[HOW TO] SmartThings Presence reporting using Tasker/SharpTools/AutoLocation

So I ditched ST after the last firmware update debacle. Switched to Hubitat and been using their Life 360 integration for presence, which has actually been pretty decent. Enabling driving mode in the app turns GPS on full time when it senses that you are driving, which gives accurate presence again. It’s a battery drain, but I’ve gotten in the habit of plugging my phone in while in the car so not a big deal. Plus now my wife and I don’t have to send updates or ETAs, or ask when we are going to be somewhere. We can just look at the map and see where the other person is. If some of you are looking for a solution still I’d think about giving this a shot. Or use Tasker to accomplish the same thing maybe.

Using Home Wifi Not Connected and Cell Near to turn on monitoring for 5 minutes, then setting the task to 'abort existing task, has worked flawlessly for me.

For reasons I haven’t figured out though, none of the Tasker stuff is working on my wife’s phone after we upgraded to the Pixel 3.

I figured this out. Even though they were ‘set’, I had to back into the Tasker tasks and reselect the AutoLocation boundaries.

Has this project been abandoned? I was searching for the explaination of instruction 3b (an actual asterisk *, the typed name, or what) and got to the end of the discussion. I have also found the ST presence not working all the time, IFTTT taking way too long, so I was going to try this

Just started reading through this, looks great.
One question, what do people use it for? What functions etc.
I have the odd person come into my house who don’t love with Me, gig walker etc. Is there an easy way to deal with that? I do have a Yale lock so thinking that unlocking could also put house into temp ‘home’ mode or something.

Battery/location management in Android Pie made this solution ineffective.

I disagree. You just need one more profile to turn on Location Services when your phone gets near cell towers in the area. It works flawlessly for me now.

So it’s still worth doing? Just looking at this but head is hurting already as don’t know tasker so will have to spend a lot of time on this!

Since adding a profile to turn on Location Services in Sharp Tools once I hit some towers in my area, it works 100%.

edit: This is only needed in Android Pie.

@ flyize

  • can you please provide some details about this additional profile for location services for android pie? I’m ok with the current setup when leaving but I’d love to make it more responsive when I arrive home!

Absolutely right. However, I got consistent good results when phone is connected to the car and Android Auto is running. Otherwise, everything is delayed for up to 5 minutes.

Create another profile using the Cell Near trigger. Scan for the towers in your area (I just left the scan on and drove around my subdivision). When Tasker detects a connection to one of those towers, create a task that turns on Location Monitoring in SharpTools. Leave all other profiles exactly the same.

That’s all you need to do and this will work perfectly.

(And just a reminder to all that this is only necessary for Android Pie.)

Ok, I can see Tasker shows me as away. But in ST it shows me as present still. How do I try and resolve this? I don’t know tasker at all and have followed it to the letter, and as tasker shows as away am thinking it’s an error else where?
If I look in Sharp tools I show as present. That’s where I’ve gone wrong?

You missed something. Somewhere…

Which part changes my state to departed. I can’t figure it out.

All the profiles work together to get / set the virtual presence sensor, so you have to try to figure out where the problem might be in the profiles.

The task that ACTUALLY sets you as away is the “Depart [yourname]” task. That tells SharpTools to send the “departed” command to Thing: [whatever you called your virtual presence sensor].

The task should only do this if the active profile doesn’t match “Home” (which is why you use %PACTIVE !~ ,Home,) in the conditions.

I’d say try to run the Depart task manually while you’re home and it should change the virtual sensor. That way you make sure that at least the Tasker - SharpTools connectivity is working. If that doesn’t work then you’d have to look at the authorization bit and make sure they’re connected.

I just set this all up, I guess I will wait till morning when leaving to see if it works.

My question is does the Autolocation Notification need to stay up…It is currently in my notifications and says Monitoring…

You can long press on it and minimize the notification. You can remove it entirely, but without it there it’s possible that Android might kill the process.

Alright I’m going to giving it a go… but it seems like it’s going to be a huge unbearable battery drain… I dropped 8 percentage in about half hour.

Check your battery stats. That’s likely not it. Mine runs all the time minimized.