Presence Using Homekit

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I know there have been a lot of issues with SmartThings and presence when it comes to using the built in presence of the SmartThings app. I also tried Life360, which worked for the most part but I had to set the radius too big and a few times Life360 would say I left about 30 seconds after I arrived so my routines wouldnā€™t trigger.

Anyway, I found a great solution that works for me (and my wife) so thought I would share.

First, I installed the Momentary Tile Button DTH and set my Routines to trigger when each of the corresponding buttons was pushed.

Then, using the JSON Complete API SmartApp + Homebridge running on an Ubuntu machine I added these buttons to HomeKit.

I am now using HomeKitā€™s ā€œWhen Anyone Arrives Homeā€ and ā€œWhen The Last Person Leavesā€ presence options to push the corresponding button, which in turn triggers the routine in SmartThings.

Iā€™ve found this to be a lot more reliable than relying on SmartThings presence.

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Very interestingā€“thanks for sharing. :sunglasses:

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BTW, another variation on this would be to have the momentary button also turn on a virtual presence sensor in SmartThings. That might allow you to extend it to even more use cases. :sunglasses:

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