Hello all! First: I’m a complete newbie in Home Assistant, Pyton, Linux etc. so I think my questions are on that level, I’m afraid. But I’m eager to learn….
I’v been trying to get this device tracker to work, so I can see where the kids who live with us are hanging out. Unfortunately I can’t get it to work.
This is my setup:
I have Hassio 0.85.1 installed on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (I tried 0.86.4 but after returning to the overview card it keeps loading). I work with Hassio on a Windows machine using Samba, which works fine.
I first downloaded the .zip from github, extracted it in my downloads folder and copyed (not drag and drop) the complete custom_devices folder from the extracted .zip to the Hassio’s config folder in the windows explorer (opened throug a Samba link).
When copied, I copy and paste the Yaml-code in my configuration.yaml:
I put my credentials in secrets.yaml, check the configuration (it says valid configuration) and click on restart.
I did this about 7 times. I don’t see Life360, and my log says:
Error setting up platform life360
15:46 components/device_tracker/__init__.py (ERROR)
Life360 communication failed!
15:46 custom_components/device_tracker/life360.py (ERROR)
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'life360'
15:46 custom_components/device_tracker/life360.py (ERROR)
Unable to load /config/known_devices.yaml: Config file not found: /config/known_devices.yaml
15:45 components/device_tracker/__init__.py (ERROR)
You are using a custom component for device_tracker.life360 which has not been tested by Home Assistant. This component might cause stability problems, be sure to disable it if you do experience issues with Home Assistant.
15:45 loader.py (WARNING)
I read that known_devices .yaml should be created, but I don’t see it.
I know there must be something wrong and probabely because I’m doing something wrong. But after reading this topic, looking at YouTube video’s where everything goes smooth and easy I think there is only one option: calling for help…
Can anyone please tell me what I’m doing wrong? And please, remember I’m new at this….
I don’t use hassio, so I can’t help with file/permission/etc. issues. But I do know that people have been able to use this custom component on hassio successfully.
You do know you can do that with the Life360 app (and their web interface), completely independently of HA, right? In fact, I’d say, it’s even easier to see that information natively in Life360.
That was overkill. All you need is one file – life360.py – copied into <config>/custom_components/device_tracker, where <config> is HA’s configuration folder, which on hassio I think is /config. You may need to create the custom_components and device_tracker directories first. And you need to make sure the account running HA has permission to access those folders and the files they contain.
The errors you’re seeing are because the PyPI package that this custom platform needs (also called life360) is not available on your system. However, if HA was installed and is functioning correctly, that package should be automatically downloaded and installed by HA the first time it tries to load this custom platform. Look earlier in home-assistant.log – do you see any messages about attempting to install life360?
Regarding not being able to load known_devices.yaml, that is being done by the “component-level” device_tracker code (not my custom code.) That seems to point to a more basic problem. If you haven’t gotten too far with HA, you might want to consider starting over. Maybe try a standard device_tracker platform (even something as simple as ping) to see if you can get that working. Once that is working, then adding life360 should be easier.
Hi Paul, thanks for the quick response. Some answers:
You do know you can do that with the Life360 app (and their web interface), completely independently of HA, right? In fact, I’d say, it’s even easier to see that information natively in Life360.
Yeah, I’m aware of that. But my docter told me it’s good to keep busy and take up new challanges. So, I.m diving in and trying to get it to work. 64 is a great age to start learning coding….
But as i said befor, I’m really new and any help is appreciated….
That was overkill. All you need is one file – life360.py – copied into <config>/custom_components/device_tracker , where <config> is HA’s configuration folder, which on hassio I think is /config . You may need to create the custom_components and device_tracker directories first.
That were my first 2 attempts. That didn’t work……
And you need to make sure the account running HA has permission to access those folders and the files they contain.
Well, you may have pointed out something there. My account in Hassio has the same username as I use to connect via Samba, but they use different passwords. I can open the config folder to edit my Yaml files, so I don’t think that is the problem, but when looking through the log as you suggested I also saw errors concerning a mistake in my database.
Indeed, I wasn’t very far with my automations, so I did what you suggested: I removed the SDcard from my Rpi, formatted en installed Hassio again. I will retry en report back later. Thanks for sharing your ideas, when I’m having more questions I know where to find you
Per the post above I’ve added a service – device_tracker.life360_zones_from_places – that can be called to force an update of HA zones created from Life360 Places. The service, however, will only be registered if add_zones is not False (i.e., it’s explicitly set to True or include_home_place, or zone_interval has been defined.)
If you’d like to try it, you can use the link to the beta version in the previous post. (The version is now 2.6.0b2.) As always, I’d appreciate any feedback.
With the addition of this service you have a choice. You can have HA periodically check for new (or changed or deleted) Life360 Places and update HA zones accordingly (by defining zone_interval), or you can manually cause this to happen after you’ve made changes to your Life360 Places (by using the new service), or you can do both. Note that if add_zones is not False the the process will always happen at least once when HA starts. So another option is to not use zone_interval or the new service, but simply restart HA if/when you make changes to your Life360 Places.
Hi, the best if you use one of the editors of hassio addons.
ie: Community Hass.io Add-on: IDE, based on Cloud9
This runs in the same browser session as the hassio interface, I have not had any permission issues with files, folders I created through this.
My first question is, why do you have each person configured separately? Don’t you have a Life360 Circle with all these Life360 Members in it? If so you only need one life360 device_tracker configured (which would typically be for the “admin” of the Circle, but I guess it doesn’t matter.)
If all the Life360 Members are not in a common Life360 Circle, I guess it’s ok to do it this way. I just didn’t expect anyone would.
Do you see any errors in the log associated with life360? Specifically, do you see any communication errors?
The bottom line is, both methods (this custom component, and the MQTT-based one you used before) query the same Life360 server. They are getting the same data. I can’t explain why this custom component would be any less responsive than the other, except for maybe if the system on which you’re running HA has a less reliable Internet connection (in which case you should see communication errors like I mentioned above.)
You might want to look in home-assistant.log. Make sure you have logger set to debug. You will see messages like these when the custom component gets new, updated location information for users:
pi@raspberrypi:/home/homeassistant/.homeassistant $ grep 'custom_components\.device_tracker\.life360' home-assistant.log
2019-02-06 12:37:50 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.loader] Loaded device_tracker.life360 from custom_components.device_tracker.life360
2019-02-06 12:37:59 DEBUG (Thread-6) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Life360 communication successful!
2019-02-06 12:37:59 DEBUG (Thread-6) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Configured members = None
2019-02-06 12:38:00 DEBUG (Thread-6) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_xxx
2019-02-06 12:38:00 DEBUG (Thread-6) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_yyy
2019-02-06 12:38:00 DEBUG (Thread-6) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_zzz
2019-02-06 12:39:20 DEBUG (Thread-14) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_yyy; Time since last update: 0:06:08
2019-02-06 12:39:31 DEBUG (Thread-4) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_xxx; Time since last update: 0:09:05
Another idea would be to run both methods side-by-side – i.e., this custom component and the MQTT-based one you used before. Of course, you’d have to use different device_tracker object_id’s, but that should be easy using the prefix life360 configuration variable. At least do this for one person, and see how the two different device_trackers behave.
Hi, i use different users in life360 because i don´t want share location between family members, only home hassistant know all locations and free account life360 don´t let me do.
HA is the same machine in both configurations, same connection, etc…
Adds new choices for the add_zones config variable. The choices are now:
false – Do not create HA zones from Life360 Places
only_home – Only update zone.home per Life360 “Home” Place
except_home – Create HA zones from all Life360 Places, but do not update zone.home. (Same as true for backward compatibility.)
all – Create HA zones from all Life360 Places, including updating zone.home
If any choice but false is selected, also register a new service – device_tracker.life360_zones_from_places – which can be called to force an update of HA zones per the selected choice. Note that whether or not this service is used, or whether or not a zone_interval is set, if add_zones is not false, then the process will be executed at least once at startup.
Also bumped the version of the lower level life360 package (which is automatically installed from PyPI) to 2.1.0, which now handles HTTP 403 errors from the Life360 server.
Sorry, that was a bit vague. There are still two pieces. One is custom_components/device_tracker/life360.py which you need to install and update. The other piece is a package on PyPI. The first one specifies which version of the second should be installed automatically. Version 2.6.0 of the first piece now specifies version 2.1.0 of the second piece. Does that make sense, or did I just make it more confusing? (I probably should have said, “Also bumped the …”
Not sure if this is Life360 related, but issues started shortly after the last update to 2.6. Will move out of this thread if required.
My HA docker keeps restarting every 6-8 hours.
I’m running HA on docker, issue started on 0.86.3 and remains on 0.87.0
I can’t see anything in the HA logs, the docker logs (from portainer) only really show HA logs.
This doesn’t appear to be RAM related (no spike at the time and only ~50 usage. There are times when RMA usage is higher, like upper 70% but no container reboot then.)
I’m not too sure how to troubleshoot this one.
Any pointers?
By all means, let me know if you can determine this code is somehow at the root of the problem. I’m still on 0.84.6, so there might be something in all the re-architecting they’re doing that has caused problems with this. I’m in the process of getting my system more ready to deal with all the recent changes, especially moving to Lovelace, so hopefully I’ll be able to test with a newer HA before too long.
Thanks Phill. Will try and disable the component to see if it makes a difference…
Interestingly my uptime is the highest I’ve seen so far so if it keeps being up it’s going to be a difficult one to troubleshoot
I checked my recent changes again, and I can’t see anything obvious I changed that could cause these types of problems. There certainly could be – it’s just not obvious at this point.
Could you make sure DEBUG is turned on for custom_components.device_tracker.life360 and take a look at the messages it outputs to the log? Anything out of the ordinary or suspicious there? (If you’d like to share your log messages via PM, that’s fine.)
@Mariusthvdb, can you expand on how it’s failing? Are the device_tracker entities simply no longer updating? Are you seeing any errors in the log? Do you see any messages like these in home-assistant.log?
pi@raspberrypi:/home/homeassistant/.homeassistant $ grep 'custom_components\.device_tracker\.life360]' home-assistant.log
2019-02-12 10:08:40 DEBUG (Thread-10) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Life360 communication successful!
2019-02-12 10:08:40 DEBUG (Thread-10) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Configured members = None
2019-02-12 10:08:41 DEBUG (Thread-10) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_xxx
2019-02-12 10:14:55 DEBUG (Thread-8) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_xxx; Time since last update: 0:08:54
2019-02-12 10:18:24 DEBUG (Thread-19) [custom_components.device_tracker.life360] Updating life360_xxx; Time since last update: 0:03:25
yes that’s what was happening in once HA instance.
Ive waited longer than the max_update setting and nothing happened.
Seemed they were not only not updated, but not even initialized because normally when one clicks the more-info, the full list of attributes is displayed, and now only the regular history graph with home/not_home was shown.
Ive rebooted once again, and now they’re back! Which would at least suggest my settings are ok… Hope it was a short hiccup. Hadn’t experience it before…
and probabely because I’m doing something wrong. But after reading this topic, looking at YouTube video’s where everything goes smooth and easy I think there is only one option: calling for help…
