How do I know who’s is at home and who’s away?

In the classic version of the SmartThings app it was easy to see which members location were present and which members were away. How do I see this in the new version of the app?

Surprisingly, you can’t, at least not natively. ST have deliberately filtered out mobile presence from the devices list and dashboard and yet not made it possible to see the information anywhere else. So if you want to see members’ presence in the app you have to use an automation of some type to mirror it onto some type of device.

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Thank you.

That’s a real pain because that info was very useful.

Here’s how I just worked around this misfeature of the new app.

It turns out that the Simulated Presence Sensor (SPS) device does show up in the new app. Only the Mobile Presence device is hidden.

For nearly 5 years I’ve been using the Everyone’s Presense to set a SPS called Anyone Home to Present if, well, any of us are home. And that SPS device shows up in the new app!

I added another one just for me and now my presence shows up in the new app.

First, create the new SPS device using the IDE:

To add the SPS, open the IDE (account.smartthings.com), go to My Devices, click “+ New Device”.
Give it an appropriate name (“John Doe SimPresence”).
Give it a unique Device Net Id (I used “sim-presence-3”, since I already had 2 others).
Set the Type to “Simulated Presence Sensor”.
Set the Location as appropriate (“Home” for me).
Set the Hub as appropriate (“Home Hub” for me).
Hit “Create”.

Finally, add an instance of the Everyone’s Present SmartApp that simply uses the real John Doe’s phone presence to set the SPS presence you just created.

Repeat these two steps for everyone who’s presence you want to show up in the new app.

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AND: For each single one you have to create, open another SmartThings Support Ticket saying that presence should show up in the new app.

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Thank you.

Followed your instructions but it doesn’t show me as present. It shows this. Any ideas?

That suggests to me that your simulated presence sensor hasn’t been assigned a presence value yet.

Ah, sorted. Thanks.

This is great. Can you please elaborate on following:

Finally, add an instance of the Everyone’s Present SmartApp that simply uses the real John Doe’s phone presence to set the SPS presence you just created.

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He means if you have 3 people in your house you will need to add 3 separate versions of the app if you want to individually see who’s present or away.

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I.m assuming he used Eric Robert’s everyone’s presnece SmartApp. In your IDE, create a this new smart app:

After you’ve created/saved/published for me go into your device, go to SmartApps, click the “+” to Add SmartApp, scroll down (probably under : Custom) until you see the Everyone’s Presence smart app. For Presence Sensors, select your phone, for Simulated Presence Sensor select the simulated presence sensor that you created using John’s instructions. Next, name it, select Done. Now you’ll have a device on your home screen, showing updated presence. Do this for every phone, presence that you want to add. Very neat! Thank you John!

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My family uses Life360 and I was able to integrate it into the classic app. It transferred to the new app and we’re all now “devices” in the system. I have a special room called “people” so I can quickly see who’s present or not. I edited my automations to check device status instead of presence and they all work (mostly) as expected. Best part, my family doesn’t have to have a copy of smartthings running on their phones; only Life360, which they already use.

HOWEVER, as much as I’d like to suggest Pagemakers try this, I don’t see any way of integrating Life360 using the new app. Does anyone know of a way to get Life360 using just the new app and/or the IDE interface? Is there a list of steps to take, or some kind of hack to try? Do we need to lobby Life360 for an official integration?

Correct.

It’s a terrible kludge we have to use because Samsung decided not to show presence sensors in the new app.

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I did link directly to the Everyone’s Presence thread where the code (and Github integration) are, so that people would go there for the SmartApp.

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Seems to be working so-so for me.

My partner left home 40 minutes ago but their phone is still showing as ‘present’. If I check history there is no indication of them leaving.

However when we went out over the weekend it worked.

iPhone location settings are set to ‘always’ and background refresh is on.

In the last 2-3 years of using the classic app I had no problems at all.

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Hmmm. maybe it’s related to this… However, it was fine with my location earlier today.

I’ve found the desktop page of the app doesn’t always show the correct presence.

I have 2 devices in the app and both of them are away from home but 1 hasn’t updated to show “not present”. However, if I look in the app history page both apps can be seen as leaving 10 minutes ago.

Not sure if this is a bug in the script or the iPhone app itself.

I want to be a smart A** and respond to your question: “How do I know who’s is at home and who’s away?”.

This way: pick up your phone and call each person to ask if they are home… sense smartthings present senors automation are hit and miss right now, numerous issues. Hehehhe

I am just going to wait a week or so before I drive back in and try to get mine working again. I have had enough head banging, for now. :smiley:

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I’m getting about 90% success with the system now. With the classic app it was more like 99.5%

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I’ve followed the process on my phone and successfully setup a simulated presence sensor for me. But on my wife’s phone, I’ve installed the new app, signed in her with account and can see all our Smartthings devices. But when I go into settings and enable the “Get location from this phone” setting it toggles on and then immediately off again. I’ve given the ST app full location permissions all the time and disabled battery optimisation for it. I can’t figure out why it’s behaving like that. Any ideas?