Ping doesn't really work for me. My device goes to sleep and turns off wifi (apparently that's how iPhone is). So, I am using life365 GPS. Very reliable and works perfect.
I used to use nmap... it work great with my old router (even with iPhones)... however my cable company change it, and the new one does not work correctly. It often set people away and back home, even if the had not left. I also tried arpscan_tracker (custom) but no success there either!
I use HomeKit, which I’ve found to be the easiest and most reliable for iOS. I create a virtual switch in Home Assistant, expose it to HomeKit via the built in integration and make an automation in HomeKit that turns on or off the switch when I leave or come home. Local push. No need for polling. Announces on my Nest mini whenever my wife or I enter the driveway (or 50 meters before). I’m actually really impressed how well it works and I like that everything turns off as soon as I leave. For a long while I even used it for turning on the lights in the driveway. (Didn’t work for guests though, so I connected the old mains powered sensors to a Shelly 2.5 instead 👍) Just a tip 😊
For anyone trying to verify the Location settings in the HA app around 7:35, it looks like the UI has changed from what is in the video. You need to go to Settings > Companion App > Manage Sensors > Location sensors.
I finally got my home assistant up and running this week ( BRAND new to smart homes) and this video helped a lot, well and another 20ish of your videos. When I got home today my garage opened for me bc of this video, and a shelly 1. Thanks man!!!
Thx for providing all those great videos! Presence Detection broken done to single Rooms is a thing I would be very interested in!!! Keep going, you doing a fantastic Job!
Thank you Lewis, you helped me after a very long search for present in the house or not at a few minutes to watch your video through IP (which is free) and about ip recognition I do not have to continuously leave our GPS on our mobile phone so we gain a lot of battery savings, which I did not get as an answer from several other streamers. You are simply the best streamer on youtube to guide us with Home Assistant and useful tips. ps: I look forward to when your presence sensor is available again. like all of you, it will work correctly, and I trust it with my eyes closed
Excellent! As always I learned something. I have been using the tracker on the iPhones in my home and noticed it only updates when the app is opened (not so useful Apple), but didn't know about the abilityt o setup iCloud - very awesome, and thank you.
Great tutorial. I've previously played around with using home assistant to trigger alerts / automations based on my mobile phone GPS location with poor reliability. But it wasn't aware under the app configuration part which you can adjust the sensors frequently and sensitivity options. You may have just solved my issue 👍
I ran into the iOS behavior you mentioned awhile back. From what I recall, you have to sign out of the app, delete it, delete the Companion App config from the integrations page in HA, then resetup. Also, in some recent version of iOS, they have the initial pop up for location tracking only allow when the app is in use (open). To fix, go to iPhone settings, privacy, location services and ensure home assistant is set to Always and Use Precise Location is on. Also, check to be sure background fetch is enabled. After fixing it’s been working flawlessly for over a year. Thanks for the video!
That's good to know, I have all those settings set correctly but they don't seem to make a difference, I haven't tried the uninstalling and re-ininstalling though will give that a try thanks!
I kind of did my own room presence detector to switch on/off hvac and lights for my downstairs based on occupancy. I tried a lutron PIR+ultrasonic but had nothing but trouble. I found a cheap microwave sensor on Amazon that was much more sensitive (people sitting on a sofa watching TV) without the false triggers. I hooked it up to a shelly input to get it on home assistant. Whenever it triggers I turn on the lights, I use an 10 minute average to serve as occupancy indication (filters people walking through or the rare false trigger and allows a missed sense period for small movements of someone on the sofa). I use the filtered occupancy to change my hvac to away/home and turn off the lights when unoccupied.
For me the location from the HA app works perfectly on my phone (iOS). But the rest of the family all use Android and it works unreliably at best. Sometimes it doesn't update for hours or only when you open the app.
One thing that maybe should be mentioned is that the companion app on android is very flaky until is is exempted from the OS power saving mechanisms (at least for my Samsung). After that it is solid, especially with some automations about triggering the increased accuracy command notifications.
For iOS app, you can setup automations in Shortcut app to trigger Sensor update with various triggers like location, battery level or when you open messaging app. This will keep the location in iOS app up to date without needing to actually open the app. Disable "notify when run" of automations in Shortcut to not be bombarded by notifications. I didnt like to give icloud access to another third party, it keeps sending email when icloud is accessed.
Lewis, thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge on this topic with everyone. I am in the process of setting up a system to integrate into my parent's home as a surprise for a little something extra when they finish their current renovation projects and your videos have helped so much with the process. One question I did have is the difference between User and Person within Home Assistant. I am looking to make a separate "profile" for each member of the house to then link different account such as iCloud to their personal device. Is this possible? Thank you again!
With iPhones, if you give the HA App permissions to access location "Always" rather than when the app is open you will have more reliable location tracking from your girlfriend. By default "Always" is not shown as an option when you first install an app so you have to go into settings/privacy and change the setting manually to Always. This seems to work for my iCloud family account.
Use a load of different methods churned through a baysian sensor, was a cool method introduced on the forum. Haven't updated it in a while and think it's time for a review. Really like the magic-areas integration which seems to detect I'm home before my smartypants baysian tracking, it's no good for approaching/departed automations though.
@@EverythingSmartHome The magic-areas room detection assumes if it detects you in a room, you must also be home, so adds weight to other presence detectors. I use it for that more than room detection. Auto room lighting is not something I've played with....yet.
Android 12 is pretty savage on restricting things running in the background, so HA updates often don't update location (or anything) to HA when I'm oot n aboot. Even though I told it never to sleep the app and don't use optimised battery it's still very slow to update if at all. I have it so the location sensor triggers an occupancy boolean which I use in my automation logic. Because It's a toggle it lets me override the status to here/away to pre-empt the sensors lack of updating. Also handy for testing automation logic. I also set up a sensor to track the # of HA devices connected to WiFi using the companion app's "WiFi Connection" and "State" sensors. When a mobile device connects to the network it'll also toggle the occupancy boolean on so there's no need to wait for the location sensor to try to figure out where it is. (if device connected=yes and SSID=MyWiFi then someone must be home)
I haven't used `ping`, but I've recently set up the `nmap` platform for tracking, and it works pretty well! I've also got two `monitor` nodes set up for Bluetooth presence detection, but it takes a bit more setup than these 😅
Firstly - loving working my way thrugh your back catalogue. Great content; great explanations and very motivational. Secondly - appreciate this video is 18 months old but.... When using the UNifi Portal approach, My phone (ioS) shows up as source: gps NOT source: router.... what have I done wrong?
Thanks! I'm guessing your looking at the entity generated by the Home Assistant mobile app and not the one generated by Unifi, there may be a slightly different name
Guys, if you use iOS, you should go into settings > privacy > location services > home assistant app and set it to always. If you select “only while using” when you first launch the app you’re obviously going to get that behavior.
Thank you, in my case I can only use the phone presence for me and the wife, not for the kids, I'm thinking it can be done intecractively, using the devices to know if they are present or not, something like asking them to turn on/off something, also by checking the bandwith used. Any additional suggestion would be appreciated.
Just looking into using the iCloud method. Im assuming you need to set an automation with all the peoples phones in your house? Also can you define this person and that person for leaving home and this person or this person for arriving home? Basically to use the when everyone has left home and when the first person arrives home
My main question is on iCloud how often it asks for the code. I know it’s semi random, but on average. once a month? Once a year? Once a day? I may use it but I may also use locative.
Hi Nice work, if using Unifi Controller, why do my state switch from Home to Not_Home and back, every 10 sec. When i'm home on my device mobile entities
Very informative video! However, I do have a question about family sharing: in Apple Home (Homekit), you are able to get your family members' not/home state WITHOUT having them share their exact location, as long as they enabled "Find My" and in the same family iCloud account (join the family but disable location sharing). Is it possible to get that in HA? Currently, I am using a boolean toggle through Homekit integration for presence detection. I don't want or need to see the exact location of my family members:P
I think you can do that in the companion app: Configuration > Companion App > Manage sensors. Activate "Background location" and "Location zone", but disable "Single accurate location". See also 7:27.
I want to use the built in Home Assistant device tracker however it sees me as being at home all of the time. I've checked the companion app sensor settings and background, zone and single accurate location are all enabled. I've cleared app data, logged in, logged out and back in, re-installed HA on my mobile but no luck whatsoever. What could possibly be wrong with it? Do I need to subscribe to remote access for my HA server or should it just work? I have a Samsung S8.
i use the fps based presence and I have Android. I noticed the refresh rate is slow so whenever I am close to my house, it won't open as expected...it takes some time for the next refresh to see I changed location and then run the automation. Also with Samsung S22 Ultra, it seems it does require for app to be running as GPS location refresh apparently doesn't change unless you open it
Device tracker only work if you have cloud Homeassistant bought. I don't want to add every phone by hand so for me there is only one option: motions sensors in the house and timers 😢
Firstly thanks for a great video. I have been using the Unifi integration happily for quite sometime and it has been working perfectly however the last few weeks it started pulsing all the android phones connected to the system on and off together. They come on for 10-15secs when at home and then off for a similar amount of time. I have the time set to 10 secs. Any suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks once more.
no idea why my android devices are having such difficulty using gps detection :( it seemed to work a few times when i first set it up, but no longer. If I open a map and change my gps location it almost immediately changes in HA, then if I change it back and open maps to verify it immediately updates HA, but if i'm not in maps, it does not seem to work. my app settings are - 1) HA has background access 2) Location sensors - background location enabled - high accuracy mode enabled/false - location zone enabled - single accurate location enabled. I can access my HA off wifi... and it does not seem to work for any of our 3 android devices. i.e. i just took dogs for a walk well away from my home zone and actions did not fire. I need it to be accurate to within a 5 minute walk :) and quick enough to within exiting a car and walking 25 feet to the house.
We use iOS, how secure is it to put in a username and password into something like home assistant? I would be more comfortable with oauth obviously not an option it seems.
Thank you for another wonderful video. (I have subscribed now) Question: Is the PING sensor similar the NMAP sensor for detecting home/away? I have used NMAP and found the same issue with iOS devices dropping off, but it seems to work well with Android.
So I just tried to do the pink sensor and it's so funny because whenever I do something that I see in a video on home assistant it never works. The video always makes it seem so easy and I follow the instructions but it just doesn't work and I find that that is the case with 75% of the things on home assistant and I always have to troubleshoot and figure out what is wrong and that I need something else to do something. It's crazy lol
@@EverythingSmartHome What other video is that ... where you mention that remote access is needed for gps based presence detection ? So remote access is needed for the HA App method & the iCloud method as well ?
Great video once again. thanks. However left some thinkering still :D My issue is that i have been using the app to track location and by that the home presence status. This has a massive delay and it is not acceptable. If i set 100m area surrounding to my house to be the limit, when i arrive at night i'm already in the house when the garden light will light up. The delay may be onlu 30sec or so but it makes this use non functional. If i then base it to ping (have not tried) or Ubiquity it will not work if the wifi is off from the phone. This is the wife who will randomly mess with the phone settings :D I also have been unable to get the Ubiquiti integration to work with Edge Router X. So there is really not an ideal solution. Thought this video would bring ideas to create such but even if i would get all of these to work it would still not work for the yard lights on time if the wifi is off from the phone. More clever ideas? or how to get that delay off from the location tracking of the phone app? I dont want to extend the range either and the power saving options of android are all off for homeassistant and still. :D
The iOS app location tracker works fine. You need to enable background refresh or whatever is called in iOS and allow the app to always use location. And tell your wife when that annoying iOS "warning" comes up warning you that an app is using your location to NOT turn it off :) not that this happened with my wife... Just saying :)
Slightly off topic but as you mentioned the unifi integration and it's feature to disconnect certain clients. I tried to use this to only allow my small kids to use the internet at specific times. But it just doesn't work reliably. Often both in home assistant and in the unifi controller itself it will show the client as blocked and pretend it's not connected but in reality internet is working just fine. Same if I block the client in the controller itself. Also confusing that some clients appeared twice (could be related to the smartphone supporting 2.4ghz and 5ghz)
It's most likely a Unifi bug, I don't use it personally (no kids) but pretty much everything is a Unifi bug...are you on the latest firmware? Even if you are that means nothing with Unifi firmware 😭
@@EverythingSmartHome yes I'm pretty sure it's a unifi bug ;) I was on the latest firmware when I tried this feature. Have abandoned it though due to these bugs.
When using Google Assistant to invoke a script on Home Assistant, is it possible for Home Assistant to identify which device the call came from? I want to use my Google Nest smart devices to control HA and it would be super cool if HA could respond to the actual Nest device, I'm speaking to.
Any plans for explaining Room-assistant? I have tried and had partial success with Bluetooth Classic but it was slow to update (2 to 3 minutes) but got a bit lost with BLE.
@@EverythingSmartHome Not sure but there’s not many people working on it and, like you, my results with it have not really met my expectations. I have seen some HA showcases where the results are instantaneous so it may just be I can’t stump up the money for a home network good enough. I’m only on the ISP router and can’t justify the expense for something that may or may not give the desired outcome. I’d be interested to know the hardware of networks where people get that kind of response time.
So what if you're used to put your phone into airplane mode at night, what approach should you choose for so that HA knows your home although your phone is not connected, both to WiFi and to GPS location?
I would use "do not disturb" mode instead of "airplane mode". Works great for me, and you can even set certain alarms to get through always, or when someone calls you twice within minutes, it also gets through (in case of an emergency for example) Unless you're using airplane mode because you are afraid of the "radiation" of wifi and cellular signals, but then you probably would not be setting up a smart home anyway.
I've set up the Netgear presence detection via the config.yaml, and refreshed the config file/restarted HA, but the device_tracker entities don't appear in my list of entities.Any idea why?
My wife has a Samsung phone and it also only updates when the app is open which is super annoying. She has all the same location access options enabled that I do and it works fine for me but not her. Home assistant thinks she's always home. I came here to try and find a solution even though this video is several years old 😕
Never thought to edit the person entity, I assume I can set my person and select all my different trackers and then do away with my tracker groups I have made, will this work the same as the groups, IE. If one device is home then I am home?
Thanks for the reply, I was just about to do away with my tracker groups and then realised that if I put the router and gps trackers under the person entity instead the location prioritises the router tracker over the gps. So unless I have misunderstood, this would mean when my router tracker (in this case an iPhone drops of the network due to iOS device sleeping then the person entity would change to not_home! If I extended the "consider home" time this may overcome this issue but would cause the leaving home automations to be massively delayed, as it wont show me as away (not_home) until the router tracker updates! Were as the group of trackers only has to show one tracker home in this case the GPS. Therefore preventing false away triggers and allowing me to keep the consider home short and leaving home automations to trigger quicker Or have I massively misunderstood something? Thanks again and love the vids
So, my person entity is failing. It's telling i'm home while i'm not. My device tracker entity is working correctly. Wth is going on here? My device tracker entity is connected to my person entity, so i'm not sure what's going wrong here.
When I'm miles from home with my Android, how does my location get sent to my HA machine at home? Do I need to make my HA available to the Internet, opening ports etc?
Fantastic, I followed your "Remote Access DuckDNS" video and it all works including NAT loopback. Thanks buddy, tomorrow I will go mobile and check a few automations based on zones. :-)
Hello. I have on my phone and my wife's phone the app for presence detection. While I see just fine the battery percent, charging state they will constantly show home. All location sensors in app are of course enabled. Do you think I miss something ? I have to say though that I do not have access to HA outside of the network if that matters. Thanks. :)
Great video Lewis, I learned a few new things there! My presence detection has been based on my router, but it's very unreliable, so I'll revisit it soon. Looking forward to your room based tracking one soon too!
@@EverythingSmartHome the ADSL/fibre one provided my ISP, although I have been considering changing it, despite the fact it's supposed to integrate with Home Assistant.
@@EverythingSmartHome I don't mind by the way, I just noticed. Thought it would be nerves because you look like you're healthy and in shape. Keep the videos going. I'm a noob.
@@EverythingSmartHome I open the program which is installed on my laptop and then it opens Unifi Controller in the web browser. From what I remember I did not configure it too much.
I would be more hesitant too if it was a 3rd party integration but because it's official I'm OK with it. Definitely check out the code for yourself if your unsure!
Oof, I'm still lost here. HA sees my phone using gps and I have the mobile app installed. To see my wife and kids' phones do I need to install the HA app on their phones as well? (This is all Android btw). If so, they all exist as People, not Users so do I need to log in the apps on their phones with my user account? Thanks!
That's correct, although you could just create a seperate sensor for the VPN address, and then create a template sensor from the two. Although if you are on VPN, surely that means you are away?
Which presence detection integrations are you using, do you use multiple? 👇
Ping doesn't really work for me. My device goes to sleep and turns off wifi (apparently that's how iPhone is). So, I am using life365 GPS. Very reliable and works perfect.
Indeed it does as mentioned, kind of annoying! Glad you found a good solution
I use the iCloud3 integration from hacs
I used to use nmap... it work great with my old router (even with iPhones)... however my cable company change it, and the new one does not work correctly. It often set people away and back home, even if the had not left. I also tried arpscan_tracker (custom) but no success there either!
I use HomeKit, which I’ve found to be the easiest and most reliable for iOS. I create a virtual switch in Home Assistant, expose it to HomeKit via the built in integration and make an automation in HomeKit that turns on or off the switch when I leave or come home. Local push. No need for polling. Announces on my Nest mini whenever my wife or I enter the driveway (or 50 meters before).
I’m actually really impressed how well it works and I like that everything turns off as soon as I leave. For a long while I even used it for turning on the lights in the driveway. (Didn’t work for guests though, so I connected the old mains powered sensors to a Shelly 2.5 instead 👍)
Just a tip 😊
For anyone trying to verify the Location settings in the HA app around 7:35, it looks like the UI has changed from what is in the video. You need to go to Settings > Companion App > Manage Sensors > Location sensors.
I finally got my home assistant up and running this week ( BRAND new to smart homes) and this video helped a lot, well and another 20ish of your videos. When I got home today my garage opened for me bc of this video, and a shelly 1. Thanks man!!!
Thx for providing all those great videos! Presence Detection broken done to single Rooms is a thing I would be very interested in!!! Keep going, you doing a fantastic Job!
Thanks my friend! Appreciate the support
Thank you Lewis, you helped me after a very long search for present in the house or not at a few minutes to watch your video through IP (which is free) and about ip recognition I do not have to continuously leave our GPS on our mobile phone so we gain a lot of battery savings, which I did not get as an answer from several other streamers. You are simply the best streamer on youtube to guide us with Home Assistant and useful tips. ps: I look forward to when your presence sensor is available again. like all of you, it will work correctly, and I trust it with my eyes closed
Excellent! As always I learned something. I have been using the tracker on the iPhones in my home and noticed it only updates when the app is opened (not so useful Apple), but didn't know about the abilityt o setup iCloud - very awesome, and thank you.
Thanks buddy, you know I don't need to say how much I appreciate the support! 😅
Great tutorial. I've previously played around with using home assistant to trigger alerts / automations based on my mobile phone GPS location with poor reliability. But it wasn't aware under the app configuration part which you can adjust the sensors frequently and sensitivity options. You may have just solved my issue 👍
Thanks Dave! Let us know how it goes!
Awesome! Do you plan to make a video about room presence detection as well? Please do it! Thank you!
Thanks! Sure do, hopefully some day this year! 😂
I ran into the iOS behavior you mentioned awhile back. From what I recall, you have to sign out of the app, delete it, delete the Companion App config from the integrations page in HA, then resetup. Also, in some recent version of iOS, they have the initial pop up for location tracking only allow when the app is in use (open). To fix, go to iPhone settings, privacy, location services and ensure home assistant is set to Always and Use Precise Location is on. Also, check to be sure background fetch is enabled. After fixing it’s been working flawlessly for over a year. Thanks for the video!
That's good to know, I have all those settings set correctly but they don't seem to make a difference, I haven't tried the uninstalling and re-ininstalling though will give that a try thanks!
I kind of did my own room presence detector to switch on/off hvac and lights for my downstairs based on occupancy. I tried a lutron PIR+ultrasonic but had nothing but trouble. I found a cheap microwave sensor on Amazon that was much more sensitive (people sitting on a sofa watching TV) without the false triggers. I hooked it up to a shelly input to get it on home assistant. Whenever it triggers I turn on the lights, I use an 10 minute average to serve as occupancy indication (filters people walking through or the rare false trigger and allows a missed sense period for small movements of someone on the sofa). I use the filtered occupancy to change my hvac to away/home and turn off the lights when unoccupied.
For me the location from the HA app works perfectly on my phone (iOS). But the rest of the family all use Android and it works unreliably at best. Sometimes it doesn't update for hours or only when you open the app.
I use both the unifi presence and my phone gps tracking for that. I can't wait to see the room presence detection video. Thank you for this video.
Thanks Robert, I'll get to it one day 👀
@@EverythingSmartHome would be great. Nice work man. Keep home assisting
The iCloud integration is the solution for me. Thank You!
Thanks for your video it was useful!
So amazing. I was waiting this video for a long time. Love from India Again. ❤️
❤️🙌
One thing that maybe should be mentioned is that the companion app on android is very flaky until is is exempted from the OS power saving mechanisms (at least for my Samsung). After that it is solid, especially with some automations about triggering the increased accuracy command notifications.
Indeed, I think some phones have more aggressive power saving methods than others!
lol @ the Edinburgh Castle troll.. nice one Lewis!
For iOS app, you can setup automations in Shortcut app to trigger Sensor update with various triggers like location, battery level or when you open messaging app. This will keep the location in iOS app up to date without needing to actually open the app. Disable "notify when run" of automations in Shortcut to not be bombarded by notifications. I didnt like to give icloud access to another third party, it keeps sending email when icloud is accessed.
you're the best man, keep up with the amazing videos
Thank you sir!
Great! loved this simple explanation. Using the iCloud version.
Glad it was useful!
Lewis, thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge on this topic with everyone. I am in the process of setting up a system to integrate into my parent's home as a surprise for a little something extra when they finish their current renovation projects and your videos have helped so much with the process. One question I did have is the difference between User and Person within Home Assistant. I am looking to make a separate "profile" for each member of the house to then link different account such as iCloud to their personal device. Is this possible? Thank you again!
Please make a video with setting Up Google Maps from start to end 😊
With iPhones, if you give the HA App permissions to access location "Always" rather than when the app is open you will have more reliable location tracking from your girlfriend. By default "Always" is not shown as an option when you first install an app so you have to go into settings/privacy and change the setting manually to Always. This seems to work for my iCloud family account.
Use a load of different methods churned through a baysian sensor, was a cool method introduced on the forum. Haven't updated it in a while and think it's time for a review. Really like the magic-areas integration which seems to detect I'm home before my smartypants baysian tracking, it's no good for approaching/departed automations though.
The Baysian sensor is pretty useful indeed! Individual room detection is an interesting and cool challenge for sure!
@@EverythingSmartHome The magic-areas room detection assumes if it detects you in a room, you must also be home, so adds weight to other presence detectors. I use it for that more than room detection. Auto room lighting is not something I've played with....yet.
Android 12 is pretty savage on restricting things running in the background, so HA updates often don't update location (or anything) to HA when I'm oot n aboot.
Even though I told it never to sleep the app and don't use optimised battery it's still very slow to update if at all.
I have it so the location sensor triggers an occupancy boolean which I use in my automation logic.
Because It's a toggle it lets me override the status to here/away to pre-empt the sensors lack of updating. Also handy for testing automation logic.
I also set up a sensor to track the # of HA devices connected to WiFi using the companion app's "WiFi Connection" and "State" sensors.
When a mobile device connects to the network it'll also toggle the occupancy boolean on so there's no need to wait for the location sensor to try to figure out where it is.
(if device connected=yes and SSID=MyWiFi then someone must be home)
I haven't used `ping`, but I've recently set up the `nmap` platform for tracking, and it works pretty well! I've also got two `monitor` nodes set up for Bluetooth presence detection, but it takes a bit more setup than these 😅
Yeah the nmap one is cool too, nice job!
How does it compare to room-assistant?
Firstly - loving working my way thrugh your back catalogue. Great content; great explanations and very motivational.
Secondly - appreciate this video is 18 months old but.... When using the UNifi Portal approach, My phone (ioS) shows up as source: gps NOT source: router.... what have I done wrong?
Thanks!
I'm guessing your looking at the entity generated by the Home Assistant mobile app and not the one generated by Unifi, there may be a slightly different name
Thanks for this - greatly appreciated
Glad it was useful Ken!
I find looking under the Christmas try is the best solution
Thank you, amazing video 👍🏻
Thanks Jozef!
Guys, if you use iOS, you should go into settings > privacy > location services > home assistant app and set it to always. If you select “only while using” when you first launch the app you’re obviously going to get that behavior.
Thankss
Can you show us how you did the OPNSense statistic?
Thank you, in my case I can only use the phone presence for me and the wife, not for the kids, I'm thinking it can be done intecractively, using the devices to know if they are present or not, something like asking them to turn on/off something, also by checking the bandwith used.
Any additional suggestion would be appreciated.
thanks for the video... i'm using iPhone, so I gon for the last method (iCloud)
Thanks for the comment!
Does the tracking for the HA companion app require remote/cloud access?
Thank you. But Where is the all supported sensors and chips?
Just looking into using the iCloud method. Im assuming you need to set an automation with all the peoples phones in your house? Also can you define this person and that person for leaving home and this person or this person for arriving home? Basically to use the when everyone has left home and when the first person arrives home
My main question is on iCloud how often it asks for the code. I know it’s semi random, but on average. once a month? Once a year? Once a day? I may use it but I may also use locative.
Hi Nice work, if using Unifi Controller, why do my state switch from Home to Not_Home and back, every 10 sec. When i'm home on my device mobile entities
Very informative video! However, I do have a question about family sharing: in Apple Home (Homekit), you are able to get your family members' not/home state WITHOUT having them share their exact location, as long as they enabled "Find My" and in the same family iCloud account (join the family but disable location sharing). Is it possible to get that in HA? Currently, I am using a boolean toggle through Homekit integration for presence detection. I don't want or need to see the exact location of my family members:P
I think you can do that in the companion app: Configuration > Companion App > Manage sensors. Activate "Background location" and "Location zone", but disable "Single accurate location". See also 7:27.
How can you create a group of all the device trackers, so that you have a sensor eg "is home occupied"
Ty!!!
Hello sir may i ask how do u find that ip address that u typed in the ping sensor portion of this video ?
Thank you
!
do i need to set my account up using the wifi at the address it will be used at?
I want to use the built in Home Assistant device tracker however it sees me as being at home all of the time. I've checked the companion app sensor settings and background, zone and single accurate location are all enabled. I've cleared app data, logged in, logged out and back in, re-installed HA on my mobile but no luck whatsoever. What could possibly be wrong with it? Do I need to subscribe to remote access for my HA server or should it just work? I have a Samsung S8.
rooter.... ahahaha cool, thank you, good video.
Haha thanks!
Great video!
Thnks John!
i use the fps based presence and I have Android. I noticed the refresh rate is slow so whenever I am close to my house, it won't open as expected...it takes some time for the next refresh to see I changed location and then run the automation. Also with Samsung S22 Ultra, it seems it does require for app to be running as GPS location refresh apparently doesn't change unless you open it
Device tracker only work if you have cloud Homeassistant bought. I don't want to add every phone by hand so for me there is only one option: motions sensors in the house and timers 😢
Really good video! Do you find the route that you use drains your phone battery significantly more?
Thanks! No not overly, you can adjust the frequency that check-ins occur
I have been trying to get this set up for Hours, but no matte what I do, I just cant get this tracker set up working.
Firstly thanks for a great video. I have been using the Unifi integration happily for quite sometime and it has been working perfectly however the last few weeks it started pulsing all the android phones connected to the system on and off together. They come on for 10-15secs when at home and then off for a similar amount of time. I have the time set to 10 secs. Any suggestion would be appreciated. Thanks once more.
Hey Ian, hmm strange one - probably best to jump in the Discord server and we can take a look!
On the iCloud integration, what do you dif if you have two different accounts?
no idea why my android devices are having such difficulty using gps detection :( it seemed to work a few times when i first set it up, but no longer. If I open a map and change my gps location it almost immediately changes in HA, then if I change it back and open maps to verify it immediately updates HA, but if i'm not in maps, it does not seem to work. my app settings are - 1) HA has background access 2) Location sensors - background location enabled - high accuracy mode enabled/false - location zone enabled - single accurate location enabled. I can access my HA off wifi... and it does not seem to work for any of our 3 android devices. i.e. i just took dogs for a walk well away from my home zone and actions did not fire. I need it to be accurate to within a 5 minute walk :) and quick enough to within exiting a car and walking 25 feet to the house.
Same here. I notice the HA only works when I manually open Google Maps and update GPS location
We use iOS, how secure is it to put in a username and password into something like home assistant? I would be more comfortable with oauth obviously not an option it seems.
Great video, but, at 7:30 you go to "Manage Sensors" under configuration. I can't find that in my HA install. Please help.
Are you on iOS?
@@EverythingSmartHome No, Android. I thought the Manage Sensors setting was inside HA. That is what I am trying to find.
Sorry, Windows.
Ah no, it's an app thing :)
Thank you for another wonderful video. (I have subscribed now)
Question: Is the PING sensor similar the NMAP sensor for detecting home/away?
I have used NMAP and found the same issue with iOS devices dropping off, but it seems to work well with Android.
Ping is more basic than NMAP but yes you'll find the same issue I think. Thanks!
What do you use to edit the yaml that you get live feedback on your script ?
So I just tried to do the pink sensor and it's so funny because whenever I do something that I see in a video on home assistant it never works. The video always makes it seem so easy and I follow the instructions but it just doesn't work and I find that that is the case with 75% of the things on home assistant and I always have to troubleshoot and figure out what is wrong and that I need something else to do something. It's crazy lol
Isn't remote access needed for gps based presence dedection?
Indeed it is, slipped my mind to mention it! I've done an entire video on this if you need it!
@@EverythingSmartHome My Isp uses cgnat, so I can't apply it. Thank you for great video and replying the comment
@@EverythingSmartHome What other video is that ... where you mention that remote access is needed for gps based presence detection ?
So remote access is needed for the HA App method & the iCloud method as well ?
Great video once again. thanks. However left some thinkering still :D My issue is that i have been using the app to track location and by that the home presence status. This has a massive delay and it is not acceptable. If i set 100m area surrounding to my house to be the limit, when i arrive at night i'm already in the house when the garden light will light up. The delay may be onlu 30sec or so but it makes this use non functional. If i then base it to ping (have not tried) or Ubiquity it will not work if the wifi is off from the phone. This is the wife who will randomly mess with the phone settings :D I also have been unable to get the Ubiquiti integration to work with Edge Router X. So there is really not an ideal solution. Thought this video would bring ideas to create such but even if i would get all of these to work it would still not work for the yard lights on time if the wifi is off from the phone.
More clever ideas? or how to get that delay off from the location tracking of the phone app? I dont want to extend the range either and the power saving options of android are all off for homeassistant and still. :D
You can configure the update time in the sensor settings so that it updates more frequently!
@@EverythingSmartHome hmm. Thanks. I'll have to test those few options
The iOS app location tracker works fine. You need to enable background refresh or whatever is called in iOS and allow the app to always use location. And tell your wife when that annoying iOS "warning" comes up warning you that an app is using your location to NOT turn it off :) not that this happened with my wife... Just saying :)
Haha previous experience I see! I've done that and checked it many times and it's always correct, just doesn't seem to work!
Slightly off topic but as you mentioned the unifi integration and it's feature to disconnect certain clients. I tried to use this to only allow my small kids to use the internet at specific times. But it just doesn't work reliably. Often both in home assistant and in the unifi controller itself it will show the client as blocked and pretend it's not connected but in reality internet is working just fine. Same if I block the client in the controller itself. Also confusing that some clients appeared twice (could be related to the smartphone supporting 2.4ghz and 5ghz)
It's most likely a Unifi bug, I don't use it personally (no kids) but pretty much everything is a Unifi bug...are you on the latest firmware? Even if you are that means nothing with Unifi firmware 😭
@@EverythingSmartHome yes I'm pretty sure it's a unifi bug ;) I was on the latest firmware when I tried this feature. Have abandoned it though due to these bugs.
Yeah it's unfortunate, they never get firmwares right...they spend all their time just making new UIs that no one was asking for at this point
When using Google Assistant to invoke a script on Home Assistant, is it possible for Home Assistant to identify which device the call came from?
I want to use my Google Nest smart devices to control HA and it would be super cool if HA could respond to the actual Nest device, I'm speaking to.
Hello Jan, sorry I'm not sure I follow you. What would HA respond with?
wish there was a pfsense tracker that tracks hostnames not IP
That would be nice! PFSense is long overdue an official API
Any plans for explaining Room-assistant? I have tried and had partial success with Bluetooth Classic but it was slow to update (2 to 3 minutes) but got a bit lost with BLE.
Yeah that's what I briefly touched on during the video but I haven't been fully impressed with it so far!
@@EverythingSmartHome Not sure but there’s not many people working on it and, like you, my results with it have not really met my expectations. I have seen some HA showcases where the results are instantaneous so it may just be I can’t stump up the money for a home network good enough. I’m only on the ISP router and can’t justify the expense for something that may or may not give the desired outcome. I’d be interested to know the hardware of networks where people get that kind of response time.
So what if you're used to put your phone into airplane mode at night, what approach should you choose for so that HA knows your home although your phone is not connected, both to WiFi and to GPS location?
You would definitely need to think of another solution, sorry I'm not sure of a good method for that
@@EverythingSmartHome maybe a bedsensor solution?
I would use "do not disturb" mode instead of "airplane mode". Works great for me, and you can even set certain alarms to get through always, or when someone calls you twice within minutes, it also gets through (in case of an emergency for example)
Unless you're using airplane mode because you are afraid of the "radiation" of wifi and cellular signals, but then you probably would not be setting up a smart home anyway.
@@sandphotoNL haha, daarom ga ik ook voor een Arduino setup met een relaisboard en Ethernet😜
I've set up the Netgear presence detection via the config.yaml, and refreshed the config file/restarted HA, but the device_tracker entities don't appear in my list of entities.Any idea why?
I would guess there is some sort of mistake, check the HA logs
My wife has a Samsung phone and it also only updates when the app is open which is super annoying. She has all the same location access options enabled that I do and it works fine for me but not her. Home assistant thinks she's always home. I came here to try and find a solution even though this video is several years old 😕
Never thought to edit the person entity, I assume I can set my person and select all my different trackers and then do away with my tracker groups I have made, will this work the same as the groups, IE. If one device is home then I am home?
Yep that's exactly right, that's what that bit was designed for
Thanks for the reply, I was just about to do away with my tracker groups and then realised that if I put the router and gps trackers under the person entity instead the location prioritises the router tracker over the gps.
So unless I have misunderstood, this would mean when my router tracker (in this case an iPhone drops of the network due to iOS device sleeping then the person entity would change to not_home!
If I extended the "consider home" time this may overcome this issue but would cause the leaving home automations to be massively delayed, as it wont show me as away (not_home) until the router tracker updates!
Were as the group of trackers only has to show one tracker home in this case the GPS. Therefore preventing false away triggers and allowing me to keep the consider home short and leaving home automations to trigger quicker
Or have I massively misunderstood something?
Thanks again and love the vids
So, my person entity is failing. It's telling i'm home while i'm not. My device tracker entity is working correctly. Wth is going on here? My device tracker entity is connected to my person entity, so i'm not sure what's going wrong here.
When I'm miles from home with my Android, how does my location get sent to my HA machine at home?
Do I need to make my HA available to the Internet, opening ports etc?
Yes that's right or use Nabu Casa
Fantastic, I followed your "Remote Access DuckDNS" video and it all works including NAT loopback.
Thanks buddy, tomorrow I will go mobile and check a few automations based on zones. :-)
Hello. I have on my phone and my wife's phone the app for presence detection. While I see just fine the battery percent, charging state they will constantly show home. All location sensors in app are of course enabled. Do you think I miss something ? I have to say though that I do not have access to HA outside of the network if that matters. Thanks. :)
You need external access for it to work yes :)
@@EverythingSmartHome Thank you for your reply. Then until I complete that (external access) I will try maybe Bluetooth detection :)
Unifi setings: Host is IP unifi or router? Thx
It's the IP of your Unifi network controller (or "application" as UI now has named it...)
Great video Lewis, I learned a few new things there!
My presence detection has been based on my router, but it's very unreliable, so I'll revisit it soon.
Looking forward to your room based tracking one soon too!
Thanks Rob! Which router are you using?
@@EverythingSmartHome the ADSL/fibre one provided my ISP, although I have been considering changing it, despite the fact it's supposed to integrate with Home Assistant.
I feel sorry for you 🥺😂
@@EverythingSmartHome with respect to my router, or just generally? 😉
@@EverythingSmartHome have you any recommendations for a sensibly priced ADSL/fiber router/modern that's more configurable?
Thanks for your useful videos ! Why do you sound like you're out of breath in most of them?
Glad they are useful!
Speak to slow people complain and speak to fast people complain haha - still trying to find the balance. That and nerves/anxiety
@@EverythingSmartHome I don't mind by the way, I just noticed. Thought it would be nerves because you look like you're healthy and in shape. Keep the videos going. I'm a noob.
what happend to bluetooth presence detection?
Meh, yet to find a reliable one so far!
Where to find IP address of Unifi Controller? I cannot add integration because I do not know where to find it :(
You don't know the IP of your controller? 😯 How did you set it up in the first place?
@@EverythingSmartHome I open the program which is installed on my laptop and then it opens Unifi Controller in the web browser. From what I remember I did not configure it too much.
somehow I hesitate to enter username/password to the iCloud integration. is it safe?
I would be more hesitant too if it was a 3rd party integration but because it's official I'm OK with it. Definitely check out the code for yourself if your unsure!
@@EverythingSmartHome if we are using 2fa not should be an issue am i right?
Oof, I'm still lost here. HA sees my phone using gps and I have the mobile app installed. To see my wife and kids' phones do I need to install the HA app on their phones as well? (This is all Android btw). If so, they all exist as People, not Users so do I need to log in the apps on their phones with my user account? Thanks!
slowly
I guess the ping sensor will return a false results if you're on a VPN
That's correct, although you could just create a seperate sensor for the VPN address, and then create a template sensor from the two. Although if you are on VPN, surely that means you are away?
rooter
Fiest comment! ♥️
Beat me to it!!
Great video thanks... but dude... please take a breath!
Thanks! I can't...too excited to talk about Home Assistant!
Not more useable, doesn't work anymore HA is changed,
Greate video, but do you need to talk so fast is there any reason?
How do I get configuration in the side bar?
How do you view all users under the home assistant map?