PHLocation V2 Discussion

[MNB]

Paul, your "PHLocation V2 Release Notes" needs to be updated to reflect your latest release version .63

[Chewbucka]

Thanxs Steve this was what I was looking for.. I assume that you did not change your HomeLocDirTimeOut value which is set for 5 minutes? I found that some of the events that were using Home Location Direction took too long (5 minutes) and would not necessary trigger the event reliability especially when there were several that would trigger near real time such as Approaching Home which had Time to Home=6 min, Time at Location=0 and Home Direction=Approaching (which changed 5 minutes later) I would expect that your experiencing the similar outcomes (your Time to Home=10 min)? Mike

If I understand the Paul's write up your adjustment suggest that you would have to travel 900 meters with HomeLocDirCount=3 vs. 600 meters if HomeLocDirBuff=300?

UPDATE: I chose 128 meters as the HomeLocDirBuff since that is what my minimum distance to move is set for my users. (.08 miles).

Here are my settings:

HomeLocDirTimeOut=5
HomeLocDirCount=3
HomeLocDirBuff=128

I would need to travel a minimum of 384 meters in this case before the Home direction would change. I haven't seen any issues with using Approaching and firing events. Typically what I do is put something like "If time to home < 15 minutes and home direction is approaching" then fire the event and don't fire again for 5 minutes. This way, as long as I'm heading toward home with at least 3 successively closer points, then the home direction will flip to approaching and will allow the event to fire. If I run up the street for a quick errand and I'm less than 5 minutes from the house, then you're right, I would not get an alert that I'm on the way home because the direction timeout is 5 minutes. I may play with that and change it to 3 minutes, but you have to be careful since if you are stuck in traffic and you don't move more than the direction buffer value (128 meters in my case), then the direction could switch to stopped and then require 3 more points before switching back to approaching.

[Timon]

For some reason automatic polling to my iCloud is not working. I can start a manual poll and that works just fine. I've tried setting the polling interval to everything from a minute to ten minutes and it never automatically poles. The dates never change unless I manually poll.

I've looked for any setting I might have missed but have yet to find one.

----------------------

Is Geofency no longer supported? I was using it on V1 but don't see it as an option in V2. Now to figure out which of the other two to use.

[MNB]

John, GeoFency is one of the many (11 total) apps that V2 is supporting. Look under "Users / Devices" if you look under "Choose user type to add" drop down you will see Geofency. As to automatic Polling, Thanxs to Randy, I have a few events that change my polling from every minute to 15 minutes to 1 hour and they seem to be working when I look at my iCloud polling interval it is set to what ever my event set it too the time stamp is at the time the polling was set if you look at your Account Status device the time should update accordantly. If this isn't happening then you might want to "reset account" your iCloud under >Service Accounts>PHLocation2 Tab for iCloud. Mike

[MNB]

Steve, thanxs for the update, like I said in my previous post I did not realize that PHL Direction device wasn't a near instantaneous updatable device, it wasn't until I was troubleshooting why my event did not executing when I thought it should and then as I looked at my iPhone devices time stamp was when my eureka realization occurred. I've since updated my events to use my Geo Fences (my previous methodology) as they update real time and I can determine if I'm approaching or depart. Mike

[madmellow]

I need help with my Granddaughter's iPhone. I added her iCloud account correctly, but it won't find her phone. I enabled logging and get (account name masked):

Polling Check complete.
2019-02-20 12:09:17.731 PollAccount iCloud poll called for: 29 c...@yahoo.com
2019-02-20 12:09:20.147 UpdateDevices iCloud Att:1 Content for 3 devices found for c...@yahoo.com Begin processing content.
2019-02-20 12:09:20.152 UpdateDevices iCloud Device: Cynthia’s Apple Watch for appleId:c...@yahoo.com ignored because not known.
2019-02-20 12:09:20.157 UpdateDevices iCloud Device: iPod touch for appleId:c...@yahoo.com ignored because not known.
2019-02-20 12:09:20.159 UpdateDevices iCloud Device: C.C.’s Iphone for appleId:c...@yahoo.com ignored because not known.
2019-02-20 12:09:20.226 PollAccount iCloud poll completed for: 29 c...@yahoo.com in 2481 ms.

What does "ignored but now known" mean and what do I need to do to make it be "known?"

Thanks,

Rick aka MadMellow

[Timon]

John, GeoFency is one of the many (11 total) apps that V2 is supporting. Look under "Users / Devices" if you look under "Choose user type to add" drop down you will see Geofency. As to automatic Polling, Thanxs to Randy, I have a few events that change my polling from every minute to 15 minutes to 1 hour and they seem to be working when I look at my iCloud polling interval it is set to what ever my event set it too the time stamp is at the time the polling was set if you look at your Account Status device the time should update accordantly. If this isn't happening then you might want to "reset account" your iCloud under >Service Accounts>PHLocation2 Tab for iCloud. Mike

I thought they would be where the other's were located but I was wrong. Thanks for pointing that out. Now to get all the locations I already have on my phone to show up. So far none are there yet.

[Timon]

This is strange. PHLocation will work when I turn it on but not PHLocation2. I'm using the same Device ID since I never got a new one.

Still working to find out what's going on.

EDIT: I did find this error in the logs.

File does not exist: /opt/HomeSeer/html/phlapi

[randy]

I thought they would be where the other's were located but I was wrong. Thanks for pointing that out. Now to get all the locations I already have on my phone to show up. So far none are there yet.

It works just like in V1. Create a GeoFency user device, post a fence entry from your phone and grab the Device ID from the HS log and enter it on the PHL tab of the GeoFency user root device. Once the User ID is on the root, fences will be auto created as they post.

If you still have V1 running, the device ID may not show up in the log.

[randy]

This is strange. PHLocation will work when I turn it on but not PHLocation2. I'm using the same Device ID since I never got a new one.

Still working to find out what's going on.

EDIT: I did find this error in the logs.
File does not exist: /opt/HomeSeer/html/phlapi

It is phl2api for PHL2. You will need to change the URL in all of your fences.

You post to /phl2api?dtype=GF either through MyHS or port forwarding.

[sooty]

Quick update:

I'm busy for a few days with some unscheduled work but I will get back to the plug-in at the weekend.

Paul..

[Timon]

It is phl2api for PHL2. You will need to change the URL in all of your fences.

You post to /phl2api?dtype=GF either through MyHS or port forwarding.

Being a beta I not surprised the data in the manual was wrong. It now updates and adds the Fences correctly.

Thanks

[Timon]

Two issues.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm sure the answer is Yes but just to make sure I'll ask.

I assume there is no issue with changing "inside" and "outside" to some other word that makes sense such as "arrived" and "departed", "near" and "not near" or anything else we like. I understand that when a new location is created it will be set to "inside" and "outside" however I would not object if we had a place where we could set our own defaults which would be used when a new location is created.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

What information is needed to make a GPS tracking device useable with PHLocate2? I tried to find at what is sent from Geofency but couldn't find anything. I was going to contact SPOT about their Spot Trace and what methods they can use to send out data using their API. However, I'd like to better understand how you can receive before I contact them.

[MNB]

Paul, in one of your recent updates you added "Any" to your PHL2 command is it possible to add "None" because I thought "Any" was for any known locations but it also includes "None", it would be nice to be able say: If User: X enters or exits know location: Any (known) but not None.

I like the ability to have None within the Current Locations but I have to create three statements to exclude Home and None when entering or exiting a known location, Mike

[randy]

Two issues.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm sure the answer is Yes but just to make sure I'll ask.

I assume there is no issue with changing "inside" and "outside" to some other word that makes sense such as "arrived" and "departed", "near" and "not near" or anything else we like. I understand that when a new location is created it will be set to "inside" and "outside" however I would not object if we had a place where we could set our own defaults which would be used when a new location is created.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

What information is needed to make a GPS tracking device useable with PHLocate2? I tried to find at what is sent from Geofency but couldn't find anything. I was going to contact SPOT about their Spot Trace and what methods they can use to send out data using their API. However, I'd like to better understand how you can receive before I contact them.

You can change the fence status text as you assume.

For how data is sent to PHL2, look at the help on custom position or custom fence devices.