No it doesn’t need to connect, it is detecting a live BT signal, so no connection is needed.
The ibeacon is a little chip you can add to your keychain. It provides a BT signal which can be detected by HA to know your home (instead of using your phone).
Not sure what the hardware requirements are.
I use a combo of things put into a Bayesian Sensor which then triggers a Boolean Input based whether or not the Sensor is ON or OFF. Also, it’s nice to have the Boolean Input so if needed, I can quickly toggle presence.
- platform: bayesian
name: Jake's Home
prior: '0.1'
probability_threshold: '0.75'
observations:
- entity_id: 'device_tracker.jake_pixel_xl'
prob_given_true: '0.9'
prob_given_false: '0.2'
platform: 'state'
to_state: 'home'
- entity_id: 'device_tracker.jakes_ping'
prob_given_true: '0.9'
prob_given_false: '0.2'
platform: 'state'
to_state: 'home'
- entity_id: 'device_tracker.jakes_2nd_ping'
prob_given_true: '0.9'
prob_given_false: '0.2'
platform: 'state'
to_state: 'on'
- entity_id: 'binary_sensor.jake_arrival'
prob_given_true: '0.9'
prob_given_false: '0.2'
platform: 'state'
to_state: 'on'
- entity_id: sensor.jake_ble_presence
prob_given_true: '0.95'
prob_given_false: '0.5'
platform: 'numeric_state'
above: '50'
- entity_id: 'binary_sensor.jake_tasker'
prob_given_true: '0.9'
prob_given_false: '0.2'
platform: 'state'
to_state: 'on'
- entity_id: 'device_tracker.tile_wallet'
prob_given_true: '0.9'
prob_given_false: '0.2'
platform: 'state'
to_state: 'home'
I use Owntracks HTTP along with MAC Address, a variety of Pings from NMAP, Tile Trackers, Arrival Sensor from SmartThings and use Presence. Works great. Just need to adjust the threshold for your needs.
Any generic one will work, only difference I can see between the ones I have is battery type.
I also do the Bayesian Sensor thing as well, here’s my config example
I use this, works like a charm:
How do you send location data from Life360 to Home Assistant? I don’t see Life360 listed as a component. Have you noticed any significant decrease in your phone’s battery life using it?
I created a custom Life360 Device Tracker Platform. I know of at least a few other people that are using it successfully. I hope to submit it as a standard platform someday, but that hasn’t happened yet.
Life360 is all about providing accurate location at minimal battery usage. I’ve been using it for years and haven’t found it to be a noticeable battery drain. Sure, it uses some, but nothing that I’ve found unreasonable. We use it on both Android phones and iPhones.
If you are mostly focused on arriving home by car, this might do it.
@DrZzs has a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DyblwsjfU8
and @luma has a tutorial https://github.com/aderusha/MQTTCarPresence
this is only tracking the car is on/off and connected to your wifi.
Another option if you have an iPhone and appletv/home iPad/HomePod- I use the HA home kit integration and the home app to toggle presence. Home app uses Bluetooth low energy from the Apple TV/iPad/HomePod so it’s the same underlying tech, but for me it was way simpler to set up than getting own beacons, OwnTracks, etc and it’s been working for a few months 100% reliable.
There’s instructions from a user on the forums somewhere…
Also looking forward to the Apple shortcuts app and how that will work with home assistant.
Thanks for all the replies, guys. I ordered a couple BLE beacons and the D1 mini to do some testing. I’m not sure i want to use it to open my garage door for security reasons, but I would like it to turn on my front porch lights. The front porch lights use MyQ (so we can hit the homelink garage door button in our cars to turn them on) and HA doesn’t have a MyQ component for lights yet.
For now, I’d just like HA to sense our car in the garage/driveway and possibly disarm the alarm when we open the door.
Opengarage might work for you. There is native support in HA. The beauty of opengarage, because it has a distance sensor, is it’ll sense 3 states.
So you can setup so if it goes from door closed w/o car -> door open, you are coming home and initiate a series of events.
Edit: the other thing I liked about opengarage was, MQTT support and native HA support. So you do not need the ‘cloud’ or the app it comes with. It even has a web browser you can hit to manage it. I have nothing accessible remotely. So I can simply VPN in and do stuff.
I’m using ddwrt router and it work flawlessly. HA know that I’m home for 5 sec. after wifi connection.
My solution was for my phone to self-report that I am home, or not longer home, based on WiFi connection.
For me, it works excellently.
I also detect when I am at University or work, so HA updates based on that info.
Infra: Android phone with Tasker, and HA with API calls.
I update a boolean variable based on the status change of my alarm system…
I use the nmap device tracker plus GPSLogger for my 2 Android phones and it works great. The lights I have set to turn on when I get home are usually on before I turn my car off.
I am using GPSLogger and Tasker which switches profiles when my phone is connected to my car or not. or if its powered.
So when I am in my car it updates more frequently, which works very well (in combination with google geocode).
Ah, OK… misread OP. Apple 
Nevermind!
“Honey I’m home” has worked well for decades. 
Could you possibly start up another thread with some details and share your tasker setup on this? I like this idea. I have been using zanzito for over a year and have been good with it, but am always interested in conserving battery life
Check out the ICloud3 device tracker device tracker custom component.
Some of its many features include:
And by using the IOS App and iCloud3, you won’t need any other device trackers. No Owntracks, Nmap, ping or other router based trackers.