CaliChris wrote:So I have been using this plugin for a couple weeks now but it rarely acts the way it should. I have a scheduled manual update check every few minutes to see if I am home, and once I come within .1 miles it should execute a few actions. It has worked a few times however the majority of the time I will come home and look at the iPhone device info which usually says it is a few miles away even though I have the Maps application open with it actively fixed to my location. When I run a manual update, multiple times, with Maps app opened to ensure an accurate location fix it will still show I am miles away but then if I reload the plugin from the plugin menu the iPhone device instantly updates to a .01 distance away and executes my actions. I checked the log and nothing looks odd, there are successful entries for the scheduled update which shows it was able to login and update. Anyone know what could be going on here? I love the concept of this plugin if it can work reliably in this way.
The issue here, is that there is no way with the Find my iPhone service (that Apple supplies) to guarantee when the GPS location has been updated.
You can request the location to be updated, 1, 2, 4, 100 times, and there is no way to guarantee that the data has been updated, since Apple seems to cache the data...
I don't recommend a poll time below 15 minutes, since Apple seems to be more likely to cache the data, depending on how often you poll for the location....
Find My iDevices relies on the data from Apple's service. If that data is not updated in a timely manner, then FMiD can't do anything to force the data to be updated.
(This is separate from the Fencing issue, there is a known issue with the fencing implementation, where a device may not be listed as being inside a fence when it is...)
You have to remember that the Find My iPhone service is only suppose to be used by Apple, they do not currently support the use of the service by any other applications. FMiD relies on reverse engineering the Find My iPhone service, and it does a reasonable job of this... But only Apple can tell you how and when the Find My iPhone data is cached....
- Benjamin