I just ordered a couple. I will hit you up when they arrive and work with you.
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As I promised before, I’ll be providing my developer credentials to mandarons tomorrow so can use it for testing. He already started working on the project. I’m really excited 
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Excellent and exciting news.
Got my devices today. Followed the instructions in the app. Went for a drive, which the app instructs you must do for 10 minutes to activate the location. I spent an hour in the car driving in about a 10 mile radius and it still said pending location. I’m told by their support team, my device is enqueue for cell activation (the app said it was activated, aside from the perpetual pending location message) and ‘some’ devices can take up to 24hrs.
Gave the feedback, it’d be nice if the app would alert you to the actual status rather than claiming it was activated. I’ve checked once more today after about 6hrs and still is not working. Their support team has gotten a little snippy at this point. I’m not hopeful based on my early experience, now.
I worked on an IoT project where we had private access to the cell networks for remote access and surveillance systems. Activating the SIMs in our devices (various neworks) was nearly instant. This was some time ago, but still I don’t have any confidence these guys know what they’re talking about.
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Wow exactly same issue here. I remember when I first got their device two years ago it instantly activated the service, ever since I haven’t had any issues so far. I used Automatic before, it used to many issues like not recording trip data but I didn’t have any issues with Bouncie to be honest. But I’m not sure what’s up with their activation process now!
This is what I got from their CS:
"Thanks for reaching out!
I checked everything and it looks like the device is pending activation with the cell systems. Occasionally, this can take a couple of hours. Normally, it’s only a few minutes but it looks like it is in queue and should complete the activation process in the next 24 hours.
Please keep the device plugged in.
If you do not see any data by tomorrow please let us know."
I have 4 devices, and am using a dev account as well. Right now, I use the web hook to push data to a stand alone Node Red instance, which then in turn pushes the data to a Node Red instance on HA. Not the ideal way to integrated obviously, and a real integration would hopefully connect to the Bouncie API and retrieve the information on a regular basis. I am looking forward to a REAL way to get bouncie data into Home Assistant, and would be willing to help test, or help in any other way possible.
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One thing I struggled with when I looked at this initially was that the authorization process to get access to the devices must hit an external web interface. You hit a web interface with some parameters including the external URL, log in with your bouncie creds, and authorize access to your devices, which then sends the auth code to the URL you provide. I did this in testing to my Node Red instance. Perhaps part of the process for this could be to a web hook on HA??
Sounds like OAUTH2.
It is. I have no knowledge of how an integration might handle that initial auth code. I had it hit a web instance on node red to get it on redirect. I decided to try my hand at hitting the REST api with Node Red, and have done that now, just have to parse the data and assign it to helpers. Obviously, a real integration would be much cleaner.
Got as far as getting fuel levels for 4 vehicles, and handling the token expiration in Node Red. The way I’m doing this in Node Red isn’t really scalable for multiple people as an integration, and it’s far from simple, and requires a web instance set up to provide the initial auth code
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As I understand WebHook doesn’t go very well with Home Assistant. Fortunately, Bouncie has REST API available. With the REST we can get pretty much same data but there might be some limitations how many requests we can make, in that case it wouldn’t be as instantaneous as webhook. But I’d still be happily to have an integration. @mandarons has started working on this project and he’s using REST.
Yea, I’m curious on the limitations in the REST calls… sending them every 10s now… throughput wise it’s very little traffic… imagine the Bouncie app is as bad probably??
On data, I think there are some things you can do with webhooks that you won’t be able to do with REST, or as easily and in real time, but I’ll have to look at the data I’m pulling… Webhook sends events, so you get TripStart and TripEnd, which I don’t think you will probably get with REST?? So far I have fuel gauge, speedometer, and odemeter pulling via REST. Will see how the stability is. webhooks requires an inbound connection obviously, which is a challenge for a number of reasons.
I’m curious what other peoples use cases for Bouncie in HA are… mine was initially for fuel gauge, but started doing trip summaries with webhooks and sending alerts that way, which with kids driving is kind of nice… would have to check JSON data to see if trip start and end is available via REST.
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That’s awesome!
There are many use cases I can think of…
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For presence detection - with coordinates we can track vehicle’s location and automate things based of off that.
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Mileage tracker - can track mileage based on Odometer readings.
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Cost tracking - Since Bounie doesn’t have built in trip by trip cost (Automatic had this feature), we can track how much we’re spending on gas mileage. No need another app for fuel tracking.
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Getting rid of Bouncie app - One less app on my phone.
Yea not sure all that’s going to be possible with an integration. I think it would need a cloud server to collect data perhaps, but will see what happens, could just be I don’t understand the API well enough… I’m not a developer, just threw some stuff together in node red to handle basic stuff. As for gas cost, you’d have to have an input for what you actually pay when you fill I would think to measure actual cost, and I’m not sure you’d ever replace all the functionality of the bouncie app.
Geofencing is my usecase.
Yea, playing around with GeoCode with REST calls from Node Red right now… something I didn’t expect was that while HA reboots, the location for the object is “Not Home”. So automations that rely on transition from Not Home to Home may be a problem?? The native app doesn’t report it that way, and neither does Life 360, so I’m not sure why a device tracker I create and update via Node Red acts that way.
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Not a super big deal. Battery backup means I’m the one that does all the rebooting. There’s also a way to block automation until fully rebooted I used to have scripted. Could probably pull that back out if y’all need.
Yea, I have a “Maintenance Mode” boolean helper that I use for some of that, and enable it while doing work including rebooting. For automating it, I’d have to check the timing on the update, guessing in my case it’s after Node Red is up… it actually surprised me that the location was set to away while rebooting, I thought it would store the last value.
I’m pretty disappointed in these devices. They really don’t have a whole lot of detail that I’m pretty sure is available over the OBD2. Pretty much could just keep using Life360 for the most part.