Homey presence issue FW 7.xxx

Hi Ria,
Can this be related?

I have mqtt homey, mgtt mosquitto on synology, presence enable homey I tasted all but not working correct ios 15 and the last 15.2 not fix it. I’m very frustrated because apple not fix it and I dont have any idie how can fix. Someone any solution this…

More detailed but only in German language:

The most reliable method for me is the HomeKit workaround.

What isn’t working? Presence isn’t related to MQTT nor to your Synology.

mqtt broker run synology all ios devices connected owntracks app but many times not push location but iphone settings location always…

So you have iOS, Owntracks, MQTT, Synology DSM and Homey that all need to function 100% for it to work. Sounds like there are many possibilities to this to fail (I don’t have any issues with iOS 15 presence and Home Assistant).

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But owntracks is a separate app right? What doesn’t work? As what @robertklep says, so many variables… I’m just using the normal presence of homey and apart from having to manually set my home location it runs fine on at least four iOS devices.

Yes and I always 1 testing the mqtt broker run synology, owntracks all ios devices and Ho,oey owntracks app name location and persence. but many times not reported location. Now stop mqtt and mqtt flow and testing homey presence and yesterday my dougthers and wife not work, only my presence work. And I realy dont understund why? I’m not a geneus but work IT 25 years…

It anyone knew exactly why it’s failing, it would have been solved already. Athom should address this, the community can only offer workarounds for when Homey’s presence doesn’t work. You can ask Athom about it: support@athom.com

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Totally agree .

Ive only seen one quick post by Athom about this on Slack in which they blame Apple , and that’s it it. (Nothing on here at all)

The forum has been totally going upside down on this for awhile now…

I can’t definitively say what the actual technical cause is but my Home Assistant setup works perfectly and many other geo location type App’s on IOS also work perfectly fine …, ? ?

I can see people are really starting to get P off…

It never worked accurate for me also. I wanted to have flows starting like open garage door etc when i arrive home but homey geofence always worked 10 minutes too late.
So i installed owntracks with location and presence homey app. Check the tuto on the forum and you will be good :slight_smile:

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For me it only works when the app is running in the background.

I have sent Athom an e-mail regarding this issue. Hopefully I receive next weer an answer. If so, I let you know. :sweat_smile:

ps. Athom uses a new support link. The mail address does not work anymore. :sweat_smile:

You have tried to send an email directly to a support email address of ours, probably to try to create a new support request. Unfortunately, this is not the correct way to get in touch with our support team, so no support ticket is created at this moment.

To get support for your question, please use our Knowledge Base via https://support.homey.app. It provides a whole host of information as well as a structured contact form in case you still have questions or issues, which helps our support team help everyone better.

Thanks for your understanding.

All the best,

The Homey Support Team

I guess that’s one way to limit the number of support requests: instead of actually fixing things, just make it more difficult for users to request support.

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Or redirect the users to a page to promote them to at least do one search.

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Hello all,

I have the same issues with the Homey presence detection. I made a reliable workaround for the time being(iOS only, Homekit app required). I made 1 virtual switch for each device, and 2 flows in Homey; home/away. When virtual device is turned off; person is gone, turned on; person is home. Then, I made 2 automations inside the iOS Home app, to, when a person leaves switch the virtual device off. When the person comes home; switch on.

A decent support backend (which every company that is selling consumer products should use) will automatically point users towards solutions if it can infer from the support request (whether it’s coming in through e-mail, a web form, a Slack message, etc) that there’s already a knowledge base article or precooked answer available. Bluntly put: a lot of users are either stupid or act like snowflakes thinking their problems are unique.

Besides that, I’m missing community workarounds from their knowledge base. Things like “if half of your light bulbs don’t switch from a flow, add delays” or “if your Homey regularly becomes unstable, reboot it every night” or “if your Homey starts acting strangely, replace its power supply”. Because that would mean admitting that Homey has some well-known and (apparently) unfixable issues.

Which brings me back to what I already said: this new setup is mostly meant to make it harder for users to submit support requests.

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Today I got an answer from Athom regarding the Home/Away issue when using the Homey App on a iPhone with iOS15 or later.

Athom is aware of this issue and created a support ticket at Apple.

The problem presented by IOS.15 is the following, to give you some background information by Athom:

"Our app transmits the location of your house to your iPhone (a geofence). The iPhone then keeps track of where a user goes etc. When you enter or leave that zone of the house (the geofence), it should let the Homey app know. The problem now is that when our app is closed, the iPhone should first start our app in the background so that it can forward this message. Starting our app by your iPhone sometimes works/sometimes not. Due to this randomness, flows and background tasks don’t work as they should and that’s what Apple will have to fix in a new iOS update.

The only workaround there is is to always leave the Homey app on in the background, but that is not a nice workable situation and that is why an update from Apple really needs to follow. "

I also asked why other apps on my iPhone which using geofence as well do not have this issue. The answer from Athom on my question is:

"Unfortunately, we have no insight into how other apps are composed, but Tado probably uses a different API in connection with geofencing. It’s not all apps that have been affected by this iOS update, but quite a few.

Because it may take a while before this issue is included by Apple in a new iOS update, I hereby close the ticket. We will do our best to notify all users who reported the issue as soon as this fix is ​​available."

So… we have to wait and I suppose a long time before it will be solved…

Is there anyway i can manually adjust the range of the geofence? Something like tado does?

Not that I am aware of. The geofence zone is adjustable in Tado and HomeKit but not in Homey.

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Yet many Apps including Home Assistant work perfectly fine.

I’m no Apple software engineer but wouldn’t there just be one API and system for Geofencing within the IOS system…

Again , they won’t say or explain the actual technical reason for the issue , just it’s an apple thing… Very vague …

I personally think the Homey App is at fault. I think Athom have been so busy with their Bridge project that they just haven’t spent the time to upgrade the Homey App to meet the new IOS 15 specification.,

This might also explain why the Pro now only just get’s minor patch’s and tweaks with no new features. Homey OS really hasn’t progressed much at all over the last two years other than cloud backups and a WebUI.

Too busy with the Bridge/Cloud…