Location tracking in the iOS app

Mobile Apps Home Assistant Companion for Apple
1

I updated the beta to the latest version (24) and would like to know how location tracking works. As of now its tracking my iPhone, I got a notification when I entered my home zone but when I arrived home the lights where still switched off. When I opened the app on my iPhone and forced a location update (the arrow top right) the lights would switch on.

Are there any other things to add to the config file of HA? I previously used iCloud tracking (slow) and left it on while testing the app.

Am I correct when I presume that when the App is sending a notification that I entered the home zone it would send a message to HA to run the specific script (switching on the lights)

2

That would depend how you wrote the original automation - if you mentioned your iCloud device tracker by name it would still be looking at that not the iOS app tracker.

FWIW, it probably isn’t a good idea to leave both trackers running. I tried it and sometimes iCloud lags - you may get home as triggered by the iOS app, then a minute later iCloud updates with a stale location somewhere away from home and your lights go off again :wink:

3

@iguana9999 @aimc is on the right track. You need to ensure you are pointing at the correct device tracker entity. In addition, either disable iCloud or use a different device ID in the iOS app.

4

Yeah that’s what I thought. I already disabled iCloud and nmap device tracking. Device_tracking is empty now, is that correct?

Let’s see how it goes tomorrow.

5

Well it’s morning here and it’s not working. I can’t figure out if I need to add a new platform under device_tracker or that it would need to work without any configuration.

In the iOS app I set my device ID as iOSiPhone, my automations which include device tracking are set to entity_id: device_tracker.iOSiPhone. Testing an automation by sending my location from the iOS app doesn’t trigger the script.

As I don’t have entries under device_tracker in the config I lost my devices in the states overview. I know I should be able to add them but can’t figure out how.

6

Thanks to some dedicated users I did quite a bit of debugging around location tracking and have now determined that I need to build a device_tracker platform for iOS to go along with the app before full functionality is unlocked. For now, you can still have automations based on location coming from the iOS app but the state will not display or store properly.

Also, I need to disable significant location updates when inside the geofence of any zone, something that the platform will enable me to do.

Sorry for the not so great news, but at least we have a path to fix it. I already finished the overarching iOS component as well as the notify component, so the hardest things are done.

3 Likes
7

Same here, no location tracking in HA 0.29.6! In 0.27 it worked sometimes…

This is my error message in the log:

INFO:homeassistant.core:Bus:Handling <Event call_service[L]: service_data=dev_id=marcos_iphone, gps_accuracy=65, hostname=Marcos iPhone, gps=[..., ...], battery_status=Unplugged, battery=66, service=see, service_call_id=1977524976-121, domain=device_tracker>

WARNING:homeassistant.core:Unable to find service device_tracker/see

What “device_tracker:” entry do I have to insert into my configuration.yaml?

Thanks in advance,
Marco

8

Any hints how to include the device_tracker in my configuration.yaml?

Thanks
Marco

9 
device_tracker:

without any platform works for me.

10

Having the same issue as mny. How are people using the iOS app to use geofencing with their devices? What is the entity name of the device? device_tracker.my_ios_device_here?