The Problem
The companion app (Android) does not communicate geolocation to the home assistant server.
The Setup.
Phone: Pixel 8 Pro
Android OS version: 16
No Google Account configured.
Companion App installed via f-droid.
The app has all access rights to geo location and is allowed to run in the background.
I can see from the history in Android that the App reads geolocation regularly.
I can see Companion App Settings → Manage sensors that the sensor “Geocoded location” correctly know the the street I am currently at.
On the home assistant server, my person is connected to the above described phone as geo tracker. My person is always shown as: Localtion Unknown.
The home server is connected to the internet via a static IP address. No home-dns-provider in between.
It seems, that on the Android device the companion app has all the info it needs, but can’t communicate that to the server. The phone of others (iOS, installed from the official store), work like expected.
Could it be that for f-droid sourced apps the backchannel from phone to server does not work? Is there anything you guys could point me to?
Do any of the sensors update?
If one of them update, then the connection is working.
F-droid might be missing some google services that are needed though.
Hi,
that was a good idea to check the other sensors. I see the following
All sensors update. These are the available ones, see top part of the screenshot.
The sensor geocoded location know where I have been, see middle part of the screenshot
But the sensor for the person is unknown all the time, see bottom part of the screenshot.
I don’t see a sensor which would report the “raw gps position”. I also don’t see such a sensor in the companion’s app sensors management page. Is that to be expected?
The geocoded location sensor can’t be selected when configuring a geo-tracker in the Person configuration page. What is going on?
This is 100 percent correct. Minimal version lacks play services like location tracking. Download the full version from GitHub and sideload it.
The Android Android app is being offered in 2 different flavors as either full or minimal. The full flavor of the app is offered via \\∆ explain the Play Store and has the full set of features offered as it requires Google Play Services. The full flavor is offered for both production and beta releases.
The minimal flavor of the app does not require Google Play Services and is available in the releases section on GitHub as an APK. It can also be installed from F-Droid. However, updates may be delayed because F-Droid builds new releases independently. This flavor does not support location tracking. Additionally, the following sensors are unavailable: Activity sensors.
I have exactly the same problem. But I have “normal” installed version of the app via play store. The sensor geo location is updated in HA for my pixel 8. But the device tracker is unknown.
So the connection works fine and I activated background geo location, full permission access and so on.
Why is the sensor sending the current location but the device tracker can’t access it?
Do you have background location enabled in settings>companion app> sensors? I’m pretty sure it is disabled by default. You can also set the frequency to save battery life or update instantly. You can also setup Google Geocoded location to get human readable addresses. Google charges me 1 cent a.month. I don’t know exactly what the number of free API calls you get a month but I’ve never been charged. Device tracker needs to be setup for it to work.
OMG @ginandbacon thank you so much. That’s it! I have activated the background permission in the android system settings for the HA App but didn’t recognize that there is a setting in the app as well.
No problem at all. Good to check the companion app every once in a while. The new features don’t always get a lot of attention like gesture shortcuts you can define. Great for bringing up the 3 keyboard shortcuts e, d and c. Saves a lot of noise or touch navigation.
