On the Home screen of the new app, I do NOT have a People section, and if I click Edit, I don’t see that listed as something I’ve hidden. What has to be enable for the People section to be visible, please?
Edited my post. Sorry for the confusion.
But for phones too?
there are two options that come to mind…
- use life360 which shows as a device in the new app. You would need to set it up from the classic app first
- create Simulated Presence Sensors and sync them to each phone presence
How would someone create a Simulated Presence Sensor?
login to IDE, go to the My Devices section, add new device and select Simulated Presence Sensor for type.
I was hoping not to have to ask Part 2 - I looked all over the place - but can you suggest how I sync my actual phone presence to this new Simulated Presence Sensor? I looked in Automations, but the new device doesn’t show up in the list of available devices.
it should show under Device status
But I haven’t done anything to connect the empty new Simulated Presence Sensor to me or to my phone. What’s that step? All I did was create the SPS in the IDE.
you can use automations or webcore…
you would need two automations for each presence sensor:
one for when phone location switches to not present to change simulated presence (device status) to not present
and
one for when phone locations to present to change the simulated presence (device status) to present
or use webcore to do basically the same but you can do it in one piston.
others on here may have better solutions for simulated/virtual devices. choice is good
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The solution with 2 automations makes perfect sense to me, and that’s what I’m trying to create. But the new Simulated Presence Sensor - although it shows up in my Devices list - does NOT show up when creating an automation as a device I can use in the THEN action part of the automation. 
Thank you for your patient guidance!
you appear to be correct. for full disclosure, I use webcore on mine. sorry for giving bad advice
There are some simulated presence sensors which also have switch capability. That then allows you to turn them on and off from a regular automation or from smart lighting.
You can read more about these in the presence FAQ. See post 5.
Thank you, I’ll try that tomorrow and let you know!
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The real question is why was this not a native feature of the new app - especially after it was in the old one?
Can’t say I’m happy with the direction SmartThings has gone with Samsung, and this is another example. May be time to switch frameworks.
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I’m trying this, I have the simulated presence sensors, but the automation doesn’t trigger (based on getting out/ in the house). Anyone knows how to solve the issue?
It appears that they are trying to add a new feature which would allow you to have multiple locations in the app, like home and office, and then you could figure out whether your phone was at home or at the office. So it’s no longer “away“ the way it used to be when there was only one location to worry about.
But it’s not clear exactly how all of that is going to work, and it’s also confusing because they made this change without explaining it.
But that does seem to be why the phone that has the app on it is now being treated as a different device class than a physical key fob which is what the virtual presence sensor represents.
To address this gap, I just wanted to share that I used WebCore to provide that information to me. I wrote a piston the goes through all my presence devices and just SMS myself with the status of each sensor by clicking the weblink for the piston. The idea of creating all these dummy status devices is anathema to me - I want to know the actual device values, not something that could get out of sync if there is some other failure in the ST ecosystem.
EDIT: updated to show date + time
Regarding the @presenceList, because of all the changes now happening to the actual presence devices, I now keep a global variable of presence devices in an array indexed by the person who is represented by the phone (e.g. if my phone is the second array element, I have another variable @glenPhone=2 that lets me reference the device as an arrayItem in the code), rather than explicitly reference the physical device which I have to keep changing every time new ST farts out a new presence device.
In the define section of any piston referencing a specific presence sensor, I create device variable(s) that reference the @presenceList by the @userPhone reference, and I use those variables in place of the device.
For example, this piston that let’s me know my wife is close to home (to put up dinner, of course – get your mind out of the gutter!)
The only downside with this is when new ST does pass gas (in addition to add the new device to the WC smartapp, update the @presenceList and any index that changed), I have to restart each piston so it subscribes to the new device (I don’t know of a way to tell WebCore to resubscribe all pistons, that would be helpful in this use case. EDIT: @SergL gave me this idea which works great: Phone mobile presence ) This also solves the presence device hunt if I replace my phone with a new one.
Hope all this helps.
–glen
I’m using the Everyone’s Presence SmartApp to make a simulated presence sensor minic the real one, so that there is a visible device.
I agree with @genecarella…The real question is why was this not a native feature of the new app - especially after it was in the old one?
I am not a developer and I liked the fact that I could use the classic app to make things around my house work when we arrive and when we leave. I can’t take that code and basically code my way around a serious gap in the new app.
You can’t sunset an application until you recreate all critical functionality in the new app. Well, I guess technically you CAN…you just SHOUlD NOT.
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