Presence in 2023, including multiple members and multiple locations

Yes, that is what it used to say on the Android app. However it now lets me create Routines including a non-Galaxy app and the mobile presence device now includes the components for the Linked Places. What I haven’t been able to do yet is try it out. Indeed I don’t even know if my non-Galaxy phone works with the main presence sensor.

Both my GF and I use the same login for the ST app. So, while I can set up her iPhone and my Galaxy phone to provide location, ST sees that as a single member with multiple location trackers. So, when going to create a routine, there is only a single member available and only one location tracker can be selected. Then when trying to add a second rule, Member Location is greyed out.

Morale of the story is that if you want a routine to contain location tracking for multiple people, each person must use a unique ST login for their app.

2 Likes

That doesn’t happen in the Android app. Multiple devices can be selected per member.

There seems to have been a bit of reworking of presence in the past couple of Android app updates on top of the Linked Places changes. When enabling location access in the app settings it tells you if you already have it set up on another device and allows you to disable it. I don’t remember seeing that before. Also it makes a point of asking if you are happy to share your location with others. Again I can’t remember it asking that previously. In Routines it emphasises that only devices that shared their location are shown.

I’m dragging the thread off topic though …

2 Likes

My husband and I both use iOS and presence sensing has been working great. That was a relief since we lost Life360…which I had set up because presence sensing on his old Android phone was unreliable at best. (That was, of course, the complete opposite of what other mixed marriages :grin: were experiencing.) I switched my virtual presence sensors to take input from our phones directly instead of Life360 and I doubt anyone else even noticed there was a change.

Tiny rant: Why is this basic feature so hard to get right?!? Your phone knows where you are but it’s about as willing to share it as a 3-YO with candy.

2 Likes

Problem i have is that i do not want all occupants to use the ST app, they are not interested in it and have no need for it, i have recently been trying life360 notification keywords on Android but although initially it seemed to work it now appears notifications are not recieved logically, i often get multiple life360 notifications for 2 different members and doing different things, one leaving, one arriving, turns out at least in my experience life360 notification useage is not an option

Due to that i simply cannot set up home security with ST in an automation

1 Like

This may or may not be helpful but I set up ST virtual presence sensors for both my parents and am triggering those through location based routines in google home. Their google home accounts have access to ST but they dont use it for anything else. Here’s a link to the discussion

2 Likes

Thank you Terri, due to everyone in the house using different O/s phones not using google home nor ST on all devices the google route will not work in our scenario

I think for now i am going to have to admit defeat on automating STHM

Thank you

Yes, linked places would be perfect but it’s not available with IOS phones

I connect to this thing that I use too, saying that I made 3 virtuals for each person:

  1. geolocation ST
  2. geolocation GH
  3. official presence sensor: with routines it considers the last change of status reliable.

I did this because often on my wife’s phone, either google home doesn’t work, or smartthings doesn’t work… this way if one of the two works, everything works.

13 posts were merged into an existing topic: Unable to join channels (25 Jan 2023)

I can confirm that Alexa solution works well for multiple household members as long as each member has a SEPARATE SmartThings account. While you can link separate Alexa accounts to the same ST account, one will always be the active and the other will timeout.

So here is my setup:

  • Separate Alexa accounts (but in the same household) on each phone (one Android and one iPhone)
  • Separate ST accounts on each phone (but members of the same location)
  • ST Virtual presence sensors for each member using vEdge Creator from @TAustin
  • An arrival and departure Alexa routine for each individual on their respective phones that turns the virtual presence sensor on/off for that individual
  • ST Routines that react to the state of the virtual presence sensor for one or more individuals

While there are several moving parts here, I don’t think it’s anymore complicated than it was with Life360. ST also seems to receive the state change very quickly from Alexa making for a snappy SmartHome experience (I like my doors unlocked when I get home :slight_smile: ) And by using a virtual presence sensor, it will be very easy to change out the underlying detection mechanism should Life360 come back or ST presence becomes more reliable, etc, etc.

4 Likes

So here’s how I am doing presence detection now with the loss of 360 on Smart Things and Smartthings dismal presence detection.

I used a Libre S905x and setup Home Assistant on it. In the Home Assistant world I can still use Life360 as presence detection. It also has the ability to interface with my Linksys mesh system to detect phones arrival and departure by their connecting and disconnecting from WiFi.

Home Assistant uses these 2 inputs to leverage presence. It relays the result by having a routine in Home Assistant the uses the presence to toggle 2 edge virtual presence devices in Smartthings. You can connect Smartthings to Home Assistant and control Smartthings devices in both environments. This has it’s limitations but this method of toggling the virtual presence has been reliable for us. It all operates in the background and uses my Life360 login to track location of my family.

This works great.
One detail ,each phone that runs Alexa app and smarthings must have smarthings skill enabled in the Alexa app.
I missed that on my wife’s phone first time but figured it out.
Thanks for a great solution for presence.

2 Likes

For those that don’t have Alexa, you can use IFTTT in a similar fashion now that the integration with ST has returned. Like Alexa integration, each user would need a separate Samsung account and IFTTT account on their phone and IFTTT routines would be used to turn on/off their respective virtual presence sensors.

1 Like

Not quite sure I’m trying to get the same result but here’s my problem on IOS.

I have a home location and would like a automation that if I leave my work geofence location that my heating comes on.
I have a work location as a “coupled location” but greyed out with the text “You can only use coupled locations if all members that you selected use a Galaxy device.”

Is there a way that I can trigger my heating automation when I leave work at a certain time?

No Alexa or others here, IFTTT I can use.

Create a virtual presence sensor in ST and use that in IFTTT to track when you are at work and when you aren’t. You can then trigger your heating automation based on the virtual presence sensor state.

2 Likes

Will look into this, thanks!

Thank you! I’m going to try this out. And thanks to @TAustin for his excellent drivers.

3 Likes

For iOS users…

At our house, we find that HomeKit presence is reliable and smartthings presence is not.

So we use a physical device which is visible to both platforms as a proxy. We turn it on in HomeKit, and then it shows up as being on in smartthings, and we can trigger routines from that.

No custom code is required, and you don’t need to have a SmartThings/aeotec hub.

So it’s a very simple, straightforward method, although you do need to buy an additional physical device.

We use the meross power strip, which gives us four individual sockets, to use as proxies. It may even be useful to you as a smartplug if there’s one that you want on whenever you’re home and off whenever you leave.

Anyway, here’s a how-to article I wrote about that method if it’s of any interest:

How to Use a Meross Plug to Use HomeKit Presence to Trigger ST Routines

The biggest advantage to this approach is how simple it is to set up. :sunglasses: :electric_plug:

What a great idea - presence sensing has never been great for me using a ST hub and Google Home. What is everyone’s suggestions on the best way to get this going with:

Android Phones
ST Hub
Google Home
Phillips Hue
TP Link Deco Mesh system

I have had a look through each, GH and ST aren’t reliable and I have tried all the settings etc. Hue seems accurate however lacks customisable routines. I can trigger a automation when a phone connects ton the Deco WIFI however can only control things connected and visible in the Deco app. I can’t see a way to import virtual devices into Deco.

Next best thing I can see is to trigger a routine when a TP Link Smart switch does something (after the phone connects to deco WIFI). Only issues is that I use all the smart switches already and worried they won’t maintain their previous state after a phone connects to the WIFI.

1 Like