For some reason the zone configuration was a problem.
I did delete the manual zone configuration, and now it is working (sort of).
But still there is something strange. I made an other zone “Grocery” and edited the proximity configuration like this.
# proximity home
proximity:
home:
devices:
- device_tracker.phone_1
- device_tracker.phone_2
tolerance: 50
unit_of_measurement: km
grocery:
zone: grocery
- device_tracker.phone_1
- device_tracker.phone_2
tolerance: 50
unit_of_measurement: km
If I check the state, then it all says “not set”
But if I go to the grocery and check the zone.grocery, it says that I am at the grocery. So the zone is working, but the proximity not.
dir_of_travel: not set
nearest: not set
unit_of_measurement: km
friendly_name: grocery
I’m going to hijack this post because you seem to have a great handle on this!
What would your advise be if your location tracking is regularly inaccurate such as in the thousands?
I was using a combination of Life360 and the companion app for location tracking. Since Life360 blocked their api, I finally deleted the app off my phone a few weeks back. Since then, my location tracking has been absolutely terrible. I can usually drive to the next town over before I get a location accurate enough to be accepted, and that’s with the setting set to 600.
Checking the logs I routinely see 15-20 dropped location reports in a row, all with accuracy levels between 3000-4000.
I use location tracking to arm/disarm the house. I have high accuracy mode when entering home zone enabled with a range of 1000 but it never enables because of all the dropped reports. I can drive home, sit in my driveway for 5mins and nothing, but the second I open the HA app, location report is accurate and the automation triggers.
if you check the map do those locations look correct? if so then you need to adjust accuracy per your location. The reason why it may have looked better wth life 360 is because the app also receives passive updates from other apps . So anytime life 360 got an update so did the app. If you open google maps you should see updates every 30 seconds. When you open google maps does it show you with an accurate location or does it ask you to calibrate?
I did see that, but they’ve made it pretty clear they’re unwilling to work with the smart home community and every time they’ve pulled the plug so far it’s wreaked havoc on my presence automations. So I’m trying to make it work without. But the companion app tracking is just terrible. Works great when the app is open, but not when it’s in the background
It’s set to unrestricted so it shouldn’t be. While I had life360 running in the background the updates were perfect. My understanding is the companion app doesn’t request location updates on its own. And the ones it is receiving have an accuracy that’s considered thousands of meters off
those are still actual reports the app gets from Google, life360 may have requested GPS directly. have you tried using high accuracy mode to see if it helps?
High accuracy mode is set to enable within a 1000m radius of my home zone. And my home zone is a 1000m radius itself. So high accuracy should be enabled about 2km from home.
But unless I have the HA app open, it doesn’t kick in. I can drive home and sit in my driveway for 5mins and my home automation never fires. The second I open the app, everything updates accurately.
Then you have not completely granted the app full background access. Some manufacturers add many more settings you need to turn off. I would start looking at other features to turn off as those symptoms describe no background access.
13yrs experience working in the mobility industry, if there’s one thing I can say with absolute certainty here is the background access and permissions are correct. Lol
I can see through the location logs that the reports are being received, the accuracy however is showing they are thousands of meters away which causes the app to reject them. And the ones being rejected show me right inside the high accuracy zone radius which isn’t turning to on because its rejected.
Sorry, I was scrolling up to grab the screenshots of these logs I had posted and realized I missed you had replied on them.
I do agree that Life360 was likely passing its report on to the app. And yes when I open Google maps it is very accurate and with Google maps open, the app receives accurate updates and my high accuracy mode triggers as it should.
we can only go by the data that Google gives us, go ahead and change teh accuracy setting as described in the link above to avoid skipping reports that you see as valid. Every user will have a different accuracy setting.
but, FYI, I’ve been able to get the Life360 integration working again. Please see:
