Problem with location from phone for presence

[jwsg]

Getting location from phone to update presence is never particularly reliable but right now I cant get it to work at all.

None of the usual remedies for temporary issues are fixing it this time, such as forcing a location update by opening the google earth app, changing Home’s geolocation circle, disabling and re-enabling routines using presence, even removing and re-adding the device as a source of location

Trying to get location from a different device also doesnt work
Changing Home’s geolocation circle isnt producing the normal notification message
Moving the geolocation position away should simulate changing presence but this isnt having any effect

Together all this does seem that the location function isnt working right now

[jkp]

phone brand/model/OS version?

[orangebucket (Graham)]

As it happens, my phone is playing silly beggars with home presence at the moment and it is normally rock solid. Other phones are OK at home though, and mine worked OK for a ‘linked place’ today. My usual remedy for misbehaving presence is to disable and reenable it in the app so I’ll give that a go.

[palder]

I have all of these same location related problems. Routines that have worked for years no longer function properly. I use a virtual switch on or off based on my presence at home. so its a 2 stage process

1. set switch based on presence
2. set home / away / night mode based on switch position and time of day

• mode does not switch to night in routine based on time of day and my presence at home
• notifications of presence and mode are not sent

I have Pixel 7 Pro. Only had it since the start of the year but these issues only started 3-4 weeks ago.

[h0ckeysk8er (Bruce Pinsky)]

@jwsg

Getting location from phone to update presence is never particularly reliable but right now I cant get it to work at all.

None of the usual remedies for temporary issues are fixing it this time, such as forcing a location update by opening the google earth app, changing Home’s geolocation circle, disabling and re-enabling routines using presence, even removing and re-adding the device as a source of location

Trying to get location from a different device also doesnt work
Changing Home’s geolocation circle isnt producing the normal notification message
Moving the geolocation position away should simulate changing presence but this isnt having any effect

Together all this does seem that the location function isnt working right now

I gave up on the ST app as a presence sensor and instead starting using Alexa. It’s been very reliable. I posted about in the Presence in 2023 topic.

Presence in 2023, including multiple members and multiple locations

Alexa, which would be a third party of course, works great for this. My phone is set as the primary presence sensor for SmartThings with a radius slightly larger than my property. I’ve also got the Alexa app on the phone and a routine that triggers a SmartThings scene when I get about 20 miles away. 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 u…

[jwsg]

Many thanks for the replies. Presence started working again today - rather than just being one of the usual issues it had completely stopped working all day and no steps would fix it until it just fixed itself - as ST changes are ongoing I thought it worth mentioning in case it might be cloud related. I’ll give the suggested alternatives a try to see if they’ll give better reliability and performance.

[h0ckeysk8er (Bruce Pinsky)]

@jwsg

Many thanks for the replies. Presence started working again today - rather than just being one of the usual issues it had completely stopped working all day and no steps would fix it until it just fixed itself - as ST changes are ongoing I thought it worth mentioning in case it might be cloud related. I’ll give the suggested alternatives a try to see if they’ll give better reliability and performance.

We’re using Alexa for two different locations and all our arrival/departure actions are working flawlessly.

[HalD (Hal)]

Hitchhiking on this thread with a presence oddity.

We have optical fiber internet. The Optical Network Terminal is mounted on an outside wall, connected to an uninterruptible power supply which is plugged into a GFCI outlet on a dedicated circuit.

Something is tripping the GFCI randomly every couple of months. Once the UPS battery drains, we lose our internet.

Presence sensing for SmartThings is set up the simplest way, using geolocation for my Pixel phone. It’s been very reliable.

This happened today while we were away. I got no indication that my SmartThings V2 hub had gone offline. I only knew there was an issue because my Nest cameras went offline.

So here’s the oddity. As we arrived home, the SmartThings app on my phone notified me that I had arrived as it normally would. But without being able to actually communicate with the hub to set the mode. No indication of error.

Confused…