Androd Presence is misbehaving

General Discussion
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Hi Everyone,

I’m having trouble with my android presence recently.
I’m using Galaxy Note 5 with Android 7.0 OS. I was using my phone as Presence device and it was worked perfectly.
Since last three odd weeks presence is mis-behaving. Out of nothing it shows away and then after few minutes shows arrived. It happens randomly and I could not connect any thing with it.

power saving mode is off in my phone and Smartthings is in “Unmonitored Apps”.
So nothing has changed that I know off, I’m not sure why suddenly it stopped working.
Presence from Apple device work flawless though.
Any one has any idea what could be done?

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I’ve been seeing the same thing recently, also on a Note 5 with 7.0. A couple of the times, my phone was gone for over an hour. I’ve also triple checked that it is in Unmonitored Apps, etc. I think it may have gotten more frequent since the release of the new Smartthings app?

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I think there were also several reports of this in the thread for the release of the new version of the app.

I have the same problem on my wife’s phone. Been using ST for 1.5 years and presence has always been rock solid for me.
After the update, her presence (moto z force with 7) has gone pretty unreliable. She will randomly appear home when not, or not home when she is.

4

hmm. Same here and same timeframe. My Nexus 6p is great, but my husband’s Galaxy s6 edge constantly shows the phone leaving and arriving at weird times (therefore turning on a light in the middle of the night).

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Did any one tried with Smartthings Support? If so did you get anything as cause of this? previous to this, presence worked flawless on my Android phone.

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I have sent an email to Support. Not sure if I’ll find anything to solve it or not. If so, I’ll post here…

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Have you seen this post, if not check it out, these are the most common reasons for location done awry and solutions:

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Thank you @RBoy

I’ll try this WIFI method and then increasing the home circle. As far as location setting in my phone is concerned, it’s set to High Accuracy which uses all, Cell phone towers, WiFI and GPS.
And it used to work great, just since last few weeks it’s gone awry.
I don’t see issue with cellphone towers as my wife uses same AT&T network(Apple) and in her phone location works great, no issue at all.

1 Like
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Also if you changed your router or modem that’s also a big play as the mac address may be registered to an old location or someone in your neighborhood has done the same and their wifi signal is throwing your phone’s location off.

So you may want to scan your wifi networks in your house coming from outside your house (assuming you didn’t change any equipment) and then track their location using this tool:

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I’ll check this once I’m home. But I’m using this very same router since last 22 months.

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The presence location info for the past four months has been terrible on my wife’s phone. We both had S6’s and her presence was always an issue. Now we have S8’s and still her presence is often wrong. ST often alarms when she is home. Contacted support a few months ago and they were adamant this was a cell phone carrier issue. They said the phone wasn’t reporting her location properly. Well that was false info as it does report her location just fine.

I pushed further with support and they finally admitted there was a bug. Still four months later my wife thinks ST is a piece of $hit as it often sounds alarms in the house when she is home but ST thinks she is away. Would be nice if they could finally fix this bug.

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Did you see this post, location isn’t as straight forward as you think, your GPS isn’t active always. Is uses AGPS and WiFi to locate your position. See this if you haven’t seen it:

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Thanks for pointing this out. But this still doesn’t explain why ST presence isn’t working.

My wife and I are home all night and I leave the house in the morning. As soon as she walks around all ST motion sensors are triggered and set the alarms off. So for 12 hours ST couldn’t have determined she was home? Somethings not right. I don’t see how GPS AGPS or anything else would cause ST to not figure out where it is. Especially since ST hub is sitting on the same wireless network as the cellphone.

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Go through the post again, ST has nothing to do with it. It doesn’t “figure” anything out, your phone does that and reports it to ST. So it’s really your phone (or the operating system) which is the issue here, it’s isnt’ able to figure out where you are and if you read the post again you’ll see what AGPS plays an important role in telling the phone “where it is”. The phone just reports it to ST.

I don’t see what’s the corelation between the hub and the phone. They are independent devices and have nothing to do with each other w.r.t to location. The ST app tells the hub “where” it is based on what the phone (operating system) reports to the ST app. So you could put your phone on top of your hub and it wouldn’t know it unless the phone “reports” that to the ST apps who then reports it to the hub.

The phone is a presence sensor device who’s location is determined by the operating system. To answer your question, that’s why AGPS and WiFi and every other technology used by the operating system to determine its location is important for you to understand and diagnose to get your location correct.

See the very next post, the user had replaced the modem/router and the MAC address in the providers database had it registered to a different location hence the phone was “reporting” it in the wrong location. That’s why I’m saying it’s important to understand how location works so you can figure out what’s going on. It really doesn’t have much to do with the ST app per se.

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It is frustrating and it feels like it would be a ST/Hub issue. Especially when we can see our phones show us exactly where we are through every single app that has this ability. All my map/transit apps show me exactly where I am, my weather apps show me exactly where I am on my watch and phone, without even opening the app. So even while I could have 10 different apps showing my exact location correctly, even after hours of being away, smartthings still thinks I am 30 miles away, at home.

That is what is so frustrating and confusing and causes users to pint the finger at ST. Why??? Because that is the only location device that shows their phone is incorrectly placed.

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Agree 100% Trying to place the blame on the phone, carrier, or any other thing (insert acronyms) is pure non sense. ST doesn’t figure out its location even when everything else on the phone does. This squarely puts the issue on ST.

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It’s hard to put blame on the phone, as reviews for the Official Samsung Presence Sensor are not great. Many complain of the same issues.

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Correct, once your open the ST app it should correctly identify your location as it switches to “active” GPS which is what Google Maps and other software use. That should be fairly accurate within 10-100 meters depending upon the GPS signals.

Once the app is closed/backgrounded it switches to GeoFencing (i.e using AGPS, WiFi etc) and depends on the phone telling it it’s location. If it used GPS 100% of the time it’ll kill you battery (like in 3-4 hours you’ll be 0%).

So if you’re facing location issues with the app open then definitely contact ST support and they should help you figure it out.

I’m just saying it like it is, I can’t change how ST location works, I can only recommend solutions to try to help you figure it out given what we have on hand :slight_smile:

Feel free to send an emai to support or the support staff and request them to find a better way. Honestly I doubt they’ll change it as this is the way most apps work, but it never hurts to express your frustration.

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I do appreciate it.

When I open the app, it doesn’t change then either. Another question. How do weather apps show my location without me opening their app? I get alerts from them if lightning struck within a certain distance, if rain is about to start…all based on where I am, without opening the app. If they are accurate, and can update this way, can’t ST? They don’t kill my battery.

I posted this in the iOS thread as well.

I will be honest and nothing against anyone here, but my contact with ST support has been less than stellar. To put it bluntly, worthless. I email support, and I am told inconsistent information. I call support and the rep just says they are not sure what is going on and defaults to “we are working on some bugs.” I feel like I receive more assistance her on and forums, and from ST staff here, but the common answer, is “we are working on it”. If I said that to customers at my job, after a few day/weeks, and for sure years, I wouldn’t have those same customers any longer.

I am fairly new here, but if the presence sensor has been an ongoing issue for so long, why is it still an issue? Is this something that is truly being worked on, or is that just what is said so the conversation ends? With the blame being pointed in every direction but themselves, is this something that can even be fixed?

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Combination of GPS and GeoFencing AFAIK, when you open the app or open the notifications page which loads the weather widget it uses GPS otherwise it uses GeoFencing.