Multiple iPhones?

General Discussion
1

I am trying to add my wife’s iphone to my account so we can use them both as mobile presences. For the life of me I can’t figure out how to do it… help?

I have shared my account with her, and when she logs in, she sees all the apps and devices, but my phone appears as the mobile presence and the only option is to delete it, which deletes it everywhere.

Thanks!

2

Hi Steve.

When you say “shared my account with her” do you mean she is using your credentials to log in as you? Or did you add her in settings and invite her to login as herself?

Ben

3

Ben,

I added her in settings (entered her email address).

After that we downloaded the app on her phone and signed up using her email address (per the instructions). All of the devices and smart apps showed up as expected. I then want to add her phone as a mobile presence. So, on her phone, I went to Settings->Home (that’s the name of the only location I have set up). Under mobile presence, it showed my phone with only the option to remove it (showed a minus sign). If I click that, it says it’s going to remove it from everything, so I do … then I can click to add a mobile presence, but when it does, it adds my phone again!

Now it appears that both of us are called “Steve’s iPhone” - I’m not sure which device is which. It’s all screwed up and I can’t figure out how to fix it. No matter which phone I try to add a mobile presence from it shows up as “Steve’s iPhone” — Why isn’t there a way to simply add all of the phones you want to be a mobile presence in a simple list?

-Steve

4

Hi Steve,

I can look into this. Are you and your wife running iOS6 or iOS7? Are you both running the latest version of the SmartThings app (1.4.2)?

In the meantime, if you don’t mind letting your wife log in on her phone using your credentials, she should be able to add a separate mobile presence for that device. It would still automatically be named “Steve’s iPhone,” but the name can be changed by going back to the tile view and tapping the gear on the upper right corner of the mobile presence tile. You should be able to tell which one is the new one because it will have a blue triangle in the upper left corner.

Emily Allen

5

Hi Emily,

Thank you for looking into this.

We are both using an iPhone 5 on iOS 7, with the latest SmartThings App (1.4.2). To be specific here are the steps I did:

  1. from my phone, invited my wife to share account - I entered her email address
  2. from my wife’s phone, installed the smartthings app and signed up with the address I entered in step 1
  3. from my wife’s phone, Went to settings->Home
  4. from my wife’s phone, under Mobile Presence, it listed my phone’s name with a “-” next to it. Only option when clicking it was to remove it. So I did that, at which point it warned me that it was “in use” in smart apps and deleting it would be a bad idea. But I did anyway, thinking it was just an error.
  5. from my wife’s phone, it now had nothing under mobile presence, so I clicked add
  6. from my wife’s phone, it now showed “Steve’s iPhone” under mobile presence (why didn’t it use her phone’s name?)

From here, I got all kinds of confused and promptly started doing random things and don’t recall what I did (sorry - I’m usually a much better “beta tester”). I realized at some point I had two “steve’s iphone” presences and when my wife left for work, it told me “Steve’s iPhone” had left – at that point, I knew which one was her and renamed it.

This process needs to be improved a lot. For example, why do I not see both of our phones listed under Mobile Presence in settings?
Shouldn’t it be a simple as keep adding phones with a plus sign from the “owner’s” account?

Hope that helps! Let me know what else I can do.

-Steve

6

Thanks Steve, responding via email. Hopefully we can get this sorted out for you soon.

7

any news on this request, i receive my new smarting any i have the same problem.

8

Is there a way to fix this yet? I tried everything to get this setup on my wife’s iPhone also… She keeps giving me dirty looks for touching her iPhone. Any help would be great… Thanks

9

The key is to just invite your wife to join your account (via email) - then accept the invite on her phone, go to settings on her phone and enter her phone as a mobile presence (it may have your phone listed, but delete that and enter another name. The quit and relaunch the app on blithe phones (force quit it). Now it should show both of you.

10

Steve28’s trick didn’t work for me. There wasn’t a way to accept the invite for my wife’s account. I just invited her from my account, then created an account for her with the invited email. Now I can’t figure out how to add her. When I try, I get to a screen on the phone that says: “(add) Using presence sensor or connected mobile phone” but here’s no way to select her phone, only presence sensors. Any ideas?

11

@scottpfursich if you contact support@smartthings.com they will take care of this for you.

12

Yup, they told me how to fix it: “To get the device set up as a mobile presence sensor, click the menu icon, then select the gear at the top of the screen. Scroll down below the map, and click “Add your SmartPhone as a Mobile Presence Device”. You can then configure it on the Dashboard.”

13

I have had exactly the same problem when I first set up my wife’s account on her phone.

When I added her phone as a presence tag, it replaced mine. I had to remove my phone (now replaced by my wife’s), then uninstall the app on both phones, because the entry on the list was gone on one phone, but tombstoned on the other, with no option of removing it.

After re-installing the app on both phones, I was able to get both of them added to the list by using steps similar to the ones @stevesell posted. I bet, if I had followed these steps from the beginning this would have worked out of the box.

There is definitely some buggy behavior with setting up multiple iPhones as presence tags. Luckily, you likely only have to do it once.

Still would be great to fix this to lower the entry barrier for new users. I so wish SmartThings had a public bug tracker, or at least a way of submitting bugs through a web form of sorts…

14

Thanks Scott- that trick worked for me- I was very frustrated as well but happy there is an easy solution.

15

I’m have the exact same issue and am just not able to add my wife’s iPhone (both of us are on iOS 7 latest version) to my “Home” settings… it just shows mine. Can you post the EXACT steps that need to followed here to add her iPhone as a mobile presence.

Have spent the last 2 hrs trying to follow the steps above… but no available. Frustrated !!

Thanks in advance…

16

Same bloody problem here. I have been doing home automation for my own use simce the 90’s. Was so hopeful about smartthings.

After wrestling with the same issue. I found this forum and was glad to see @scott’s post above.
( I had already installed sn uninstalled the app several times as well as added removed phones etc. but still my wife’s phone does not show up.

When I try @steve’s solution the smartthings app crashed EVERY bloody time I select the gear after hitting the menu.

Right now I am close to sending thjs back and going with a different, similar product by a major manufacturer.