Problem with Android Presence Detection starting in July 2017?

General Discussion
#1

So, I have a couple of different methods for determining if someone is at my house; I use life360 for my family, and my wife and I run the smartthings app on our phones.

Been working great until recently (like July 1 I think).

So, what is happening now is that periodically, like when someone is checking their phone, smartthings thinks that device is at my house, when in fact they are no where near it. I’ve seen it with my phone (smartthings app) and my brothers phone (life360) repeatedly this last week.

One pattern I have noticed is that it only appears to be happening on Android phones. My family members that are using iOS are not triggering events.

Anyone see presence problems recently with life360 or ST app on Android?

Thanks in advance!

1 Like
#2

I’m seeing the same thing right now. I too have a Android device (S7 Edge) that reports me being at home in the ST app at this very moment when in fact I am 18 miles away. It’s very infuriating as my SHM does not arm until I remember I did not receive an Away notification.

I sure hope they get this resolved ASAP.

#3

Did it start happening recently? It seems very odd since I’ve seen it on different Android devices, and I don’t think the ST app has been updated recently…

#4

I just started to notice the issue in the past 72 hours. The last two times I left my home I had to manually arm SHM.

#5

In the ST app, look on the support page. You can see the geo fence logs. Go ahead and send them in to ST support and tell them the behavior you are seeing.

1 Like
#6

Done. Good idea. I did not realize that option existed.

#7

I’m seeing the same issue too on my Samsung S8

#8

Same issue with my S8. I have to log out and back in for the presence to update. Very random over the last few days.

#9

Are you all running the ST app itself? Anyone experiencing similar behavior with life360?

Be sure to report this to support, I have contacted them today and they say they are unaware of any issue (I reminded them that I am contacting them to make them aware of an issue…)

#10

I also have Galaxy S7 edge that is doing cycles of in and out multiple times a day. Unfortunately my security system is also integrated with routines and Arm/Disarm accordingly which has been very annoying. Surprisingly my wife’s iphone doesn’t have any issues in reporting the presence correctly everytime without a glitch…

#11

My wife’s phone started doing that as far back as the 8th. Maybe longer. Weird thing is, we have the exact same phone. (S7) Mine works fine. I originally thought it was life 360, but after looking at all the logs, it appears to be fine. It’s the phone that is bouncing away/home. I plan on reporting this today as I wanted to do my own research to narrow down the problem first. There was an app update that happened around June 5th, but not sure that would have affected this.

#12

My s7 edge presence (via ST app) started coming and going in the middle of the night a couple times over past week. Emailed to support.

#13

Same here. Just finished off chatting with support.
Advised 2 things - Slightly increase geo-fence, login/logout and then uninstall/reinstall…go out of geofence and come back for trigger to happen…have done others expect going in/out…will report back if it helps…

BTW, I had the geofence set up to minimum possible that I now increase by about 20-30% in radius…hate to do it as my home security is hooked up with ST and it’s very convenient to have it auto arm as soon as we leave as opposed to having it armed after we are may be 1 mile away from home with larger geofence…

#14

just a thought but why not a contact sensor on your car’s door or front door to arm your alarm. combine with or just an arrival sensor inside your vehicle instead of relying on smartphone. It happens too often that presense goes wonky on the smartphones, the forum is littered with presence issues :confused:

#15

Yea, the problem I reported is very different than that. I have a pretty good sized geo-fence (both life360 and ST app). But We were over 100+ miles away when it kept alternating between us being home and not.

Looking at the logs the phone was reporting it, incorrectly.

I haven’t experienced the problem for a while now, perhaps it has been resolved.

#16

I know there are a ton of posts on presence issues but this one seemed the most current so I wanted to throw in an observations. I’ve had issues with my Samsung S8+ since moving to a new house. Despite reloading the phone, resetting the hub, yelling at it, poking at it with a stick and considering a small rodent sacrifice the presence changes hourly or sometimes every few minutes whether I’m home or 500 miles away. It was rock solid at my old address.

I changed my home address within Google maps for my personal account. I had a second work related account on my phone. Personal Google e-mail and Google work e-mail accounts. After remembering to change my home location with my work e-mail a couple of days ago everything seems to working great. For some reason I think the phone was mixing up my location with the two accounts and toggling.

Just a thought if anyone has two accounts. Set the home location with both. Might make a difference.

#17

Anyone had any luck? My wife’s phone is still bouncing in and out of the geofence and I’ve done everything that anyone has suggested and more. I have no idea what started causing this issue.

#18

I was on a road trip this past Sunday. I was 150 miles from home, but the hub kept showing home then away.

It seemed like it had something to do with me plugging my phone into my car to use the nav. Quite annoying as it easily happened 10 times that day.

#19

Problem we have, is the alarm isn’t being UNARMED when we arrive with Android presence. It UNARMS after we have already opened the door a couple minutes later. So it’s unarming AFTER, when it’s too late versus before hand when in vicinity of home or geofence. Sometimes, phones dead or have ti fumble around for phone, so this wouldn’t be a problem so much if I could only unarm with a wall mounted button pad (remote/WallMote) when entering like old school security systems.

#20

I have a piston that notifies me if me or my wifes phone presence is away for 15 minutes but our Life360 presence remains at home.
My wife is always ‘going away’ when sitting next to me at home.
When we check her phone, the weather app on her phone will show her as being in the next village. (2 miles away).
I can’t help but think this is some sort of triangulation issue.
The weird bit is, mine seems to be OK and we both have S6’s and are using the same cellular network. Very strange.

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