HomeKit GeoFencing with home hub

Question

bodhi_1980 Author

Level 1

23 points

HomeKit GeoFencing with home hub

iOS 11 supports GeoFencing for timed and mulit-user automations based on the home app. 🙂

It appears to work intermittently, meaning that some people can do it and others can't. Since apple doesn't yet support a HomeKit community forum I'll put this question here in AppleTV because thats what I use as a home hub.

Here's my setup:

my phone is iPhone8+ running iOS11
family member is iPhone8+ running iOS11
AppleTV 4thGen running iOS11 acting as home hub (in settings it says connected)
everyone is using keychain with 2FA
everyone has global settings in iCloud of granting permission to Home

Yet in my home setup when setting up Automation for "when people arrive"

I see

Action: Greyed out words of "I Arrive"

To run automations based on other people's arrival or departure, make sure you home hub's software is up-to-date

Question: Everything appears to be setup correctly and yet I still can't do person(ala phone) based geo-fencing to trigger scenes and automations.

What gives? I've searched everywhere and all the answers on the forum say people got this work but those who say they got it to work didn't say how

(for context I have Hue Bulbs with a Hue Hub that supports Homekit) so technically speaking everything is prepped for geofencing. Yet no dice 😟

Is there an obscure setting somewhere that I am missing?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Sep 28, 2017 11:04 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

_Stephen_L

Level 1

4 points

Dec 17, 2017 10:51 AM in response to bodhi_1980

I had the same issue and solved it by allowing location services for the Home app, which in hindsight makes sense (settings-privacy-location services-Home). As soon as I enabled location services for the Home app, the "People Arrive" and "People Leave" functions in automation were no longer greyed out.

Reply

Answer 2

bodhi_1980 Author

Level 1

23 points

Sep 30, 2017 7:22 PM in response to surfingarbo

I did this as well and it worked.

There is a new update to tvOS as well and that has to update first and the below steps worked

1. Sign out of my iCloud account on my AppleTV

2. Restart the AppleTV

3. Sign back into my iCloud account on my AppleTV

4. Open the Home App on my iPhone

5. Turn the setting for using my AppleTV as the Home Hub back on

6. You can now use geofencing and specific invited users to trigger automations and scenes

Reply

Answer 3

Case77

Level 1

4 points

Jan 13, 2018 10:29 AM in response to bodhi_1980

Once you have the Homekit activated on your AppleTV, make sure Location Services are turned ON in 2 locations of your iPhones Privacy menu.

On the iPhone, ensure these areas are turned ON:

1): Settings/Privacy/Location Services/Home

2) Settings/Privacy/Location Services/System Services/Homekit

Once those two areas are activated as ON, you will see in the Home app that the geobased location options are no longer shaded.

Hope this helps!

Reply

Answer 4

Dsikic

Level 1

15 points

Oct 2, 2017 8:41 PM in response to bodhi_1980

Method above doesn’t work without this:

I resolved this problem by going to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services then turn on HomeKit. This will allow HomeKit to use your location for automation processes.

Reply

Answer 5

Sep 30, 2017 6:20 PM in response to bodhi_1980

I plan on trying this when I get home from work: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8076224?start=0&tstart=0

Reply

Answer 6

bodhi_1980 Author

Level 1

23 points

Sep 29, 2017 6:27 AM in response to surfingarbo

It is maddening. I see other users on here saying they got it to work and I feel like its a simple setting somewhere I am missing. I have gone through every setting I can find on this.

So frustrated with Apple for lousy documentation about this.

Reply

Answer 7

Sep 29, 2017 6:24 AM in response to bodhi_1980

I have the same issue also. Philips Hue hub up to date, all iOS and tvOS devices on iOS 11 and up to date etc. Location services turned on for every device.

Reply