I know there are several similar topics on this, but I couldn’t find the particular help I am looking for.
We are a family of four, two teens (one college age and mostly away from home now). Three of us have iPhones, my 16 year old son defected to Android. I signed up with Life 360 a while back on a whim, never really used it and then decided to try it out now with ST as I wasn’t sure how to handle having an SmartThings account and letting the whole family get in there and mess with things!
I actually have two questions. I do have the kids added to Life 360 and that seems to work well. I’m on there too, but I also have my iPhone on ST as a sensor. I just don’t know what is the better option for my husband - just his iPhone, or Life 360. I don’t know if one works better than another with ST, or if there are advantages with one.
First question - how best to add his phone to ST if we choose that method. I did read Ron’s helpful post on adding multiple iPhones to ST, but needed clarification on that. Am I correct in understanding that he should NOT log into my ST account but create his own, then connect his account to our home hub? That never would have occurred to me - I would have just had him log into the same account. Is the rationale behind that because ST won’t add more than one iPhone per account? Or is it so he can limit or create the kinds of alerts he wants to get (which will be far fewer than mine)?
Second question - the Life 360 smart app is giving me fits. I installed it a few weeks ago and it worked perfectly. But I had to change my son’s account to use his new phone, and suddenly I couldn’t add new users, I couldn’t delete his old iPhone, I couldn’t delete the app, all kinds of errors. I finally got it figured out enough to delete him and the app. But now I can’t reinstall it. If I reinstall it from the ST app, when I go to enter my credentials and press next, it takes me to a “Page Not Found” error. If I delete it and try instead to install it from the IDE, and then go into ST to add it, I get an error about invalid token. Have no idea how to reset so I can add it again.
I do have an email into support, but I didn’t know if it might be something very obvious to others who understand that stuff better than I do.
Sorry for the lengthy questions, just very confused.
He has to have his own account if using mobile presence. if you guys use the same account, the presence will go completely nuts.If either of you leave/exit your geofence, it will be totally confused. Send him an invitation from your ST mobile app, he will get an email. Ask him to download the ST app from the link in his email and create the account from there and then follow the steps that i had listed.
Rock solid for me and wife. And since you are in NJ, check this excerpt from another thread, that i had posted:
"One issue that I face here in NJ is the Optimum auto hotspots all over the state (even though saves me a lot on data plan). I have my phone registered to auto sign in to Optimum hotspots being an Optimum customer. These hotspots have very weak signal near my home. As a result the ST app would crash at times or will still be updating the status while I am already in my geofence and reach my house. Didn’t happen everyday (may be depending on the load) but this was one of the reason for me when it did not work for me.
On my way back home from office, I disable Optimum wifi on my phone to get around and the it triggers at the exact spot every day near my home.
But when leaving for work in the mornings, it triggers at a different spot. The reason may be I am still connected to my home wifi when I leave and as I go further away from house, the signal obviously drops and as soon as my wifi drops me and LTE takes over, I get the left home notification I have set.
Exact same behavior on my wife’s iPhone. So, basically in my case it was the slow transistion from wifi to LTE and vice versa causing this."
To answer the other part of question 1, no, unfortunately the alerts come to all registered users. SmartThings doesn’t [yet] give us the option to setup alerts per user, though I seem to remember some talk about this feature being added at some point. My wife and I just ended up disabling notifications from the SmartThings app on her phone, and that solved the problem. Then, for urgent messages, like a water sensor in the basement, I will set it to send a text message to her in addition to the push notification so that we both see it.
I signed up with Life 360 a while back on a whim, never really used it and then decided to try it out now with ST as I wasn’t sure how to handle having an SmartThings account and letting the whole family get in there and mess with things!