow.
Life360 will strictly control their API use as if you open thier app you see its basically Candy Crush now full of features and additional “premium” options. This is thier business model and they profit from all those bells n whistles. Using it as solely as a tracker in HA makes them zero profit. I would HIGHLY suggest migrating to a new free app thats doesn’t have a Pay-for-features business model.
Although not perfect, i like OwnTracks. The GPS data is spot on and tracks insanely accurately almost every second (if you set it to that), With The HA mobile App, and also Life360 the gps updates were not instant and often would update only every 1-5 minutes. That didnt work for my applications.
One example, When I’m exactly 52 meters from my home and pulling onto my street i want my “arriving home” automation to start. This includes opening my garage door so its open right when i pull in the driveway and also unlock doors etc… With HA mobile app and Life360 id sometimes be sitting in my driveway for a minute or so before it updated and triggered. OwnTracks app seems to not have this issue and tracks my location to exactly where i am.
Much like everything with home automation, identify what your NEED and find the best solution for it, preferably by not relying on 3rd party companies and apps.
Interesting. My experience is that HA Companion (Android) tracking is almost as accurate. For example, my automations trigger when I or my wife are at 300 ft from the house, ± 30 ft.
However, I think that OwnTracks filters out obvious inaccuracies like impossible travel (location jumping too fast to be real) while HA doesn’t.
We’ve swung from blaming it on iOS, to it’s not their main focus. I’m simply pointing out, that it’s possible to have super reliable location tracking with iOS (my team has developed very reliable location tracking for both iOS and Android so I know this can be done without magic), and the companion app doesn’t really have it. It’d be worth while to focus on the essentials rather than the year of voice, the year of media and all the other things that get half baked and left.
Hi, any news? is it still blocked?
Can you elaborate? Is what still blocked?
Is there any consensus on a way forward here? Life360 works fine on our (IOS and Android) phones so I’m a bit reticent to install yet another app.
I have uninstalled the integration but can’t reinstall because of the credentials issue. I did try to manually install “ha-life360” but couldn’t get the integration to work.
Thanks for any help!
For a summary of the current situation with the HA Life360 integration and suggestions for getting it working, see this post.
FWIW, you should not need to use any “workaround” or my “ha-life360” custom integration. The standard, built-in life360 integration should work now, assuming you do not verify your phone number with Life360, or if you have, if you “un-verify” it. Again, see details in the linked post.
Ok, Life360 is def unverified now (per the phone app). But when I go to add the Life360 integration (I had removed it earlier) it immed pops up a “Configure Life360 Account” and asks for my username/password. Nothing I put in here works, tried email, phone with the newly reset password but always get “Invalid authentication”.
I kinda suspect I have some residual integration data someplace but nothing in config/* that looks like “Life360” anymore?
No, something definitely changed this morning. Not working for me and many other users, too.
I’m throwing in the towel. Even if they aren’t actively trying to lock us out, it’s getting way too difficult to keep up.
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Stopped working again for me. Worked after the HA recent update, but today asking to authenticate again.
Sorry, but Life360 is making it too difficult. They have publicly said they don’t support automation systems like Google, Alexa, IFTTT, etc. If they don’t support those services, you can imagine they are not at all interested in supporting Home Assistant.
If anything significant changes, it’s always possible this integration could be brought back to life. But I wouldn’t count on it.
Wow Life360! In these days of public APIs and general openness that seems pretty short sighted! I wonder how many users will bail because of this.
I’m sure like many of you, I have some pretty useful automations based on occupancy as determined by Life360. What’s the alternative then, OwnTracks?
But thanks for all your great work on this integration @pnbruckner!
You’re welcome!
I have been suggesting reading/following these topics:
FYI if you’re running Owntracks on an Android v14 phone then it will not start tracking location until the app has been opened, which can be a bit of a pain when a phone is rebooted
I guess I’ll cancel our subscription at life360. Do we think letting them know we would like it and if not we take our money elsewhere would help?