Person and device linked, but still showing as "away" when in the Home zone

Configuration
1

Just getting started with Home Assistant, so I’m learning the ropes, but it’s been fairly intuitive for the most part. Using the Home Assistant VM while I’m waiting for my Home Assistant Blue to ship. The VM, by default, setup a Person entity for me and a default Home zone. I also installed the companion app on my iPhone and the system added it as a Device to my Home Assistant and as a Tracker to my Person entity. I’m looking at the Map page and it shows my device fully within the Home zone, but both my Device and my Person are listed as Away.

I’ve tried searching on various terms and didn’t really seem to hit on anyone stating they had this same problem. Since the Map is showing my Device and Person fully encompassed by the Home zone, I’m at a loss as to why Home Assistant didn’t flip my Person entity to being at “Home”. The only tracker setup for my person entity right now is the phone.

Any advice appreciated.

~Dan

2

On Android, HA sensors relating to the phone are disabled by default (there are about 60 of them). You need to go to App Configuration in the HA app on your phone, then Manage Sensors and enable the location sensors you want. Don’t know if it’s the same for iPhone.

2 Likes
3

Appreciate the feedback. The App Configuration section of the iOS version appears to be slightly different, but, from what I can tell, all location data is active and going to my HA. The device is marked as enabled in HA as well.

4

And, magically, about 5 hours ago, around the time I just started looking around the config areas, but not actually changing anything, it started working. Logs show that my person entity flipped to Home 5 hours ago.

5

Sometimes intermittent dysfunction may be caused by the app being put to sleep by your phone to manage power, especially if you haven’t used the app in a while. Fix it in your phone settings by giving special permission to the app so that it can be persistent and never be put to sleep. I did this with good results.

There are two places that might need adjusting:

  1. the companion APP SETTINGS to enable the sensors
  2. PHONE SETTINGS to give permissions to the app that keep it from sleeping
1 Like
6

I had this same issue with my IPhone. I went to settings within the app on my Iphone.

  1. Click on Companion app
  2. Click Location
  3. Click Update location (in blue)

My phone’s status on HA changed from “Away” to “Home”