FAQ: How to troubleshoot mobile phone presence issues

When you say set a reminder are talking of in Smartthings or some function of the I Phone I have 2 Homes - 2 Hubs and 1 works and the other only works if I open the program (My Phone is roaming at this location) Last year when was at the roaming location(France) it worked well. The Phone got replaced and I set it up for the US Home and there it worked. On return to France It did not work and removed the phone from ST and reinstalled now it only notices when I open the ST APP

Using the Reminders app on your iPhone and setting “when I arrive” or “when I leave” reminders. The very first question to ask is “does my phone REALLY know where I am?” You have to determine that before you can blame any other apps, SmartThings included. I find that there are times when, if I don’t have WiFi on (which helps with additional location tracking), I have much a less accurate location. For example, the way the cell towers area round here, I might show up at the airport, which is across the river. Doesn’t happen often, but it has happened on occasion.

When I’m testing, I set up those two reminders (arriving at home and leaving home). I then activate the notifications in SmartThings. If I see the reminder and not the notification, I know it may be a ST issue. If I don’t see the reminder, then I know that my phone does not have an accurate location lock.

I will test that but If I get to a wifi not at home and open ST it send the notice or when I get home and I go outside where the wifi and the gps can see it sends a notice

ST since I just set up the IPhone reminder and have not tested it.

I set up the Reminder on the IPhone and it works well it know where it is and sends a push when I come and go. ST AP has my location and it worked last year with the old IPhone and worked this year with the new phone in Florida US. when I got back here to France and I added the new phone and it does not work right

I’m a little confused as to where you are. Are you using this in France? I might suggest opening a ticket with ST support and they can troubleshoot further.

Thank you for the info on the I Phone. Since it was reporting that it knew where it is and I had already removed and replace the I Phone from ST I just take a shut down and restart on the phone and it is OK now.
Yes I have house in FL and France and I have both on ST with 40 installed things and 8 more to install here is France. I carry them over from the US. I bought the first hub last year and set it up in FL before I came here and Liked it so I Brought a hub to France and door sensors and water leak sensors. I spend the winter in FL is I added to that install and this spring I brought a pile of stuff with me. The House is stone and big and the 3ft thick walls are a challenge. I am redoing the complete electrical system and Ethernet wire al over because the wifi will not get around the walls. The problem now is with EnerWave Relay switches ZWN-RSM1S That are 230 volt. I am using them to get a mesh network to cover the house so my Fortrezz water sensors (Zwave) can be put where the belong. So one of the relays was switching on and off on is own 10 times a min which was making things strange. I got it to stop by disconnecting one relay not he one that was isolating. In the morning I will work on why. Thanks again I know I will need help again John .

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I have the same issue. My daughter IPhone 5 has shown her present without ever leaving for over a week. My Galaxy S5 shows me leaving and going accurately. My Android version is 5.0.

There is also an android app called Trigger that is free that can be used to set up presences. In the free version it can detect Wifi, Bluetooth and NFC. Tasker charges now :frowning:

I too am having this issue. Picked up a V2 on preorder and some days its fine, some days its horrible. Just now it told me I left and came home about 20 times in the matter of 30 minutes. All the while I am sitting at work, about 50 miles from my house. Yikes. I’m on a Samsung Note 3 on 4.4.4

I am going to give the Tasker solution a try but curious if I were to get the ST Presence Sensor (thing), does it work 100%? Or does it too have these issues? I dont recall the price of that thing but if its $30 or whatever, it may be well worth it to avoid the headache. Thanks

The short answer is that phone-based presence works well for some people and not at all for others. And the zigbee arrival sensor works well for some people and not at all for others. It’s not predictable in advance, it depends on many local factors. You just have to try and see.

There are some workarounds for both the phone and the zigbee fob that can help improve things, but still doesn’t guarantee it will work for everyone at every house.

I worked with support for months trying to get the fob to work, but it just kept losing connection meaning it kept thinking I had left the house when I hadn’t. Ultimately we decided it was probably interference from the neighbors’ boosted Wi-Fi.

I ended up throwing iBeacons into the mix, and now I have very reliable presence detection, but it took a lot of work to get there.

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Hi fellow Smartthings users. I’m new to Smartthings and have a V2 hub after quite a bit of aggravation with a Wink hub. Anyway, I have the presence notification working for both my and my wife’s iPhone but I’d like to send a notification for when I leave work. Is that possible?

Just create a second location in the app. Drop a geofence over your work place, add your phone as a presence sensor and set up the notification.

I never received a response, but mobile presence based on my Droid started working fairly reliably a couple of months ago, perhaps when I upgraded to the V2 hub. I still find the message annoying since I often look at the SmarthThings app when I am not near home and don’t have location enabled.

The only thing that ended up working for my family was to start using Life360. It’s been much more reliable and has the added benefit of allowing family members to use their phone presence without installing the SmartThings app. So, my parents can swing by my house to let the dogs out without setting off the alarm.

So I’ve been playing around with our phones a bit and found something in the location settings I had not seen before. In the Google Location History under Settings>Location>Google Location History (Samsung S5), there is an option to turn on Location History for my device. As soon as I did this, my presence both going home and away got much better. I also notice that keeping my wifi on helped a lot as well. Not sure if this just causes the phones to push a location update more often or what, but it helped either way so I’m happier.

Keeping WiFi on was one of the recommended settings to keep mobile presence from flaking out.

So why is that no one can fix this unexpected error… Lights are green (solid) but the phone app gets a unexpected error, or smart things hub has crashed or mobile presence can not refresh… looks like the hub updated and now is unusable. Very disturbing since this is our security

Trying to get presence working with my phone. Status never changes from “Present”. I tried the Life360 SmartApp but sign-in appears to be broken.

Hate to revisit such an old thread, but this is my issue as well and I’ve tried all the things with no luck.

I DO think it’s a wi-fi/data issue, because this morning when my wife left it didn’t show she had left UNTIL she arrived at work (where she has wi-fi) and then it showed the phone as gone. But she HAS mobile data (so it should work when she’s out of range). I’m fairly familiar with our iPhones (former IT guy) but perhaps there is something different about how her phone is set up in this regard. Anything I should be checking in particular? (her GPS works fine for all other apps, even those that run in the background, and background location is turned on for all. So, as I said, I’m pretty sure it’s a wi-fi versus cloud data issue).

Failing that, anyone recommend any particular fob to work in this situation? I’ve read nothing but bad things about all the fobs that are sold (mostly due to battery life). My wife is rapidly losing faith in my automation of the house, so it would be nice to have a win here (oh, and my phone works just fine).