PHLocation V2 Discussion

[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..

[randy]

On the Android side of the house, if you could do something like Backitude which gives the option to only steal locations, that would be great. I notice no battery drain by having Backitude running all the time. It only steals locations from other apps when they query for GPS (like Google maps, Waze, WeatherBug etc.) and if nothing is utilizing GPS, then it will report what it can from Wi-Fi/Cellular, but only if it meets the minimum accuracy allowed, which is user configurable. This has been pretty much flawless for me and requires no geofences to be created.

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.

[Chewbucka]

I was hoping to create a companion (iOS & Android) mobile app for the plug-in to remove dependency on third party apps but the way things are going right now I don't know when I'll find the time

Paul..

On the Android side of the house, if you could do something like Backitude which gives the option to only steal locations, that would be great. I notice no battery drain by having Backitude running all the time. It only steals locations from other apps when they query for GPS (like Google maps, Waze, WeatherBug etc.) and if nothing is utilizing GPS, then it will report what it can from Wi-Fi/Cellular, but only if it meets the minimum accuracy allowed, which is user configurable. This has been pretty much flawless for me and requires no geofences to be created.

[MNB]

Actually that is what I started 2 hours ago and I still have probably another couple hour to complete and fine tune.

Thanks


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

I did say "relative" all thou it doesn't help your situation, (I think there should be some words of encouragement here!) Mike

[MNB]

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

Claude31 Oct 21, 2018 7:27 AM (in response to Josh587) Tested in simulator (Apple location):

1. func locationManager(_ manager: CLLocationManager, didUpdateLocations locations: [CLLocation]) {
2. let newLocation = locations[locations.count - 1]
3. locationManager.stopUpdatingLocation()
4. print("Location", newLocation!)
5. }

I get:
Location <+37.33233141,-122.03121860> +/- 50.00m (speed -1.00 mps / course -1.00) @ 10/21/18, 4:10:11 PM Central European Summer Time

So, you get
- the speed in newLocation!.speed (in meters per second)
- the direction in newLocation.course :The direction in which the device is traveling, measured in degrees and relative to due north.)

[quote]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);
} 

[goldriver]

Ah! so it's GeoFency, yes it does create a new reference id for new GF as you modify the PHL2api. I found though simply changing one and update ones events wasn't a big task.. (I guess that's relative) but as I created and test each one I was able to change the various associated events relatively easy with my 4 iBeacons and 3 Virtual Fences. Mike

Actually that is what I started 2 hours ago and I still have probably another couple hour to complete and fine tune.

Thanks


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[MNB]

Unfortunately, when I modify my Geofency device in my iPhone to communicate via phl2api, this creates new devices and old devices are not updated anymore.


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

Ah! so it's GeoFency, yes it does create a new reference id for new GF as you modify the PHL2api. I found though simply changing one and update ones events wasn't a big task.. (I guess that's relative) but as I created and test each one I was able to change the various associated events relatively easy with my 4 iBeacons and 3 Virtual Fences. Mike

[goldriver]

Bruno, when I installed PHL2 along with PL1 I do not recall my device ref ID's changing in PHL2 in fact they were the same so that one would be able to transition events from on version to the other. Mike

Unfortunately, when I modify my Geofency device in my iPhone to communicate via phl2api, this creates new devices and old devices are not updated anymore.


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

[MNB]

Question

I have more than 20 geofences ibeacon set in 5 different iphones with about 10 events related to each of these 5 phones/ibeacon.

Is there a way I can keep the original Geofence device "reference Id" moving to V2 once I remove V1 ?

Bruno, when I installed PHL2 along with PL1 I do not recall my device ref ID's changing in PHL2 in fact they were the same so that one would be able to transition events from on version to the other. Mike

[MNB]

Thanxs for the confirmation Paul. If I stop posting silly inquiries will that help with more time! , Mike

[sooty]

So I can safely assume that iCloud/iPhone and/or GeoFency do not support Course or Speed or is there something I have to do on my end to enable them?

Last time I checked iCloud did not report speed and / or course as part of the location data. Never checked but I don't expect Geofency will report that info given its primary purpose.

I was hoping to create a companion (iOS & Android) mobile app for the plug-in to remove dependency on third party apps but the way things are going right now I don't know when I'll find the time

Paul..