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

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?

That was happening a few weeks ago when presence in the new app was completely busted. But they fixed something on their end. You might just report that to support.

Yea I found all the posts about that - weirdly though, on my Galaxy S8 it worked perfectly fine first time. On my wife’s OnePlus 7t Pro, it’s giving me this issue. And both devices have the same version of the new ST app installed.

Anyway, will raise with support…

FWIW, the new app’s presence on my own phone last reported something for me 3 days ago. It’s still got “Get location from this phone” checked. It’s just not reporting me leaving or arriving (something I’ve done 3 times since then). The new app’s presence is still working on my wife’s phone. We both have identical Galaxy S8s.

I’ve given up relaying upon it.

If you happen to have a ubiquiti access point and controller (Yes, I realise that might be a bit niche) then this is working well for me [RELEASE] Unifi Presence Sensor

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Hmm I always had issues with presence in the Classic app but thought it might work with the new app but clearly too much to ask for! What are you using for presence then?

There is very definite weirdness in Android location reporting. I’m seeing it using my Pixel 2 running Android 11.

Both the Nest app and SmartThings are reporting me as arriving home at the correct time, then leaving a few minutes later, then again arriving back home a few minutes after that.

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Funny, immediately after writing my last post I thought I’d try enabling that setting again on my wife’s OnePlus and this time it worked! No idea what changed. I could then see the placeholder device the new Smartthings app had created in my IDE and used that to create a simulated presence sensor like I did with my phone. It’s correctly reporting her as present. Need to test how it behaves as one or both of us leave and return but some progress at least.

I’m also interested in the Ubiquiti solution as I do have the APs and controller software so that’ll be one potential backup if the native functionality doesn’t work.

HalD if you come across a solution…give me a shout…
I am fresh out of ideas except…leaving ST for Hubitat

Given that my Nest app is showing location weirdness, I’m not pinning this on a SmartThings problem.

I’m thinking something odd is happening with Google Location Services.

I have a standing seam metal roof. GPS most definitely does not penetrate it. Google uses the location of my WiFi once I’m under the roof.

I know this because when we moved to this house in 2018 our phones would report that we were back in the old house (250 miles away) as soon as it lost GPS. That was because I had moved my router, of course, and Google “knew” where that network was. That issue got fixed when I replaced my networking gear.

Anyway. I’m wondering if I’m seeing some related issue with location services.

  • I’m home when I reach the geofence circle. I set this to 300m in SmartThings. No control in Nest
  • Then I go under the roof and my location is … unknown … ?
  • Then the WiFi connects and location is again known.

Dunno. Lots of speculation here. Whatever it is seems to be a bit worse with Android 11 than it was with Android 10 on the same device.

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Hal do you have Solar panels?

No. Not yet, anyway. Might do some someday.

I imagine they make good signal blockers, too.

hal
Check ur messages

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What is odd to me… When you enable “Get your location from this phone” in the new app, it states on that page “Use this phone to determine your location for automations and to show other members whether you’re at home.”
So why does it not do this?

I’m stuck in this part too, didn’t find where to post the code

You guys can try, but I don’t think it’ll work. Phone presence shows as a placeholder but it looks like it’s actually a sick occupancy device.
This is what phone presence says

This is what simulated presence sensor says

I leave home at least once a day and I always come back same day. Not according to smartthings.

I know this thread is kinda dead but it someone finds this and is looking for geofencing in 2022 or later, I posted this on a newer thread about setting up geofencing on multiple devices (Samsung devices + Bixby Routines)

https://community.smartthings.com/t/geofence-stopped-working/232999/35?u=quincarter

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