Not any GPS mind you… Okay, what I really mean is that there are no GPS devices out there with an API. I’ve been working an home automation solution for myself and I’d very much like it to be able to ask for my current location in order to perform specific actions throughout the day. While this can sound a little ‘Big Brother-ish’ there are lots of things that I’d like to do with such a capability:
- Test if I’m home before blindly starting a morning routine of trying to wake me up†
- If I’m away, perhaps play some music or talk radio over some networked speakers so it seems like someone is home
- If I’m away, determine what timezone I’m in and do my morning routine for wherever I am
- Determine if maybe I haven’t moved in three days and call for help because I might be dead.
IFTTT is a great resource for a lot of my automation needs, but the location channel doesn’t do enough for me – it’s strictly trigger events. I can’t ASK IFTT where I am, I have to voluntarily tell that information when I enter/leave a geofence I set up.
I turned to pyicloud to interface with iCloud (and thus my phone) to see if I can’t just pull the current coords from my phone, but it isn’t updated enough to be accurate. I found that more often times, in the morning hours, it doesn’t have any idea where I am (leading me to believe iCloud only keeps your “active” lat/long for some arbitrary period before throwing it out).
Devices like Tile or TrackR are great with GPS, but don’t give you access to that information. Same for services like life360.
It’s to the point I’ve considered side-loading my own app on my iPhone to provide this capability for me.
† - My morning routine consists of playing music until I get up, performing mental math to get the brain going, guided yoga to really wake me up, and then a weather report for the day.