So Life360 have a bug at the moment whereby on certain phones the platform isn’t updating as it should. It’s wreaking havoc with my automations and home alarm, which is life360 dependent.
I have bluetooth and router backups for if either of those two methods are quicker to detect someone coming than life360, but at the moment the life360 problem is so bad it’s messing everything up.
The iOS 2.0 beta app location tracking isn’t ready for primetime yet…
Any tips on how to mitigate this? Is it possible to set either a group (e.g group.steve consisting of a bluetooth tracker AND Life360 tracker) to away OR set individual device_trackers to away from within an automation?
It’d be a real pain to have to migrate to another platform like google location sharing or owntracks because life360 has been rock solid and super reliable and accurate for months. But this is getting pretty annoying!
Have you checked their FAQs? Have you contacted their tech support?
We use it with two Android phones, and one iOS phone. As far as I know, the iOS phone has been working just fine. (I haven’t gotten any “update overdue” e-mails.) But this is on my daughter’s phone, and I don’t know if she regularly updates stuff. She might be using an older version.
I haven’t bothered trying to contact their tech support. I’ve read their FAQs. They seem to be aware they have issues. If you read their recent reviews, you’ll see that there are LOADS of people moaning about how since the last two/three updates to the app it’s become unusable.
I’m not asking you to do this, I’m merely saying if you want confirmation, you can.
Just an update to this, since updating my own iPhone to 13.3.1 and Life360 to 18.6.2, my phone is now also plagued by these interruptions. Previously it was just my wife’s. I did contact Life360 in October and over the course of ten emails (and nags on Twitter when they let the support emails go dormant) they eventually revealed (but I had to prise it out of them and reject their attempts at sending me to their FAQs or pasting in some useless irrelevant tip etc). I’m not sure the problem is related to the phone being turned off or running out of battery, but as long as they’re working on it it’s all I can ask.
I am sorry for the trouble you have had! Thanks for bringing the error you are seeing to our attention. When a phone runs out of battery or is turned off, the app needs to be opened again to regain connection.
This is an issue that the team is currently working on. Every example we receive helps us fix the issue quicker so thank you for your feedback.
That’s weird.
We (my wife and I) have used Life360 for at least two years and it has been ‘rock solid’ we are both on Android and pretty much have GPS, mobile data and WiFi enabled all the time (very few exceptions). The integration with HA is part of that, and if ALL pnbruckner EVER DID was this integration (it isn’t ! ), then it justifies him being a ROCK STAR !
I do have a granularity issue but that is a consequence of the time interval I HAVE set to update the locations (I don’t want to ‘over ping’ my welcome on a backdoor api loophole that could easily be closed by life360)
Question: Is the composite tracker kind of superseded by the person domain? I haven’t looked at the composite tracker for awhile, but I think there’s a lot of parallels between it and person, right? Like you, my wife and I both use Life360 and it’s pretty solid here as well, but I’m always looking for ways to tighten up my location-based automations.
Hmmmm !
You may have a point, but I’m something of a traditionalist and I understand device tracker.
And as @Burningstone pointed out on another thread, what do you do when you have 3 devices for one person ? Which one do you trust ?
I wish I could just blame my wife when she leaves her phone at home and the heating stays on when we are miles away. (I have individual ‘force evictions’ on device trackers for that reason and buffer them through binary sensors) But (in recent past) I’ve had to use my tablet to track ‘where the hell I left my phone !’
The permutations and possibilities involved in ‘person’ are a bit intimidating.
AND …
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ! (it’s feature rich enough already ! )
I’ve just started getting into the person domain and I have all the device trackers added, but I haven’t done much beyond that, so I’m always looking for opinions on it.
Very interested in this, because I’ve got this exact same wife shaped problem of leaving keys or phone at home and being unable to change the state of the device tracker via an automation action
No no no sir !
You are further along the curve than I and I appreciate others input (especially when then know more than I (though that’s easy as “I know nuthing”))
Good Luck and I promise I’ll read up a bit on ‘person’
I’m not 100% certain, but I think you could use the device_tracker.see service to override a device_tracker’s current state. You could create an input_boolean (aptly named something like input_boolean.forgot_device) and set that manually in the UI. Then, have an automation that triggers upon that turning on (along with a timer to enforce it) and have that call device_tracker.see to manually force her device tracker to be not_home. It’s not pretty, but it should work.
Pretty easy,
Create n+1 template binary sensors (where n =number of people)
The template for an individual includes an input boolean to ‘force_eviction_mutt’ and Mutt = home
Value = Mutthome and not force eviction mutt (let’s call this bsmutthome)
The +1 sensor is the house
Value = (bsmutthome or bswifehome or bsdoghome or input_boolean.force occupied)
The force occupied is for guests or contractors (they usually don’t like working in the dark )
Edit: Also you can put delay_off: in the binary sensors so that if you have issues with device trackers jumping around you can say ignore it unless ‘not home’ for 2 minutes.
I implemented this but haven’t actually needed to use it (my delay is configured from the UI and is set on 0)
If you haven’t done so already, read the person docs. It explains how the person entitiy works in case you have multiple device trackers attached to one person.
In my opinion the person integration is a very good ‘feature’. Before using the person integration, I had some code that had the same/similar logic as the person integration, to determine where a person is based on multiple device trackers and then update a self-created mqtt device tracker with this information and now the person integration does all this for me and I don’t even need the self-created tracker anymore I’m still testing it, but unitl now I’m very happy and it has been rock solid for me.
I know that you use ble trackers for room occupancy
So I know we are comparing apples and oranges but …
I don’t see how this helps with either the force occupancy or force eviction issues described above.
So for my usage case, I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got
Absolutely
I understood that and I’m always willing to learn.
That is how I saw your post
It’s just that "I tasted your recipe, and I found that I don’t much care for “raw mixed slugs with a pureed scorpion froth” ".
No offense intended, just saying it’s not for me
In case you ever need assistance with this, I’m happy to help. It’s not that difficult in my opinion, the software room-assistant does all the heavy lifting.
Looks like my english is not as bad as I thought haha, I’m from Switzerland
I assume you are South East Switzerland as your early syntax indicated German language origin ?
Edit: I agree with @code-in-progress room prescence is a no brainer, but I’d need to have a pi (zero, I can’t remember if they have Bluetooth?) under the floor in the center of each room and maintenance would be a nightmare
AND
Everyone would need to get a Bluetooth tag surgically inserted, as I don’t trust people to carry them of their own volition (I’m a benevolent dictator, honest ! )
I’m still testing it, but unitl now I’m very happy and it has been rock solid for me.
