How to you create a virtual presence with IFTTT?

[shan52 (Shang)]

How to you create a virtual presence with IFTTT? I can’t find any documentation.

[viguera (Amauri Viguera)]

I don’t think that’s reliable enough, and I believe that it doesn’t report fast enough to be useful. I remember having 10-15 minute delays at times, which is useless if you want to create automation around your location.

If you’re on Android and just having reliability problems, I’d recommend Sharptools and Tasker.

[JDRoberts]

@shan52

How to you create a virtual presence with IFTTT? I can’t find any documentation.

You just need a virtual presence sensor which also has capability.switch and then can be turned on or off.

Then you have the IFTTT location as the IF and turning on/off the virtual presence sensor as the THAT in your IFTTT applet. (You will need to applets, want to turn it on when you arrive, and another to turn it off when you leave.)

There are a number of community members who use this method successfully. Like everything involving presence, some methods work for some people and don’t work for others. You just have to keep trying until you find one that does work for you.

You can find more details about this in the presence FAQ. (This is a clickable link.)

FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence (2020)

Presence, regardless of the device you use, is one of those features that works great for some people, not at all for other people, and is randomly flaky for still others. It’s very much affected by local conditions. So some people will find that phone presence works much better than the SmartThings-branded presence sensor. Other people will find the reverse. Still other people, myself included, find that they have to use a combination of two devices in order to get reliable presence indication. So if this feature tends to work differently for different people, where do you start? 1. Using a Smart Phone as a Presence Indicator [image] Well, since most people who have SmartThings have a smart phone, it’s worth starting there. This method has changed significantly in the change fro…

[JDRoberts]

BTW, if what you’re really asking is how you add the virtual device to your account, here’s the FAQ for that:

FAQ: An Overview of Using Custom Code in SmartThings (SmartThings Classic, Groovy Code)

So you’re new to SmartThings, you asked a question, and someone suggested “custom code” as an answer. Or you were browsing the forums, and you found something that sounded like it would be perfect for what you wanted, but again, “uses custom code.” What does that mean, how hard is it to do, and what’s the difference between a “SmartApp” and a “Device Type Handler”? (Note: the official terminology has changed a couple of times. “device type handler,” “device handler,” “DTH,” and “device type” all mean the same thing, and you will find all these terms used in the forums.) SECTION I: SMARTAPPS AND DEVICE HANDLERS: WHAT THEY ARE SmartAPPS: Tiny Programs to decide what a specific device should do when, or to collect the information from a specific device SmartApps, including the various f…