Swap Life360 For OwnTracks in Home Assistant

In this video we talk about adding Owntracks to your Home Assistant Presence Detection solution.
The process is easy and Owntracks keeps your location data private. And it works well.
So if you are using Life360, and looking for a more private solution, Owntracks may be the integration you are looking for.
Video Chapters:
00:00 - A more private presence tracker in home Assistant using Owntracks
01:47 - What is Owntracks and why you should use it
02:27 - Setup Owntracks in Home Assistant
05:52 - A Simple Presence Detection System in home Assistant
9:03 - A Cloud Service Rant
Links:
The Markup Article - themarkup.org/privacy/2021/12...
My Presence Detection Config
Family Group: github.com/thejeffreystone/ho...
Family has Left Automation: github.com/thejeffreystone/ho...
Family has arrived Automation: github.com/thejeffreystone/ho...
Family is away script: github.com/thejeffreystone/ho...
Family is home script: github.com/thejeffreystone/ho...
#homeassistant #owntracks #presencedetection
Who am I?
My Name is Jeff. I am an DIY-er and Automator of boring things. And, of course, a huge Home Assistant fan. Oh, I also live in a house that tweets.
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Github - github.com/thejeffreystone
Twitter - / thejeffreystone / / slackerlabs
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[@louisefrancheberon1261]

Installed Life360 a few mins ago, opened KZbin to find videos on how to use it, then I came upon your video and I immediately uninstalled it. Thanks for the info!

[@emiellr]

You have that voice that companies put on their instruction videos, which makes it really easy to listen to for longer periods of time. Thanks for making the 'boring automation' videos, they're really helpful!

[@SlackerLabs]

I hope that is a good thing. haha. Glad its been helpful.

[@emiellr]

@@SlackerLabs sure is!

[@deez-nutskroll7223]

Love the video. You got a lot of very good one’s. Thank you for what you do.

[@RAKRail]

Another good video. As I'm getting ready to move to Home Assistant, I've been looking at using Bluetooth for HA status, alarm, etc... You may want to look at that as well. I like the fact that is is information that is all kept local.

[@SlackerLabs]

Yea. It works. And works well if you just want to do things based on home and not home. NMAP works for that as well. Unfortunately for me I have a lot of automations based on where people are in the world. Things like vacation mode turns on based on how far we are from the house. Notifications when people leave work along with estimated time until home to help whoever is cooking dinner. And just the ability to report where people are when trigger via a voice command.

[@ducsue751]

I am going to give this ago once more. Does the owntrack location needs to be set to 'always' ???

[@plousmike]

Hey. Just trying to make it work but i am stuck for days now. I use my own domain name for home assistant, and i use port forward to my router for 8123 to home assistant rpi3b+ The issue is that i get a weird "Trust Anchor for certification path not found". Any ideas to solve this problem? Great video btw!!

[@KrispKiwi]

Curious, is there any benefit to this over the default location tracking in the home assistant app?

[@SlackerLabs]

I’m not sure it gives you anything you don’t get from the HA app. Personally I have noticed some weird things with GPS in the ha app but that may be where I’m at.

[@limp15000]

Was going to ask them same question. Quite new to HA but presence detection works well.

[@dretwav]

Thanks for the guidance. Definitely the hardest task was getting the url and encryption key into the app on the phone. Fortunately? the data is stored in clear text in the .storage folder so I emailed it to my phone where I could cut and paste. I am not sure I would have ever gotten it typed correctly. Surely they don't need a url that long.

[@SlackerLabs]

Apple notes here. But yeah.

[@GroupNuzil]

Just a quick question, with the home assistant app installed on my family mobiles, isn't this enough for presence detection? What benefit do you see with a third party app?

[@SlackerLabs]

I have used the HA app. And it does work well for me most of the time. My only issue is that sometimes I could be sitting stationary in a zone and it will process and update that puts me out of the zone, and then the next update I am back in the zone. Which of can kick off some automation that causes things ti happen at the wrong time. I find some of the third party ones dont have that issue. It could be my phone, or my cell service. Not sure. But I think if the HA apps works for all your use cases you should just go it with.

[@JiltedGeek]

Thanks for another great video. I do have a question though. Is there a specific reason that yuou do not use the iOS integrated location options? I use only my iOS location in HA and so far it has worked fine for me. But maybe I am missing something important here, so please teach me :)

[@JiltedGeek]

Oh nevermind, I found your response in the comments below :)

[@4sp3rti]

I've managed to do the same without exposing my home assistant, by using an external mqtt server only for location data. It is obviously secured, with letsencrypt certs, and only home assistant can connect to it (via a dedicated port). I also set up some rules to filter the topics, also to make sure my internal mqtt traffic never goes outside.

[@SlackerLabs]

I had this setup for a while. Actually I had used an nginx server with a random port handle the forwarding to an internal mqtt server. I think I may include that setup in a future video. I am a mqtt fan. But I dont think many people are using it.

[@florianosabatini4016]

Hi Jeff, how you have been able to manage no guest at home? in other words how to create the entity_id: input_boolean.guest_mode ? Many thanks for your great video

[@SlackerLabs]

You can create it under the helpers option in the settings. It's called a toggle in the UI but it creates an input_boolean.

[@MrToup]

Really nice video as usual. I love the organisation you have around your automations. One question though, what are the benefits to use owntracks over the official Home Assistant IOS app ?

[@SlackerLabs]

Honestly I have found it a bit more reliable. I have noticed that when I use the app as my presence detection the gps bounces around a lot and I get automations triggering when I am sitting stationary because home assistant reported my location as being out of the zone. Not sure why yet. But it’s a bit annoying. For example I have an automation fire when I leave the zone for my kids school. And while I’m sitting there waiting for pickup the automation will say I left when I havn't moved. Since using OwnTracks I haven’t had that happen.

[@MrToup]

@@SlackerLabs thanks for the insights ! I have to check what I automated based on our presences. It can be that I did not realize the problem yet. Or maybe I have other sensors like Tile or my router which correct this.

[@SlackerLabs]

It could just be my phone or the area too. Really Life360 has been the best. But perhaps not the best solution anymore.

[@marti_abernathey]

@@SlackerLabs so much this. I'm going to look at owntracks again. But it's so solid presence wise

[@ShoruKen]

FYI, the HA app may work better on Android phones than iOS phones. My wife and I both have Samsung, and the presence detection is very good. My daughter has an iPhone and I notice the presence detection can be delayed by a few minutes. I'm not sure what Life360 or OwnTracks does to work better on iOS.

[@lwizinski]

Hey Jeff, why did you opt for HTTP rather than MQTT?

[@SlackerLabs]

Strictly because I know quite a few of my audience don't do MQTT and it will work out with a basic Home Assistant install. But the MQTT method is solid and its how I origially connect Life360 back when I was running Hassbian.

[@SEOng-gs7lj]

the homeassistant app (on android at least) already has location tracking right?

[@SlackerLabs]

Yes it does. As does the iOS one. And if that gets you what you need out of your presence detection then no need for another one. But so far I haven't found the the HA app one to be as reliable as Owntracks in terms of timely updates, or accurate updates. At least on iOS.

[@EsotericArctos]

Does that toggle in Life360 do anything outside of California?? All the text on that page talks about California only and does not say it will stop them in any other location

[@SlackerLabs]

I'm not sure. I think it's there because California for sure. These apps tend to build towards the strictest rules which in the US ends to be California. But you bring up a good question. I dont think we have that information, and I am not sure they would tells us if it didn't.

[@EsotericArctos]

@@SlackerLabs I think I will just migrate over to OwnTracks and not take the risk.

[@SlackerLabs]

@@EsotericArctos I think you will find it comparable. I dont think you get the same level of detail like actually street names if you want that. But I find it really solid.

[@craigiedema1707]

What's the benefit this over the native HA Presence Detection?

[@SlackerLabs]

If the HA app is working for you there may be no benefit. The only reason to use a present tracker outside of that is you want more information that the HA gives or you want to track a device without using providing a login to your home assistant. OwnTracks can connect directly to a mqtt server so you wouldn’t need a HA login. But personally I have found life360 and OwnTracks more reliable than the HA app

[@brianredmond7891]

Why do I get an error NSURLErrorDomain - 1202 The certificate for this server is invalid? Causes my entity to go unavailable.

[@SlackerLabs]

That sounds like perhaps a certificate issue. I know iOS can be weird about certificates. It might be a port issue unless you have something like nginx acting as a proxy to forward SSL and non-ssl to the right port in Home Assistant.

[@jefffusco8009]

I moved in with my friends husband cause he went to jail. When I moved in i was being watched and stalked online by alot of people to the people at work were watching me and they were saying stuff at me i walked out

[@tomaszapczuk7761]

Why just not use HA app to do the tracking?

[@SlackerLabs]

Depends on your use case. For me the HA app tracker has pretty drastic swings in gps coordinates while stationary. And if you want to track someone but not give them access to HA OwnTracks can help. Maybe you want to track velocity. I don’t think velocity is something you get from the HA app. But it really depends on what you want present detection for.

[@nappyjim]

When I tried using HA to track, it wasnt updating my wifes location for HOURS. Turns out that it only updates when the user opens the app. (At least thats how it was about 8 months ago)

[@rickisajedi]

@@nappyjim if you're using an iPhone, that's an ios setting. You can set each app to be able access location services never, only while using the app, or always. Default is only when using app. Note that this setting sometimes gets reset on ios updates.

[@SlackerLabs]

I think if background refresh is on it updates more frequently. At least on iOS. But it does seem slow. I could be in the home zone for a a full minute..about the time from entering the zone to parking the car..and the app wouldn’t mark me as home.

[@RJMaker]

@@rickisajedi I noticed the OwnTracks Andriod version "Always Allow" is not an option. Only "Deny" and "Allow only while using the app". Not sure yet if this is going to effect anything though.

[@ll-yh7pg]

Alerts have been delayed and sound notifications silent which makes life360 useless. Took a while you admit it is a known issue. Still no fix after a month.

[@SlackerLabs]

It's clear you didn't watch the video. But thanks for taking the time to make a comment!

[@Magiske-michaelDk]

When i add owntracks to homeassistant i get translation error, so i Cant set it up

[@SlackerLabs]

What language is your home assistant using? That sounds like the add on might not be able to translate to the language. That’s a guess of course. I remember seeing others with language issues.

[@Magiske-michaelDk]

@@SlackerLabs i tried to change to english and they worked. then I could change back to Danish. thanks for the help :)

[@FrankGraffagnino]

I don't think the data is the only issue... even if they pay you for the data... if you tie your home infrastructure to cloud accounts you don't control... you are building up a system that will break any time those cloud services change anything that they want to. Maybe they decide to stop supporting that product. Maybe they turn off the API you are using. Maybe they change the cost. Maybe they sell the company and you don't trust the new company. Maybe everything stays the same but they don't make the app for your version of android or iOS. It goes on and on. Control of the data is one thing... but having control of the actual hardware itself is another.

[@SlackerLabs]

Yep, which is why you have to understand what the risk to your smart home when those things happen and then decide if that risk is worth the benefit. But honestly, local hardware's is some what out of my control as well. Since 2014 I have had more local only hardware fail than anything that leverages a cloud service. And anything cloud based that has failed was easily remedied.by pointing it to a new service. The bottom line is none of this stuff lasts forever. You are going to be replacing hardware because it fails due to mechanical issues or cloud service changes. For me the decision comes down to how critical it is. If its critical to my smart home, and that is pretty much just security stuff, then it has to be 100% local. If its just providing the ability to automate something that I could just as easily handle manually then the risk of cloud service changes that break that functionality are pretty low.

[@makoesim]

Owntracks only work when app in foreground, and that makes it totally useless

[@SlackerLabs]

Hmm. My version doesn’t. Did something change? I don’t have my running in the foreground and I haven’t had any issues with it arming or disarming my security. But I also don’t know the last time I updated it.

[@makoesim]

@@SlackerLabs i am using it to open driveway gate and i disappointed every time i reach house, door does not open until i open the app, i tried to leave app open in background and that didn't helped in any thing