There have been numerous comments and requests that relate to the slowness of location tracking by the companion app (notably with the IOS version).
How hard would it be to fix the app so that the user can specify the time intervals between location updates?
The issue is that I sometimes get updates that are hours old - the other day it triggered an announcement that my wife was arriving home, when she’s be in the house for nearly eight hours! I’m sure other people have similar frustrations.
The technology exists to track in real-time, as I have a number of hiking apps on my phone that do exactly that, so why can’t the companion app? (In the Search/Rescue team, we even have one that updates a cloud server, so the deputy can track us in real-time.)
I understand there maybe a battery penalty with frequent updates, but at least let the user make that decision.
Yes, I have background refresh on, precise location on, the plow power option is off and location is always enabled, etc.
However I did not realize that you could request an update via automation (and by automation, I assume you mean on the HA-side, not an IOS automation?). That would definitely help improve things. I’ll look in to that. many thanks.
Ya know, I don’t think it’s an IOS-thing, but rather the way the companion app is designed. I believe (and I’m willing to be proven wrong) that it requires IOS to tell it when a significant location change has occurred.
As I said, I have multiple IOS apps that track my location in real-time and display it on a map, which is why I don’t believe its an IOS limitation. I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like these apps frequently interrogate the GPS data directly rather than wait for IOS to “tell them” that a location change has occurred.