PHLocation V2 Discussion

[bjwanvik]

Thank you!
I should have seen that myself... After some struggling with my tasker string, I'm finally in with the Android (tasker) device as well - then everything should be ready to take advantage of this fantastic plug-in

[sooty]

I just installed PHLocation 2, and got the iCloud up and running pretty fast.
Tasker didn't work out so well for me
I just copied the old tasker task from PHLocation (1) and modified the url, but I'm getting this error:
(ProcPositionData) Invalid Interface Name for user [4918] of PHLocation2!

Any idea what that could be? 4918 is the device for tasker device in PHLocation 2. I realized that if I change the string in tasker, for instance change from 4918 to 4917, that's reflected in the log - also tried to change to the user, and tried to rename device 4918 to different names without that helping.

Apologies, the user guide is incorrect for Tasker configuration

The "(ProcPositionData) Invalid Interface Name for user [4918] of PHLocation2!" message is coming from PHLocation V1 because device ref 4918 belongs to PHLocation V2.
Change the URL in your Tasker post from /phlapi?dtype=CD to /phl2api?dtype=CD

Paul..

[bjwanvik]

I just installed PHLocation 2, and got the iCloud up and running pretty fast.
Tasker didn't work out so well for me
I just copied the old tasker task from PHLocation (1) and modified the url, but I'm getting this error:
(ProcPositionData) Invalid Interface Name for user [4918] of PHLocation2!

Any idea what that could be? 4918 is the device for tasker device in PHLocation 2. I realized that if I change the string in tasker, for instance change from 4918 to 4917, that's reflected in the log - also tried to change to the user, and tried to rename device 4918 to different names without that helping.

[MNB]

Randy, slow question.. "Known Location for his home is 0 and "The Vortex" is 4." where does value get set or inferred for home and Vortex contains 0 vs 4? are there other devices that have value of 1-3 or 5> Mike

Update: I believe that the slot number for Known places within PHL2 e.g. 0 for home and in the case for Steve 4 for vortex.

Steve, out of curiously what makes up your vortex known place?

[MNB]

Thanxs Randy for taking the time to explain on both Group conditions and Easy trigger conditons. As I have mention before examples are great learning tools so if one doesn't quite grasp what's going on this forum always has subject matter experts.

Well I guess I must of not kept up with the "Jones" and updated to the latest... Thanxs Mike

[randy]

Stephen, thanxs for sharing, I agree with you PHL2 has significantly improved the Location/Maping capabilities. I noticed that your using Group Conditions I thought I had read some where or was advised that Group conditions aren't reliable in how they execute has something changed with the recent HS3 upgrades.

2)How does the "range" trigger work I see [0,0] and [4,4] thanxs in advance
3)Where does "Any" when using the PHL2 command "User: Steve phone exits known location: Any." come from?

Group conditions work fine, There is some ambiguity on one of the options as explained here.

Known Location for his home is 0 and "The Vortex" is 4. Those are Conditions not Triggers. A range of [0,0] means equal to 0 and a range of [4,4] is equal to 4. Together, the event will run only if he has been away from Home (0) or The Vortex (4) for at leas 10 seconds. As he wrote, he handles entry and exit of those two locations separately.

"Any" was added to the latest beta - 3.0.0.60 yesterday.

[MNB]

Stephen, thanxs for sharing, I agree with you PHL2 has significantly improved the Location/Maping capabilities. I noticed that your using Group Conditions I thought I had read some where or was advised that Group conditions aren't reliable in how they execute has something changed with the recent HS3 upgrades.

2)How does the "range" trigger work I see [0,0] and [4,4] thanxs in advance
3)Where does "Any" when using the PHL2 command "User: Steve phone exits known location: Any." come from?

[Chewbucka]

v 3.0.0.60 Feb 12th 2019
Added - Any location can be specified in Enter/Exit location trigger.

UPDATE3: After posting on the EasyTrigger forum, Spud pointed me in the right direction to fix the EasyTrigger error when updating the Previous location device. It turns out, you shouldn't clone a plugin device, but instead, create a new virtual device and in this case, it needs to have Status-Controls set to Both in order to be copied correctly. Now, instead of having to use script commands, you can simple copy the device using EasyTrigger.

UPDATE 2: After further testing, I was unable to use EasyTrigger to copy the current location to the previous location. I've corrected the events below to use script commands. Currently I set the Previous Location to the Current Location whenever I enter any known location which means these devices are the same whenever I'm at a known location.I've made a request to Paul about the possibility of having a "Previous Location" device that would get updated automatically whenever you left a known location which negate having to create a device and have to keep it updated.

UPDATE: I had to change the events for Entering/Exiting a known location. Originally I was using the value for the current location which works when you enter a known location, but when leaving, the current location will be "None" and so my event was announcing I had just left "None" and it was also checking to see if the current location was not equal to [0,0]or [4,4] which would always be true since it was None or a value of -1.

Paul,

This is brilliant! This has dramatically reduced the number of events where I announce when a user has entered/exited a known location. I have three users and currently 5 known locations for a total of 30 entry/exit events (and adding new ones every day) down to just 6 events. With <.60, I would have to create two events for each user, for each known location. Now I've reduced that to just two per user. If I add more known locations, my announcement automatically announces the location based upon the current location value.

Here are the new events that I've created. When arriving, I check to make sure it's not home nor Vortex (I have other entry events for those locations) and then I announce the location using dev id 2715 which is the current location. I then use EastTrigger to copy the current location device to a new virtual Previous location device for use later when exiting. When exiting, I'm checking to make sure the previous location isn't home (don't want to announce that I just left home) by checking the device value, and that I'm not leaving the Vortex by using EasyTrigger to check if the device string contains "vortex". I've reached out to Paul to see if he might include the location index of each location under each known location section so that the raw value could be used in case anyone didn't have EasyTrigger to check the string value. The group conditions are just checking for two virtual device values: 1) a virtual device called "Party mode" is off (don't want announcements if we're having a party) and 2) a virtual device called "Occupancy status" is Home


Here is the Arrived/Departed events for Any location with a check for group conditions and special locations.




This is the new device that I created based upon the Current Location device.



Here is the event that updates the previous location device. Much easier to read than the previous way of doing it with script commands.




These are the custom events to handle entering and exiting one of my known locations.



These are the events used to handle approaching and arriving Home.

[Chewbucka]

I understand what you are saying except: "requires no geofences to be created". Do you mean you don't have to create them on your device? Known Locations in the plug-in are geofences, I am guessing you are using those.

Yes, that's correct. I meant to say that I'm using only a positional user (Backitude) rather than a fence user (like geofency) with the known locations.

[MNB]

Thanxs for inputs Randy re Life360/FollowMee, I really didn't want to add another app unless it was going to provide something useful and/or data.

I was thinking that speed with location could be an indicator if one is on the freeway an indicator of traffic density e.g. if on freeway and speed is <10 miles most likely there is a traffic situation somewhere and time to get home will be greatly extended. Mike

[randy]

Paul, thanxs for the "edumcation" (sic) I was having a wishful moment you bubble popper! So Life360 app should provide speed are there any advantages with Life360 and GeoFency? Mike

I will add that speed is all but useless. FollowMee and Life360 report speed, but it is not an average, but only the speed at the moment the app on the phone reports. On the highway, it will usually be close to correct, but around town with stop and go it will rarely be correct or even useful.

Just out out of curiosity, what value would a speed report provide for automation?

To add to what Paul said, the latency of Life360 makes it of low value for arrival and departure based Events. For that GeoFency is the best choice. The speed reported by Life360 is also going to be old by 2-5 minutes.

[MNB]

thanxs Paul your PHL2 PI continues to be the ticket for the major of requests. Mike

[sooty]

Paul, thanxs for the "edumcation" (sic) I was having a wishful moment you bubble popper! So Life360 app should provide speed are there any advantages with Life360 and GeoFency? Mike

Funny, the amount of time I put into this plug-in and I don't use 95% of it on my own HS3 system
Whilst I do have location reporting configured here I don't have a use for the data so only use geofencing to see who is or isn't home with the option to poll for the location of a device if needed.

What I found in testing (also confirmed by Randy) is that Life360 is pretty slow at updating the device's location when compared with polling iCloud. Not sure if this is because the communication between the physical device and the Life360 server is slow or that the server is slow at giving "up-to-date" data when it's polled.

Think I mentioned in another post that I was planning on creating a companion app for both iOS and Android for use with the plug-in that could do both geofencing and location reporting. I did make progress on this towards the end of last year with a working Android version that would report lots of sensor data but time constraints have meant that I can't progress it any further right now.

Paul..

[MNB]

Paul, thanxs for the "edumcation" (sic) I was having a wishful moment you bubble popper! So Life360 app should provide speed are there any advantages with Life360 and GeoFency? Mike

[sooty]

[QUOTE=MNB;n1284108]Paul, I was snooping around the various internet Apple forums and found the following which suggest that speed and direction is possible albeit it would require your programing skills as I do not believe it is a standard output.. Mike

Try something like this:

- (id) init
{
self = [super init];
if (self != nil) {
self.manager = [[CLLocationManager alloc] init];
self.manager.delegate = self;
[self.manager startUpdatingLocation];
}
return self;
}

- (void)locationManager:(CLLocationManager *)manager didUpdateToLocation:(CLLocation *)newLocation fromLocation:(CLLocation *)oldLocation
{
NSLog(@"Speed = %f", newLocation.speed);
} 

That code looks like it relates to developing an app for iOS. Speed and course will be available on the physical device if an app is coded to use it.

The plug-in obtains data about a device through the FindMyiPhone service when I last looked this did not include speed and course. FollowMee and Life360 are examples of iOS apps that do ask the device for its speed and subsequently report this to their respective server.

Paul..