FAQ: Where can I see who's home and who's away in the new V3 app?

Where in the NEW app can I see at a glance who’s home and who’s away?

In the old app, it was easy because the phones showed up in the device list. My spouse could look at “Doug’s phone” and see instantly was I home or not. Now, in the new app, our phones no longer show up as devices. Where can we look instead to see who’s home or not?

On the home screen you could have a “People” section.

Edit: Apologies I have room named People it is on my home screen. My presence sensors are in that room. I have had it so long that forgot it was a room.

???

can you explain this?

On the Home screen of the new app, I do NOT have a People section, and if I click Edit, I don’t see that listed as something I’ve hidden. What has to be enable for the People section to be visible, please?

Edited my post. Sorry for the confusion.

But for phones too?

there are two options that come to mind…

  1. use life360 which shows as a device in the new app. You would need to set it up from the classic app first :slight_smile:
  2. create Simulated Presence Sensors and sync them to each phone presence

How would someone create a Simulated Presence Sensor?

login to IDE, go to the My Devices section, add new device and select Simulated Presence Sensor for type.

I was hoping not to have to ask Part 2 - I looked all over the place - but can you suggest how I sync my actual phone presence to this new Simulated Presence Sensor? I looked in Automations, but the new device doesn’t show up in the list of available devices.

it should show under Device status

But I haven’t done anything to connect the empty new Simulated Presence Sensor to me or to my phone. What’s that step? All I did was create the SPS in the IDE.

you can use automations or webcore…

you would need two automations for each presence sensor:
one for when phone location switches to not present to change simulated presence (device status) to not present
and
one for when phone locations to present to change the simulated presence (device status) to present

or use webcore to do basically the same but you can do it in one piston.

others on here may have better solutions for simulated/virtual devices. choice is good :slight_smile:

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The solution with 2 automations makes perfect sense to me, and that’s what I’m trying to create. But the new Simulated Presence Sensor - although it shows up in my Devices list - does NOT show up when creating an automation as a device I can use in the THEN action part of the automation. :frowning:

Thank you for your patient guidance!

you appear to be correct. for full disclosure, I use webcore on mine. sorry for giving bad advice

There are some simulated presence sensors which also have switch capability. That then allows you to turn them on and off from a regular automation or from smart lighting.

You can read more about these in the presence FAQ. See post 5.

FAQ: The Many Ways of Detecting Presence (2020) - #5 by JDRoberts

Thank you, I’ll try that tomorrow and let you know!

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The real question is why was this not a native feature of the new app - especially after it was in the old one?

Can’t say I’m happy with the direction SmartThings has gone with Samsung, and this is another example. May be time to switch frameworks.

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I’m trying this, I have the simulated presence sensors, but the automation doesn’t trigger (based on getting out/ in the house). Anyone knows how to solve the issue?

It appears that they are trying to add a new feature which would allow you to have multiple locations in the app, like home and office, and then you could figure out whether your phone was at home or at the office. So it’s no longer “away“ the way it used to be when there was only one location to worry about.

But it’s not clear exactly how all of that is going to work, and it’s also confusing because they made this change without explaining it.

But that does seem to be why the phone that has the app on it is now being treated as a different device class than a physical key fob which is what the virtual presence sensor represents.