Is internet connection required to use phone as presence sensor?

[atapel (Andy T)]

Hi there,

Newbie here and I just installed my Smartthings yesterday. I installed the app on my wife’s iPhone and it was detected no problem. Now I noticed that the hub shows her as “Present” even when she’s out of the house. Her phone doesn’t have data/internet access. I checked on the web api and her phone is in the “Inactive” state.

Is there a way for the hub to declare the phone away if it is in the inactive state?

Thanks,
Andy

[JDRoberts]

You have to have data activated on the phone in order for it to be used as a presence device using the official smartthings features . This has come up in the past with some community members whose kids have smart phones but without data plans.

There are some community members who have created their own presence recognition programs based on what is connected to their Wi-Fi, but that requires some significant technical skill to implement. So it’s doable if you want to roll your own, but not really easy.

Some further discussion here

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…

[atapel (Andy T)]

Thanks JD! Going to give it a read and see what will work for me.