[EDIT: For historical accuracy… this did turn out to be exactly what @bridaus mentioned; this WAS NOT Life360’s fault at all, just the result of moving a modem from one physical address to another. The tricky bit was just that I hadn’t used the modem for over a year, so I never even considered the possibility.]
I don’t know whether to start a new thread or respond to any of the hundreds of other Life360-is-crap type threads out there. SO, here’s my frustration: Since Wednesday last week, Life360 is reporting that either my wife or I, when actually at our house, randomly jumps to another location (really weirdly creepy: it jumps us exactly to our previous physical address from over a year ago, before we had Life360 accounts). SO, the “away / back” rules on SmartThings are constantly going off all day long.
It finally got to the point of deleting my Life360 account. I decided to do it; writing to Life360 got no response at all. Maybe they’ll get around to that. Anyway, I opened up SmartThings and started to unhook it, but NATURALLY when I tried to remove the Life360 SmartApp, “something went wrong” and SmartThings will not allow me to remove it. SIGH.
You can remove apps from within IDE even though they are in use. Do that instead of using the app. Supposedly that ability is coming to the mobile app as well.
Did you just change phones, or reset them by any chance, or changed the apps optimization settings or location accuracy? It sounds remarkably like my issues I had a while ago and that was because I was turning the wifi off while on the road and allowed the optimization app to kill ‘unused’ apps…
Suspect this isn’t actually Life360 but the db that geolocates wifi routers (Google?). That would explain the jumping to your previous address. Someone more knowledgeable will be able to comment, I’m theorizing.
@SBDOBRESCU No, no new phone configurations… but @bridaus that sounds like a VERY good theory, especially considering that I changed internet providers last week and am using an old cable modem that I had before. I’m pretty sure the last time I used it was at that old address. THANK YOU. I’m going to look into this… I was unaware that there’s even a database existing that collects geolocation information for routers.
Happen quite often for me and it’s not life360 fault. I usually turn my phone to airplane mode to save battery or avoiding call and once it’s back on. It will take life360 to get the current location. So it defaulted to my home even though I turned airplane mode somewhere else. This sounded similar to losing internet connection.
Definitely the modem still being associated with the old address.
This is a known issue with geolocation, nothing to do with life 360 or smart things. The people to call are your phone company for your mobile phone, or Apple if it’s an iPhone.
Whenever you move from one address to another and you use the same Wi-Fi router, it takes a week or two (or even a month!) before your router’s location gets updated. your phone’s location services Will continue to report you as being at the old physical address until your carrier’s database gets updated with the router’s street address and that update gets propagated to bunch of shadow servers.
Each carrier has their own databases so if you switch phone service or if you get a new Wi-Fi router you don’t have this problem.
Many articles on this on the Internet, just Google “why does my phone think I’m at my old house?”
Android phones often use google maps as part of their location services, and it can take google maps 4 or 5 weeks to update your router’s location.
Meanwhile… there’s very little you can do to make the update happen faster. It may help a little to stand in your yard and connect to your Wi-Fi as that will tend to send the location service both the GPS coordinates and the SSID. But it won’t be an instant fix. But it often takes a billing cycle to “confirm” the new address.
If you have an Apple phone, call their support. Customers used to be able to edit the address themselves, but then they changed that for fear of hacking. But their support may be able to push through an update faster.
If you have an android phone, call your mobile carrier, not the phone manufacturer.
BTW, some location services (not Apple) is crowdsourcing to determination an SSID’s Street location. If you don’t broadcast your SSID, it takes longer for your router’s Street location to get updated.
I’m sure this is very frustrating. I hope it gets fixed for you soon.
Maybe, maybe not. Just depends on the exact location services methodology being used, and that varies. For some services, changing the SSID puts you back to the beginning of the process and would add time to the period during which your location would not be known.
That’s why it’s best to call your mobile carrier (or Apple for an iPhone). They run into this all the time, and they’ll know the best method for getting it updated in your particular case.
Being connected to the Wi-Fi router that has the wrong address, standing outside in the yard so you also get GPS location, and then opening Google maps and forcing your location sometimes helps. But it depends on the exact location services methods being used, and if it does help it won’t show up for about two days.
Again, that’s why it’s best to just work with the phone company as they will know the best way for your particular phone on their specific service in your particular region.
Unfortunately, not yet. This app was recentrly published on Play Market, and soon will be released on Appstore. Once we make this app perfect we will probably start treaty with SmartThings regarting cooperation and integration.
