Life360 alternatives for 2022

Third party integrations
1

I’ve been wary of Life360 for a while and the news that they’re selling precise location data has motivated me to look seriously at alternatives. Has anyone found one with HA integration and precision/timeliness on par with Life360 for Android? The ability for family members to see each other in real-time is also a must for me.

I spent a couple of days with OwnTracks. Unfortunately, it’s either really slow to update (“significant changes mode”) or drains the battery in no time (“move mode”). What’s worse, it leaves it up to the user to switch between modes manually. That’s a non-starter. (I hunted for an adaptive mode to automatically switch based on recent movement or some other criteria, but couldn’t find one.)

HA companion app integration might work, but trying to view real-time movements on a Lovelace map is really clunky compared to Life360. Good for presence-detection and geo-fencing automations, but not so much keeping track of where kids are headed.

Anyone find an alternative that works as well as Life360? Am I missing something in the two I mentioned?

2

You can change the OwnTracks mode by sending an intent - eg:

https://owntracks.org/booklet/features/android/#automation-via-tasker-automagic-etc

And since you can now do that by sending special Home Assistant notifications, then yes - it is indeed possible to change the mode based on logic on the Home Assistant side.

3

That is an interesting option. What triggering criteria do you use for switching modes? I can imagine doing it based on recent velocity or change in position, but not sure how complicated/reliable that would be.

4

Personally I don’t use OwnTracks since the Companion app launched. However - if I was, I’d do something like this:

Trigger when the state changes (with to: note it is blank).
Template trigger - true when the last update is more than 15 minutes ago.

{{ (now()|as_timestamp - states.device_tracker.owntracks_person1.last_updated|as_timestamp) > 900 }}

Condition - state is not home.

Send the notification for a faster update.
Wait 2 minutes
Send a notification to return the app to significant changes mode.

5

What would be great if we could get his natively “baked-in” to Home Assistant. Using the mobile app - “Gecoded Location” entity, Home Assistant already has this information. We just need to be able to plot it on a map in real-time.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to develop this.

1 Like
6

My lige 360 is not updating my location since a couple of days ago. Any idea?

7

Did you recently upgrade HA? If so, read the breaking change notes for Life360 in the 2022.7 release notes.

8

I use Life360 for the 4 family members in the house.
I run an automations that triggers based on the amount of people home.
So Zone.home changes between 0-4
zone.home=4 when everyone is home and 0 when noone is home.

Is there any way to change this behaviour and instead use the away status?

So for example, I would like to use Away=4 instead of home=0

This is because sometimes Life360 status becomes unavailable. And this triggers the automation Zone.home=0
If I loose Wifi or if Life360 status becomes unavailable for all family members, home assistant reads this as 0 people home, and flicks off all the lights :slight_smile:
I would much rather use when away=4 flick off all the lights.

Any Ideas?

9

Yes! Every “free” service has to pay the rent. They sell whatever data they can get from you to advertisers. (Usually anonymized and in-aggregate. Those who sell identifying data usually come to regret it). There is no such thing as free- YOU are the product.

10

Where is the secret link to the breaking changes that haven’t been released yet?

11

I don’t understand what you are asking for. The breaking changes mentioned above can be found here:

Look for the section on Life360 and expand it.

12

Where is “here”? I never see the link on https://community.home-assistant.io/, so where do I look for the link next month? I only see Breaking Changes when I am prompted to upgrade through the UI.

Oh, wait- that was a year ago. But, my question, though off-topic, is still the same. Where can I preview the Breaking Changes before the next release?

13

The main documentation page Home Assistant (home-assistant.io) always has a link to the release notes of the current release, and that page always has a breaking changes section. If you want to find release notes (and breaking changes) for older releases, they can be found via Category: Release-Notes - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io). As far as upcoming releases, I think I knew where that could be found at one time, but it was a long time ago and I don’t remember anymore. Sorry.