Use IFTTT for presence?

Configuration
1

My girlfriend and I have been using an iOS app called Skylark for a few years now with our Nest. Recently, Skylark connected to IFTTT.

I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to get presence detection working. Owntracks and Locative don’t work, aren’t easy to figure out, and I’ve wasted the better part of a week trying to figure them out. I’ve given up.

So, I’m wondering… Can I set up IFTTT recipes using Maker to tell HASS when we’re home/away? I’d rather keep all my rules/logic locally in HASS and have the Cloud only handling the trigger. (Otherwise, I could just create a bunch of IFTTT rules to do the automation via Maker.)

Ideas?

2

I don’t see why not. I was considering the same thing but I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet. You should be able to have IFTTT trigger a maker event to turn on or off an input_boolean switch that acts as your away/not away switch, and use that for triggers or conditions.

3

Is another option to just continue to use Skylark with Nest, and poll the Nest status from HA to work out if you’re home?

Or is that not possible from HA?

4

That is possible, however HA seems to only poll Nest every 5 minutes or so, so depending on your Skylark radius that could be an issue if you want an immediate change to be noticed.

I still think the best bet is the IFTTT maker channel idea.

5

Hi Goyney

I struggled similarly to get things working, but i do now have a very reliable setup with locative, happy to help out if you let me know what issues you’re having?

Owntracks and IFTTT i couldn’t get reliable triggering my presence, plus depending on what you’re using the presence for IFTTT can be quite delayed.

FYI, the correct endpoints for setting presence with IFTTT are:

`http://host:port/api/device_tracker/see?api_password=xxxxxxxx’

With a JSON payload in the format:

{
    "dev_id": "person",
    "location_name" : "home"
}`

But, the see module only seems to get enabled when you turn on once of the other services like locative, no biggy, but a little annoying.

Alternatively you could use the locative endpoints and do a get with the correct data.

FYI, there is a bug in the latest build that is causing location updates from locative to fail, but it’s a pretty easy fix, let me know if you think that might be the issue and i’ll point you at the changes needed.

Cheers

Gareth

6

Thank all for the tips. I did eventually get this working with the Skylark and Maker channels.

I called:

https://my.domain:8123/api/states/home.occupancy?api_password=********

With a JSON payload of:
{ "state": "home/not_home" }

I did eventually get my own local OwnTracks solution working, so have now stopped using these recipes.

7

Hi @goyney can you tell us what are you using now and what will be the best approach to detect presence ?

Thanks

8

Can you point me at the changes needed for this? I’ve got Locative set to notify me everytime it succeeds at an update and I don’t always get these notifications when I should.

9

Hi Alademan, the fix in question is included in the latest version, so if you’re up to date you’re good to go. However, it could be todo with how you have your DNS setup, what address are you telling Locative to hit? You ideally need to use a DNS name that you externally route to your WAN IP and port forward to homeassistant, but internally maps directly to home assistant.

That said, i am now using the iOS app, but the same DNS configuration would be needed in either case.

Cheers

Gareth

10

My DNS and port mapping are fine. It’s just a standard set up.