Android Phone Presence Sensing

[Scott_Barton (Scott)]

Check out this thread below. After a lot of digging I came to realize that it was my phone, not SmartThings issue. SmartThings requires that the phone be in High Accuracy location mode. High Accuracy is a misnomer. Its more like Always Available. High Accuracy uses GPS or WiFi or Bluetooth or Cell Towers to determine location. Only GPS is actually highly accurate. The others are just guesses. In actuality ‘Device Only’ location mode uses GPS only so it’s actually the most accurate, but GPS may not always be available, so if it is set to this your phone sometimes may have no idea where you are.
So if the phone is in 'High Accuracy mode, and it is idle, it may turn off GPS to save battery. During that time it is probably just using the nearest cell towers to determine your location. If you look at your Google Location history (see the link below for info). You’ll see that Google thinks your phone is 'teleporting back and forth from your house to a the cell tower. When you ‘teleport’ to the cell tower ST reports you as away.

Fix for Android presence arrival problems

It seems like I get a lot of false presence arrived triggers. If my battery is low, it’ll turn off GPS until I start using my phone again, so when it turns back on registers that I just arrived even though I’ve been in the house the whole time. I also shut my phone off when I go to bed. When I turn it on in the morning, it thinks I’ve arrived, even though I haven’t left. There are other issues too. There are 2 very easy ways for SmartThings to fix this. Check the previous status. If my status is/was present, and you get a new update with the same status, don’t fire a trigger event. Since this is GPS based, the definition of AWAY should be a reported location outside of the geofence of my home, and PRESENT should only be reported when a location is reported inside my geofence. If n…