#Android phone/companion app location sometimes jumps between actual location and home

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

odd niche
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I have an android phone set against my person in HA, and use the number of people in zone.home to trigger automations for leaving and getting back to my house.
For months now, the phones location sometimes jumps between where I actually am and somewhere in my zone.home like I'm teleporting between home and just down the road, making the automations fire repeatedly.
I've only seen it happen when I've been pretty close to home, and it doesn't happen all the time. It seems to happen as I'm leaving the house rather than arriving.
In the attached pic of a map it shows both leaving and getting home. The dimmer line shows the problem, which was as I was leaving.

I've seen it when using a larger high accuracy zone and while I had an automation getting the phones location every 30 seconds while in a larger zone.
I've been seeing it for months, over multiple recent versions of Home Assistant and Android.
The phone is the only device set against my person in HA.
The android app has permissions set for using location and battery whenever it wants.
I've seen it when the phones been on, plugged into power and had google maps navigating somewhere, as well as when it's screen's been off while in my pocket.
I'm not logged into any browsers or HA apps on any other devices as this happens (I do log into HA on my laptop, but it was turned off and in the boot during the period shown in the attached pics).
Nothing else on the phone shows the same teleporting behaviour (google maps is spot on and doesn't do it, for example)

I've cleared data/cache for the phone app, removed the phone from HA and then set it back up but it still happens.

I'm not sure where to head with it, or how to figure out the cause.
Does anyone have any suggestions please?

3c24937ffb5426fe1a4434e5acb85ae9c3ace6c3.png image.png
odd forge
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yeah I seem to have similar issues tried all sorts of combinations and permissions, sensors. web is filled with similar problems since years. tested on a newish google pixel 8a and couple-year old ios/iphone. it just seems buggy and some people indicate bug or potential issue with google api which I would want to avoid in first place, should that be the case.

  • imho best bet is the street/number "geocoded" location results. for some reason those seem to update rather reliably compared to even non or high-precision and full full full 1min interval and background etc. permission set everywhere in the app and android/ios... yet to still simply not update for 1-2 hours or more.

tried using map card and leveraging more reliable "geocoded location" updates but without much surprise theres no automagical function to convert back to regular latlong and whatnot.

if there's a detour or way to perform geocoded back to latlong I'm pretty sure most of the issues can be avoided by simply leveraging that with a map-card instead. (at least I hope so)

odd niche
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It's kinda good to know I'm not on my own, but tbh the problem sucks.
My best guess is it's something buggy with either the HA android app or with what HAs doing with the location data from it.
I'd like to know how to dig into it further to try to narrow it down, but I'm not finding much to get into.
Lots of other stuff behaves just fine on the exact same phone and android version etc, so a solid location really should be possible.

I found someone mentioning similar on github last night, who's using a Template condition in automations to work around the problem:
{{ trigger.from_state.last_changed < now() - timedelta(seconds=60) }}
https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/110439
The source of location data's entirely different, which might suggest its the HA server end rather than the phone end?
It seems linked to a fixed issue though, so maybe the problem isn't the same.

The logic seems sound though, with it making sure the From state has been the case for a minute.. which I hope'll stop it jumping around so much without meaning I've got to be in the zone for a period before things fire like with For 0:01:00🤞

I went out earlier today and didn't see it happening, but then it doesn't happen every time so I'm far from convinced yet.

Maybe I should get a fresh issue raised

odd forge
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yea i dont think we experience identical issue or specific problem but potentially related with baseline problem. im still in process of basic setup of my very first zigbee ecosystem, split heatpump ac and full detail building and exterior tmphum surveillance, related door and window contact states. some first apollo mmwave presence radar, smart integration of co2 levels. dumb smart ir blaster remote control integration of our led stand lights etc.

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  • despite repositioning and closet optical wifi router nw rerouting and finally minimal cellar signal 3 floors down first attempt with a cheap wifi extender dont seem promising. hopefully i can test relais via smartplug zigbee routers at neighbor floors if they get a free smoke detector and tmphum sensor/surveillance. hope to see and try some potential geocoded location workaround as that seems to update way faster and more reliably. possibly with less requirements in mobile battery drain or sensor/app access rights. just not the main priority right now. need to implement more things to reduce visually staring at and analyzing indoor vs outdoor tmphum sensors vs. summer top floor heat atm. but really curious about potential geocoded location workaround
odd niche
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@odd forge & @lofty stirrup Sorry, but I don't understand how your last few messages have any relevance to 'Android phone/companion app location sometimes jumps between actual location and home'.

If you find similar to the problem I described, or have any helpful suggestions then sharing them's great. If you mean to be discussing something else or any unrelated problem, maybe a new post would be a better place for that?

odd forge
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Yeah I'm simply not a robot, nor a fan on hyper thread fixation in general. especially when meta-search works well within unstructured convos. Aside from my little detour that specific evaluation is probably one of the more promising workarounds. Unless the underlying HA/companion issue is fixed or improved I'm not sure if there's many other options, at least not that I currently know of. But maybe others chime in with other options. Other lad probably another case of new or erratic interaction with (imho) unnatural threads.

lofty stirrup
odd niche
odd niche
# odd forge Yeah I'm simply not a robot, nor a fan on hyper thread fixation in general. espe...

I don't mean to insist on any hyper thread fixation. It'd be good if I could make sense of any side-chatter though tbh.
I honestly can't pick out what you were on about. Something about WiFi, then ZigBee, mention that your trouble isn't exactly the same as mine but with no explanation of the trouble you're facing?
I'm up for pretty general conversations, but they're gonna have to be coherent for me to join in.🤣