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coredev

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 26, 2012
577
1,230
Bavaria
Hey guys and HK experts -

I have a really weird situation with my Home setup currently.
While I was away over Easter, the Home sent an event that someone came home, so it was activating devices. This was false alarm, cams showed noone home. The ghost disappeared an hour later, event telling me everyone left Home.

Yesterday, while I was sitting in the living room, an alarm told me that the last person has left Home and security will be turned on.
Since then, Homekit is convinced that no one is home, even though I am sitting next to the HomePod hub and can even do handoff music with it.

Anyone of you guys experienced something similar?
I tried turning off my phone and back on, but no success.

Any help appreciated.
 

Itinj24

Contributor
Nov 8, 2017
4,480
2,562
New York
This might be coming from the devices using location for automations. My wife and I have notifications turned on, in Find My for when we leave/arrive home and work. Sometimes I get a notification that she left home when she didn’t. Also, a reboot of your iOS devices may be triggering this since the phone leaves the network during reboot. Not sure if you’re doing that. What’s strange though is that it reported someone was home while you were away.
 

sparky672

macrumors 6502a
Dec 17, 2004
533
252
I have had zero success with anything to do with geolocation in HomeKit. Whether it's my iPhone, my Apple TV hub, or my network is anyone's guess. Arriving and leaving notifications are so delayed or non-existent that any automation dependent upon them is completely useless.
 

coredev

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 26, 2012
577
1,230
Bavaria
Latest turn of events is that Siri now won’t execute my commands anymore. I don’t have permission she tells me. I am the owner with full permission so what gives. 🤷‍♂️
Guess I have to join the ranks of people who need to rebuild their Home setup.💩
 
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firewire9000

macrumors 6502a
Sep 15, 2015
559
866
I’ve never had any issues regarding the people leaving or ente home automations and recently I’m having issues about not recognizing that I didn’t left home and that I’m still inside. It’s frustrating.
 

cynics

macrumors G4
Jan 8, 2012
11,959
2,155
HomeKit geofencing is just a function of your iPhones location. Nothing else is really required, although it would be a bit pointless without some other HomeKit device.

There are a lot of reason its not function properly.

Contacts - Your contact card has your "Home" placed properly if you are using "Home" for automation. You can change it to your address and adjust it and the size of the fence if you have trouble...

iCloud - Find My is turned on.

AppleID - Find My is set to the correct device.

Home - Your AppleID (you) from the above device is under People.

Locations services, Wifi and Bluetooth (depending on your devices for BT) are turned on.

Home - Automation is set correctly and location is correct, you can move it around or type an address to make a fence you can increase decrease the size of.
 

sparky672

macrumors 6502a
Dec 17, 2004
533
252
HomeKit geofencing is just a function of your iPhones location. Nothing else is really required, although it would be a bit pointless without some other HomeKit device.

Yep... just a function of your iPhone's location, so it's crazy how slow and unreliable this works.

Contacts - Your contact card has your "Home" placed properly if you are using "Home" for automation. You can change it to your address and adjust it and the size of the fence if you have trouble...

Yes. "My Card" in Contacts has always contained the exact street, city, state, and zip of my house, which is the HomeKit Home.

iCloud - Find My is turned on.

Always.

And I am always logged into iCloud from all devices including the Apple TV Home hub.

AppleID - Find My is set to the correct device.

Shows my location on my iPhone as "this device". Find My app also says the same and immediately reports iPhone as "with you" and a map of my correct location at my house.

Home - Your AppleID (you) from the above device is under People.

In Home settings under People, I am shown as "Resident (Owner)". I am the only person designated to this Home. It also shows me logged into my iCloud account with all Home options turned on including "Control Accessories Remotely".

Locations services, Wifi and Bluetooth (depending on your devices for BT) are turned on.

Yes, yes, and yes.

Home - Automation is set correctly and location is correct, you can move it around or type an address to make a fence you can increase decrease the size of.

For specific automations, they're set as "Arrives" or "Leaves" and location correctly shows "Home" with a map of the correct house location and a wide geofence.

------

Geofencing works, but it is incredibly slow, inconsistent, and therefore unreliable. So unreliable and slow that any automations that depend upon me being Home do not fire off correctly because the geofencing takes so long to recognize that I have arrived. When using automations that need me to unlock my phone when I arrive/leave sometimes fire off several minutes after I arrive home, making the automation completely useless. To be effective, I need it to fire off or recognize my arrival within a few seconds of entering the geofence area.

My cellular service is solid and I have a good 5G signal from my geofence area. My GPS is accurate and always seems to work well.

Oh well, maybe it's just my network? ;)

EDIT: Yes, I realize that geofencing can literally be anywhere and therefore should have absolutely nothing to do with one's wifi network.
 
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