Regarding virtual presence sensors, they can help in many cases, but it’s important to understand what they are.
What they’re not is a method of automatically tracking your presence in any way. It’s just a bit of code like the virtual switches we use with echo. The virtual presence sensor itself has no way of knowing where you are.
They are also not a method of changing the values of your other presence sensors. So if you use the virtual presence answer you have to change your routines and smart apps to look at it as the present indicator and not look at the other presence sensors that are wonky.
If you use a virtual device which has both capability presence sensor and capability switch, you get a virtual device that will show up in the things listed in your mobile app that you can tap on and off. Or that you can Have other smart things methods turn on and off, like IFTTT, or another routine, etc.
So with this approach, you can just manually turn the presence for that specific virtual device on and off anytime you want, or you can set it up to automatically change when other smArtthings events happen. Or use IFTTT to change it automatically when external events happen.
The virtual presence answers can be very valuable when you want your House to know that a specific person is there, but that person doesn’t have a smart phone and you don’t want to give them a physical fob. Or they just don’t like the idea that you are physically tracking their location outside of your own house.
Example, if you have guests and you want to do is tell smart things when they come in your house or when they have left your house. And you want to do this through a presence sensor mechanism without using an actual presence sensor.
One way would be to give each guest a Securifi key fob and set it up so one button turns a virtual presence sensor on and a different button turns the same presence sensor off. Now you have a way to manually change when the House recognizes that that person is there.
Or you could even just have a switch inside your house that they press for home and away.
Virtual presence sensors are also used a lot in testing.
The following is a virtual presence sensor that has the switch capability. Just remember that it only changes from home to away when you yourself change it in the mobile app or when you set up something out to “flip the switch.” Just the virtual device itself doesn’t have any geolocation method.