Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

HomeKit How to exclude an always home iPad for a location based automation?

Mrfatboy said:
I just did two more tests.

First, I removed the iPad from the HomeKit. Only the two iPhones are members. I left the house with both iPhones and the Automation worked👍 So the problem is definitely related to the iPad.

Second, I added the iPad back into HomeKit. I turned off all location settings:

Find my location
Share my location
Privacy>system services>home
Privacy>Home>never
Turned on airplane mode

BTW this is a WiFi only iPad.

I left the house with all devices. The automation did NOT work😖

Somehow HomeKit thinks the iPad is always home.

I am not using any other 3rd party apps for automations.

Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...
Ah ok, I caused the misunderstanding. Confused myself since this will be a stay at home iPad. Yes, it does sound like the iPad causing your issues.

For kicks and giggles, since this is a stay at home iPad, have you tried enabling it as a Hub? Maybe it will recognize that and assume it’s going to stay home anyway and exclude it from location based automations.
 
Why isnt the iPad used with one of the iPhone user accounts? That’d fix it immediately.

Look into using the eve app. It’ll let you make the automation you want I believe. And it’ll even show in HomeKit automations.

Don’t other to turn off location service or WiFi on the iPad. It assumes you are home based on last seen location I believe.

With that said how did you start creating the automation? Did you start with people or time. It should still offer full people selections if done by people and then add time modifier. I’ve got several setup that way and choose at night for the timing.
 
I just did another test.

I took both iphones and ipad out of range of the house. I connected the ipad to the iphone hotspot. It now read in the same location as both of the phones. The automation worked, of course.

I then turned off all location settings (see above) of the ipad. Then turned off the ipad wifi and the automation worked again. I assume it remembers it's last known location.

The next step was to return home and only connect the ipad to the home wifi. I then left with both iphones to test. The automation failed :( I was hoping it would remember the last location out of the home.

So basically being on home wifi even with all location sharing settings off ATV Hub can still detect (via if same wifi) if devices are home or not.

I looked into the Eve app last night and that does not have the location options that I need.

The way I create the automation is first a Time of Day trigger AND a Nobody is Home condition. There is no way to exclude the ipad in that condition. Strangely, the exclusion option exists with "when the somebody leaves" trigger. Apple just dropped the ball on this one. Hopefully it will be fixed in ios15. There has to be a lot of people with stay at home ipads on the wall.

Now regarding, moving the ipad to my iphone apple id, that was a suggestion I considered. However, I don't know what the privacy ramifications would be. This is a public ipad in the house. I would not want texts, emails, calls, anything of my iphone on the ipad. If somebody has suggestions how to accomplish this I would be interested.

Other than that I will just have to remember to manually turn on the automation with I'm travelling. Not that big of deal nowadays. :)
 
You can just not sign into any of the other settings. So don’t setup mail texts etc. just turn all of those things off.

But if you have it working with starting with people leaving instead of time of day then there ya go…

It may be because they want you to start the automation with what the main first trigger is. And that is people leaving in this case. Not time of day. Maybe they assume time of day shouldn’t really be dependent on people leaving. Not sure. But I think all settings should be available in every option. Actually I think they should change it all so it’s just setup automation and then chose things to trigger and such. Not chose how to begin making it.
 
Mrfatboy said:
I just did another test.

I took both iphones and ipad out of range of the house. I connected the ipad to the iphone hotspot. It now read in the same location as both of the phones. The automation worked, of course.

I then turned off all location settings (see above) of the ipad. Then turned off the ipad wifi and the automation worked again. I assume it remembers it's last known location.

The next step was to return home and only connect the ipad to the home wifi. I then left with both iphones to test. The automation failed :( I was hoping it would remember the last location out of the home.

So basically being on home wifi even with all location sharing settings off ATV Hub can still detect (via if same wifi) if devices are home or not.

I looked into the Eve app last night and that does not have the location options that I need.

The way I create the automation is first a Time of Day trigger AND a Nobody is Home condition. There is no way to exclude the ipad in that condition. Strangely, the exclusion option exists with "when the somebody leaves" trigger. Apple just dropped the ball on this one. Hopefully it will be fixed in ios15. There has to be a lot of people with stay at home ipads on the wall.

Now regarding, moving the ipad to my iphone apple id, that was a suggestion I considered. However, I don't know what the privacy ramifications would be. This is a public ipad in the house. I would not want texts, emails, calls, anything of my iphone on the ipad. If somebody has suggestions how to accomplish this I would be interested.

Other than that I will just have to remember to manually turn on the automation with I'm travelling. Not that big of deal nowadays. :)
Click to expand...

The iPad is one of the three Home Hubs. There is no way this shouldn’t work when a Home Hub is expected to stay in the home for out of home control and automations to work but it appears it was the automation causing the issues. You should start with the “when people leave/arrive” and then add the time condition and exclude the iPad.

However, here’s how I did something similar to yours:

I have three garage doors and since they’re a secure device, meaning they won’t open on an automation without iPhone authentication, I had them routed to be controlled by out of the way smart plugs. So a smart plug for me, my wife and my mother in law. The automation is like this, if I arrive home, it turns the smart plug on. The smart plug turning on opens the respective garage door. However, for each of the smart plugs assigned to a specific person, I have to go into their Home app on their device and put “when I’m home.” Basically if you do “an accessory is controlled” or “time of day” as the trigger and not the condition, then you have to add the same automation to each participating device involved in that automation as a separate automation and select “when I’m not home” vs “when nobody is home.”

Hope that made sense. That’s why I was asking you to share the automation.
 
Itinj24 said:
You should start with the “when people leave/arrive” and then add the time condition and exclude the iPad.
Click to expand...
I don't think the two triggering options are interchangeable in the OP's situation. Here's what the OP wants:

We leave the home earlier in the day, and come back at some point in the evening. The lights turn on automatically at sunset. If it's 10PM and nobody's home, the lights should be turned off. If even one of us is at home already, nothing needs to be done.

If you start with the "A Time of Day Occurs" option, the logic's going to run like this:

Is the time 10PM? Looks like it is, so is anyone home right now? Looks like no. Okay, let's turn off the lights.

If you start with the "People Leave" option, the logic's going to run like this:

The last person just left! Is it between 10PM and 11PM? No, it's 10:45AM. Okay, let's do nothing.

...and then the lights come on at sunset, and stay on past 10PM even though no one's home.
 
Puonti said:
I don't think the two triggering options are interchangeable in the OP's situation. Here's what the OP wants:

We leave the home earlier in the day, and come back at some point in the evening. The lights turn on automatically at sunset. If it's 10PM and nobody's home, the lights should be turned off. If even one of us is at home already, nothing needs to be done.

If you start with the "A Time of Day Occurs" option, the logic's going to run like this:

Is the time 10PM? Looks like it is, so is anyone home right now? Looks like no. Okay, let's turn off the lights.

If you start with the "People Leave" option, the logic's going to run like this:

The last person just left! Is it between 10PM and 11PM? No, it's 10:45AM. Okay, let's do nothing.

...and then the lights come on at sunset, and stay on past 10PM even though no one's home.
Click to expand...
Automations give me a headache lol. A lot of trial and error especially when you have multiple triggers, conditions and devices going on overlapping with other complex automations.

So the OP kept mentioning that he was leaving the house to test the automation. Sounded like the iPad was causing a location based automation not to fire. Had to go back and read what was going on but thanks for clarifying. I’m gonna play around a bit…. Still not sure why the iPad can’t be excluded in this when iPads are able to be used as Home Hubs.

@Mrfatboy… have you tried enabling the iPad as a Home Hub? It may be required to exclude it from automations. Who knows what the hell Apple does under the hood with every iOS update.
 
Puonti said:
I don't think the two triggering options are interchangeable in the OP's situation. Here's what the OP wants:

We leave the home earlier in the day, and come back at some point in the evening. The lights turn on automatically at sunset. If it's 10PM and nobody's home, the lights should be turned off. If even one of us is at home already, nothing needs to be done.

If you start with the "A Time of Day Occurs" option, the logic's going to run like this:

Is the time 10PM? Looks like it is, so is anyone home right now? Looks like no. Okay, let's turn off the lights.

If you start with the "People Leave" option, the logic's going to run like this:

The last person just left! Is it between 10PM and 11PM? No, it's 10:45AM. Okay, let's do nothing.

...and then the lights come on at sunset, and stay on past 10PM even though no one's home.
Click to expand...

Yes. This is correct👍

I also did a final test by turning “use as a hub” for the iPad (still on its own Apple ID). The automation failed. The iPad is still considered at home (which it is 🤣)

I have attached the picture of the automation.

For now it’s not a big deal. It just would have been nice if the HomeKit automation code was fully implemented as it should be. Dare to dream🤣🤣🤣👍
 

Attachments

  • 0B0BB8CB-FA0F-4EF5-BB75-34AE0490362D.png
    0B0BB8CB-FA0F-4EF5-BB75-34AE0490362D.png
    402.2 KB · Views: 105
I’m gonna try this with one of my iPads. Something could’ve changed in the past year since I removed my wall mounted iPad but I was definitely able to create automations to exclude the iPad from location.
 
I will be interested in what you come up with. Please report back👍👍😀
 
Mrfatboy said:
I will be interested in what you come up with. Please report back👍👍😀
Click to expand...
Absolutely… If not for your thread, I wouldn’t even bother lol so would only be right if I posted results and such. I’m gonna try with my iPad Pro, which is on my AppleID and my kid’s iPad on a different AppleID.

Wonder if it has anything to do with “Last Known Location.” My wall mount was an older iPad Air and might’ve not had that feature at the time. This wall mount was also on a separate AppleID.

Absolutely boggles my mind though that the iPad can be used as a Home Hub and not be excluded from location based automations. That makes zero sense to me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back