Using a person with passive zones does not trigger

Configuration
1

Hello,
I have a number of automations I’ve tried to set up that rely on entering zones (turn AC on when getting close to home, send a notification when a friend is almost to house, etc). However, using the person entity does not appear to work when using passive zones.

So for example, I have 3 zones that are overlapping:

  1. Home, small radius, active zone
  2. medium house radius (roughly 5 minute radius from house). Passive zone
  3. big house radius (roughly 25 minutes radius). Passive zone

I have this automation:

- alias: Enable AC when driving home
  trigger:
  - platform: zone
    entity_id:
      - person.jonathan
      - person.brittany
    zone: zone.big_home_radius
    event: enter
  condition: []
  action:
  - service: climate.set_preset_mode
    data:
      preset_mode: none
    target:
      entity_id: climate.living_room

This automation is never triggered, even though I can see my person.jonathan entity has exited and entered into the zone.

I saw some ramblings that you should use device_tracker with passive zones, but that seems like a work around instead. My device_tracker entities change every now and then for the users (I have 10 people I’m tracking) and it’s very convenient to simply switch their device_tracker in the UI and use their person entity which never changes.

I was thinking of maybe pointing the entity to the device_tracker indirectly by using the {{ }} operator like below, but that doesn’t appear to work either…

- alias: Enable AC when driving home
  trigger:
  - platform: zone
    entity_id:
      - {{ states.person.jonathan.attributes.source }}
      - {{ states.person.brittany.attributes.source }}
    zone: zone.big_home_radius
    event: enter
  condition: []
  action:
  - service: climate.set_preset_mode
    data:
      preset_mode: none
    target:
      entity_id: climate.living_room

Any thoughts?

2

I have no idea what changed… I just restarted my home assistant instance after remaking the zones (I made them a while back) and now when I spoof my phone’s location it appears to be working… But it hasn’t worked at all for the last week.

Figures it starts working once I post and try some more stuff…

3

I’ve got a similar issue

I created a large passive zone (Holiday) intending that when we leave the zone actions taken and when we enter the zone other actions

When I manually change the zone value things occur, but my person trackers don’t change things for some reason

Am I doing something wrong??