Changing the status of an phone presence sensor manually

[JDRoberts]

@Pagemakers

Just turned my phone off for 20 mins. Says I’m at home and I’m at the side of the country for the past 2 days.

Frustrating. You may need to contact support.

SmartThings Support

[S.F.B]

@Pagemakers : Please forgive: Where in the app are you able to see if you/your phone is home or not?

[jkp]

try disabling “Get location for this iPhone” in the app, sign out of the app, reboot your iPhone, sign back in, enable “Get Location for this iPhone”. Please note this may wipe out or remove this phone’s presence from any Routines so be prepared to redo them.

[Pagemakers]

Just found this. Wonder if this is the problem.

SmartThings and IFTTT not linking DO NOT UNLINK!

I have some virtual switches in my hub that I use to integrate thru IFTTT between ST and my Roomba and Alexa. They stopped working a few days ago. I figured I would just delete the IFTTT “service” from my ST account and re-add it from the IFTTT Service Integration page. Now that I have deleted it from ST, IFTTT errors when I try to add it back in. It seems to initially get thru to ST because it comes back and askes for authorization to read my ST location (AZ Home). The fact that it knows my location is called AZ Home means it got into the ST cloud. When I tell it I Authorize access, it returns in IFTTT that it “Could not connect service”. Is there a way to create this service link from the ST side in the app? Any other thoughts?

[Pagemakers]

This is where…

[JDRoberts]

@Pagemakers

I have 2 phones on the system. 1 is stuck away and 1 is stuck home. It’s been fine(ish) for a couple of years but in the last week it’s stopped working. Phone reboots and hub reboots etc have no effect whatsoever.

Which presence are you specifically referring to? The “use this device’s location” that you set in the app? Or some other integration?

Lots of integrations that people used to use for presence, including IFTTT and Life360, broke this week when they turned off the smartthings hosting cloud. Some will be coming back, some won’t, up to each service if they choose to rewrite the integration for the new architecture. But none of that should affect just the basic “ use this devices location” functionality.

Here are the details on the cloud shutting down:

Why Did My Integration/SmartApp Stop Working in January 2023?

[JDRoberts]

@S.F.B

@Pagemakers : Please forgive: Where in the app are you able to see if you/your phone is home or not?

There isn’t any place that displays basic phone presence in the official feature. Which is weird, because it used to be there back in 2015. But it got dropped in one of the many app updates since then, and never came back.

What people do is create a routine based on “member location” that turns on a virtual device if they want to get a presence tile.

[JDRoberts]

@Pagemakers

This is where…

Ok, that tile is not part of the official presence feature, which is why turning your phone on and off didn’t make any difference. It’s either a virtual device that you created or it’s coming from a third-party integration or it’s a combination of the two.

Can you show us the details from that tile?

And you should definitely take a look at this

Why Did My Integration/SmartApp Stop Working in January 2023?

[Pagemakers]

The old MUCH MUCH better version of SmartThings allowed a phone for presence. Now it has to be done with simulated presence sensors.

In the old version it was 100% rock solid. Now it’s down in the 40-50%. However it’s never failed for this long - about a week on both iPhones.

[Pagemakers]

This is the 3rd party I’m using. It’s worked for years until a week or so ago.

Everyone's Presence

“Everyone’s Presence” is a SmartApp that sets a simulated presence sensor to “present” or “not present” based on a group of presence sensors. If no sensors are home, it sets to “not present”. If at least one sensor is home, it sets to “present”. To use this, you need to create a “Simulated Presence Sensor” in the IDE. I created this SmartApp to be used with IFTTT. I know this could have been done with a virtual switch, but I thought it might come in handy later for something else. I’m sure somebody will see another use for this. /** * Everyone's Presence * * Copyright 2015 Eric Roberts * * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except * in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at: * * http://ww…

[JDRoberts]

@Pagemakers

The old MUCH MUCH better version of SmartThings allowed a phone for presence. Now it has to be done with simulated presence sensors.

In the old version it was 100% rock solid. Now it’s down in the 40-50%. However it’s never failed for this long - about a week on both iPhones.

What are you using to turn on the virtual presence sensor?

And…is this a groovy virtual device you created through the IDE? If so, it’s going away pretty soon, too. And it may go away for different accounts at different times.

Or is it a new edge driver virtual presence sensor created recently? Like the following:

[ST Edge] vEdge Creator: a virtual device generator for end users

If it’s an old one, you might as well go ahead and replace it now with the edge driver, you’ll need to do it eventually.

[JDRoberts]

@Pagemakers

This is the 3rd party I’m using. It’s worked for years until a week or so ago.

Everyone's Presence

Ok, ALL custom groovy SmartApps were shut down about a week ago. Because the cloud where they ran was shut down.

Again, details in the community FAQ:

Why Did My Integration/SmartApp Stop Working in January 2023?

[Pagemakers]

Thank you everybody. My holiday project!

[S.F.B]

Weird indeed, considering the importance of this status. “Carry coal to Newcastle” = using a routine and a virtual switch to determine the status.

[Ace2 (Chris Bell)]

I created a virtual presence sensor, 2 routines based on location turn it on/off, although i use my Samsung location and bixby routines to turn it on/off.
Easy enough to go into smartthings and the presence sensors have a on/off button.

[Pagemakers]

@JDRoberts

What are you using to turn on the virtual presence sensor?

And…is this a groovy virtual device you created through the IDE? If so, it’s going away pretty soon, too. And it may go away for different accounts at different times.

Or is it a new edge driver virtual presence sensor created recently? Like the following:

[ST Edge] vEdge Creator: a virtual device generator for end users

If it’s an old one, you might as well go ahead and replace it now with the edge driver, you’ll need to do it eventually

Hi. I’m flowing your instructions to create an Edge virtual connector.

When it scans to find a new device it doesn’t find anything. Stupid question…. I’m not at home so is this the reason it can’t find the device? Will I have to wait until I’m home for this to work?

[JDRoberts]

@Pagemakers

question…. I’m not at home so is this the reason it can’t find the device? Will I have to wait until I’m home for this to work?

Not being home shouldn’t matter.

The best thing is to ask your question in the author thread for that edge driver: someone there should be able to help you get the device set up.

[Pagemakers]

Managed to install the vEdge presence devices.

How do I control it using the presence on my iPhone?

[Terri_Baker (TeBa)]

Once you’ve allowed ST location access you’ll need to create 2 routines per vPresence device.

If member location is presnt
Then set vPresence to present

If member location is away
Then set vPresence to not present

[Pagemakers]

Looks like you can add ST to IFTTT once again.