iCloud3 v3.0.2a (3/30/2024)

Important Links:

• iCloud3 v3 Documentation is here
• The Installing iCloud3 chapter describes migrating from iCloud3 v2 and installing iCloud3 for the first time

Change Log

1. ICLOUD SERVER ERROR MESSAGE (Fixed) - When the iCloud servers did not respond with location information, the 'no response from iCloud servers' error was displayed correctly. This was followed by another unrelated error which should have not been displayed.
2. ALERTS, STARTUP ERRORS, WARNING MESSAGES (New) - Unusual errors or warning events for iPhones, iPads, and Watches are displayed in a green bar on the first line of the Event Log when the event occurs. The message will continue displaying until the event is corrected. This includes (1) startup errors, (2) no data received from iCloud Location Servers, (3) when a device is offline, (4) when a device's location is over 5-hours old and (5) when tracking is paused. The messages from AirPods and iPods are only displayed when their Event Log screen is displayed. See the Event Log chapter in iCloud3 documentation for more information.
3. OTHER - Minor code corrections and cleanup.

iCloud3 v3.0.1.1 (3/24/2024)

1. Fixed a problem writing log info to the icloud3-0.log log file when HA did not have the logger: statement in the configuration.yaml file.

iCloud3 v3.0.1 (10/22/2024)

iCloud3 v3 was updated to an official release on the iCloud3 v3 Development GitHub Repo on 3/5/2024. This is a minor update to that version.. It will be released for General Availability in April, 2024.

v3.0.1 - 3/20/2024

1. UPDATE SENSOR & DEVICE TRACKER ENTITIES (Improvement) - Changed the method of updating these items at the request of @balloob (Paulus Schousten, HA Founder) to prevent a potential Home Assistant lockup when doing an update.
2. LOG FILE (Improvement) - Changed the method of updating the iCloud3 log files. Also changed some of the record formatting to improve readability.
3. WAZE & CALC DISTANCE SENSORS (Fixed) - They were not being created.
4. UPDATE DEVICES CONFIGURE SCREEN (Fixed) - The Picture parameter was listing every image file in the all of the www/ sub-directories. A filter was added to limit the search to specific directories. The filter is defined on the Tracking and Other Parameters screen. Only the first 25 image files in a directory will be displayed to prevent overloading the HA dropdown list handler.
5. FIXED INTERVAL (Improvement) - The lowest interval was reduced from 5-minutes to 3-minutes.
6. DIRECTION OF TRAVEL (Improvement) - Changed the way this is being updated. If the distance from Home is more than 400m/250mi, it will be set to FarAway.
7. STATIONARY ZONE (Fixed) - The second device to enter an existing Stationary Zone was not saving the Stationary Zone info correctly.

iCloud3 v3.0.rc10.4 (2/18/2024)

This release fixes a few bugs with the Fixed Interval parameter introduced in rc10.1. It also simplifies access to NearBy device distance attributes and cleans up some code.

Gary

Important Links

Installing using HACS - iCloud3 is not available on HACS unless you have set it up as a custom repository. See here for instructions on how to do that and then install it. If you just go to HACS and do the installation, you will be installing v2.4.7, not v3.
Manual Download and Install - Go to the iCloud3 Releases page here. Scroll down past the notes, then select Assets, then select icloud3.zip. Download the zip file and unzip it into the /config/custom_components/icloud3 directory. Then restart HA.
Migrating from v2.4._ - See here for instructions on migrating from from an older version.
iCloud3 v3 Documentation - It is still in process, does not include the latest updates to iCloud3 and can be found here

Change Log

1. FIXED INTERVAL -

   1. Normally, when a device is getting close to Home, the location interval changes to 15-secs to be able to update the Home distance very quickly. This lets automations fire when approaching Home in addition to when entering the Home zone. When a Fixed Interval was being used, the Fixed Interval was overriding the short interval time iCloud3 calculated based on distance from Home so iCloud/FamShr locates were never being done. Additionally, a locate request would not be done if the Old Location Threshold was greater or the same as the Fixed Interval value and old locations were being accepted.

      Now, iCloud3 will calculate the interval using the distance from Home as it normally does. If that value is less than 5-minutes, it will be used. Otherwise, the Fixed Interval will be used if it is set.

   2. Fixed a problem where the results from one device with a Fixed Interval was being used for another nearby device that was not using a Fixed Interval.

   3. The minimum Fixed Interval is still 5-minutes.

2. TRAVEL TIME INTERVAL AND NEXT LOCATION UPDATE MULTIPLIER - (Configure Settings > Tracking Parameters screen) - This value (.1 to .8) is used to determine the Interval and when the Next Location Update should be made using the travel time to Home. For example, if the travel time is 8-mins and the multiplier is .5, the next update will be done in 4-mins. This has been changed from entering a decimal value (.1 to .8) to a drop down list that goes from Shortest Interval Time, to Shorter Interval Time, to Average, Longer and Longest. It defaults to Average (.5*TravelTime) and you will probably never change it.

3. HOME_DISTANCE & ZONE_DISTANCE SENSOR - Changed the way the zone and devices distances are displayed to provide better accuracy and make it easier to display them on a dashboard screen entity card. The iCloud3 documentation > Sensor Attribute chapter was updated to provide screenshots and example code that will help explain how to do this.

4. OTHER STUFF - Fixed a few other bugs. Cleaned up some code.

iCloud3 v3.0.rc10.3 (2/11/2024)

A few bug fixes.
This release fixes the last few bugs in rc10.1 and rc10.2, addresses an HA change in 2024.2 and cleans up some code.

Gary

Important Links

Installing using HACS - iCloud3 is not available on HACS unless you have set it up as a custom repository. See here for instructions on how to do that and then install it. If you just go to HACS and do the installation, you will be installing v2.4.7, not v3.
Manual Download and Install - Go to the iCloud3 Releases page here. Scroll down past the notes, then select Assets, then select icloud3.zip. Download the zip file and unzip it into the /config/custom_components/icloud3 directory. Then restart HA.
Migrating from v2.4._ - See here for instructions on migrating from from an older version.
iCloud3 v3 Documentation - It is still in process, does not include the latest updates to iCloud3 and can be found here

Change Log

1. MobApp Device Verification - Fixed a problem where a device that had an iCloud FamShr setup error would not be tracked at all even though it could still be tracked with the Mobile App.
2. Exit Zone when not in a zone - When this happened, the device would get into a 20-30 secs update loop. This has been fixed to only do this one time.
3. iCloud Account username/password change - Fixed a problem caused by changing the username or password and then trying to Restart iCloud3.
4. FamShr and Mobile App Devices that are not Tracked - Changed the message in the Event Log to indicate the device is not used by iCloud3.
5. Configure Settings - Fixed an '\T' error starting with HA 2024.2.
6. Export Event Log, icloud3-0.log - Improved the readability of log file records.
7. Configure Settings > Special Zones screen - Fixed the 'srep' vs 'step' type in the code that prevented access to the screen.

iCloud3 v3.0.rc10.2 (2/6/2024)

This release fixes a few things and updates two big things that touched a lot modules.

1. All references to the iOS App have been changed to Mobile App. The iOS App was referenced all over the place.
2. iCloud3 now uses the same HA Zone internal settings (latitude, longitude, radius, passive state) instead of loading them when starting up. The result is changes to existing zones, and adding and deleting zones now does not require an iCloud3 restart to load the new zone settings.. This change was in all the code dealing with device tracking and stationary zone handling.
3. It also changes a few messages on the Event Log during start up and changes the minimum zone interval times to 5-minutes to prevent conflicts with old location timings.

Gary

Important Links

Installing using HACS - iCloud3 is not available on HACS unless you have set it up as a custom repository. See here for instructions on how to do that and then install it. If you just go to HACS and do the installation, you will be installing v2.4.7, not v3.
Manual Download and Install - Go to the iCloud3 Releases page here. Scroll down past the notes, then select Assets, then select icloud3.zip. Download the zip file and unzip it into the /config/custom_components/icloud3 directory. Then restart HA.
Migrating from v2.4._ - See here for instructions on migrating from from an older version.
iCloud3 v3 Documentation - It is still in process, does not include the latest updates to iCloud3 and can be found here

Change Log:

1. NEARBY DEVICES - Changed the distance to another device routine so it would not calculate the distance to 'itself', which is always 0.
2. WAZE HISTORY MAP - Fixed a problem displaying the Waze History gps locations on a map.
3. MOBILE APP INTEGRATION - A check for the Mobile App Integration installation will now be done when setting up the iOS App devices and, if the Mobile App setup had not be completed, again after HA had finished starting up.
4. HA ZONE ADD/DELETE/UPDATE - When a zone is added, deleted or updated on the HA Settings > Area & Zones screen, iCloud3 had to be restarted to load the new zone settings. This is not longer needed. iCloud3 will now update the zone settings when they are made or on the next location update.
5. IOS APP --> MOBILE APP - All references to 'iOS App' have been changed to 'Mobile App' for consistency with HA.
6. CONFIGURE SETTINGS - Fixed a problem loading the Device Picture and Event Log www directory selection lists when HA was installed on system in a directory other than /config.
7. WAZE HISTORY - Fixed a problem where refreshing the HA Map Waze History Locations could be started again when it was already running.
8. WATCH & OTHER NO-MOBILE APP DEVICES - When an iPhone leaves a zone, devices without the Mobile App (Watch) are updated immediately to see if they are still in the zone or have exited too. If the last locate time for these devices is still valid, the update was not done and they remained in the zone. Now, if the location time is within the last 3-4 minutes, a location request will be made until the location time is after the first device left the zone.
9. EVENT LOG - Some updates were made to the Event Log (v3.0.17). They will be installed and a browser refresh on all devices will be needed.
10. EVENT LOG - Distances are now displays all distances in the Event Log in miles/feet or kilometers/meters based on the parameter setting.

iCloud3 v3 - Release Candidate 9 (12/20/2023)

This is a pretty big release with fixes for the issues that have been identified in rc8 (bugs and enhanced startup error checking). There are also several new functions that I solve some problems I have had when on vacation and in another time zone (local time display is now supported) and when I realized I have not been keeping up with logging trips to a business location (used for expense reporting).

Enjoy the update. Hopefully, I have not broken anything but let me know if something does not seem right.

Gary

This release contains:

• bug fixes
• minor enhancements
• changes to the battery and distance sensor attributes
• improved device famshr and iosapp error checking, messages and alerts when conflicts and errors are encountered when starting up
• the Event Log displays lot faster
• and other stuff

New Features:

• Display Local Times when away from Home - The times displayed in the Event Log and sensors are time zone aware. If you are in a different time zone than your HA server, the times can be displayed in the local time instead of where your server is located. This can be done globally or for individual devices.
• Zone Activity Log - Device/Zone enter/exit activity can be logged to files based on the device and/or zone name. Using this feature, you can keep track of when one or more devices were in a zone, The file used is a ..csv file that can be imported into Excel or another spreadsheet program. Expense reporting is one application and device monitoring are several applications,
• Fixed Interval - A device can be assigned a fixed time between location requests. This can be used instead of using a variable interval based on the distance from Home or another zone.

See the Change Log below for the details.

Important Links

Installing using HACS - iCloud3 is not available on HACS unless you have set it up as a custom repository. See here for instructions on how to do that and then install it. If you just go to HACS and do the installation, you will be installing v2.4.7, not v3.
Manual Download and Install - Go to the iCloud3 Releases page here. Scroll down past the notes, then select Assets, then select icloud3.zip. Download the zip file and unzip it into the /config/custom_components/icloud3 directory. Then restart HA.
Migrating from v2.4._ - See here for instructions on migrating from from an older version.
iCloud3 v3 Documentation - It is still in process, does not include the latest updates to iCloud3 and can be found here

Change Log:

1. Stationary Zone
   • Fixed a bug restarting iCloud3 when reinitializing the zones and a Stationary Zone already existed. Some of the zones were not reloaded and the Stage 2 Zone setup process would end.
   • All Stationary Zone information persists over iCloud3 restarts and devices that were in the Stationary Zones will be moved back into it.
   • Unused Stationary Zones will be checked and deleted every hour
   • A nearby device results will not be used if the device's stationary zone timer has expired
2. The iOSApp Location Time was not being saved correctly when it processed an update handling the Initial Location triggers when starting iCloud3.
3. Bug fix - Devices that were paired with a Watch that was not being tracked were displaying a message in the Event Log that they were paired with themselves.
4. Battery - Fixed a problem so the battery sensor would only be updated when the battery level or status changed. It was updating when the information hadn't changed which was causing excessive and unnecessary HA battery sensor state changes.
5. Near zone (home) old location update retries - When approaching Home, the location request time was small (15-secs) and old location info was being returned from iCloud, the old location threshold was set to 15-secs to try to get a good location. This sometimes resulted in the location always being old even when it was good enough to be used. Now, the small interval will only be used for 4 Location requests. The old location threshold of 2-3 minutes will then be used.
6. Waze History Database - Removed some maintenance activities being done when iCloud3 starts that was delaying the startup process by almost 2-minutes for a database with 10,000+ entries. This is now done at midnight.
   7: Event Log - The Event Log items are displayed a lot faster after selecting a different device or refreshing the screen.
7. HA Area - iCloud3 was assigning or reassigning the tracked and monitored devices to the 'Personal Device' area when starting. This will now only be done when the devices is added or changed from Inactive to Tracked. You can now change or delete the device's HA Area and it will not be reassigned.
8. Battery Attributes - Add the last battery data for famshr and iosapp to the sensor.battery attribute list (45@11:10:55a, not charging).
9. Family Sharing Device list analysis during iCloud3 startup
   1. The configuration FamShr device name will be updated if it's name was updated on the device Settings > General > About screen on the device.
   2. If a device's name is followed by a suffix (Gary-iPhone(2)), it usually means that the device has been upgraded and the old device was not removed from the Family Sharing list or the FindMy > Devices list. This can lead to confusion where an old device is being tracked if the iCloud3 configuration was not updated. If there is more than one device with the same 'base name' (Gary-iPad), an Alert message is displayed in the Event Log showing all devices with that name and the last time that device was located. The configuration is changed to the device most recently located and an alert symbol is displayed by the device's name on the Event Log. It will continue to be displayed until the duplicate devices have been removed from the FindMy > Devices and Family Sharing List.
10. Bug Fix - The 'moved_since_last_update_km' variable was removed in error in rc4 and may cause a device to not be tracked properly.
11. Old Location Error Handling - Changed the handling of old location errors from being controlled by the number of errors to using the location's age.
    1. Interval will go from 15-sec to 30-sec, 1-min, 5-min, 10-min, and 15-min for 4-times at each interval. Before, the max interval was 1-hour. If the device came back online and the iOSApp was not used, it would not be tracked since it was paused.
    2. When the device's location reaches 2-hours, the device tracking control data is reset and it will start over at 15-sec. Before, the device would be paused and a message was sent to the device.
12. iOS App Disabled device_tracker and sensor entities - Disabled entities are not identified during startup and the appropriate warning message are displayed in the Event Log and as HA Errors. A Warning symbol is displayed next to the device's name in the Event Log.

NEW FEATURE

1. DISPLAYING TIMES WHEN IN ANOTHER TIME ZONE (AWAY FROM ZONE) - "The time displayed in the Event Log and Sensors show the time an event took place using the Home 'time zone' from your Home Assistant computer. When you are away from Home and in another time zone, your tracking events are still based on the time at your Home 'time zone', not time in your current location. This feature lets you display time events on the Event Log, Sensors, Sensor Attributes and the Device_Tracker Attributes using your Away location's time zone.

This is useful if you are away for a holiday or business trip to a location in another time zone. For example, you may create a temporary zone for a house you rented, set that zone up as a 'track from' zone on the device's update screen and then all time based tracking events (arrival time, location time, etc) will show your local time instead of your Home time zone time.

The Away Time Zone screen has been added to the Configure Settings, Menu Page 1. On this screen, you can configure the devices that should display the time based entities in the Away Time Zone and the Away Time Zone's time. Two configuration fields are provided if you have several devices that are away and they are in different time zones.

2. ZONE ACTIVITY LOG - When a device exits a zone, the zone information (Enter Time, Exit Time, Time in the Zone (minutes & hours), zone name and device_name) can be written to a spreadsheet .csv file. This file can be imported into a spreadsheet (Excel, etc) and used for travel expense reporting, monitoring when a device entered and exited a zone, who entered a zone, etc. The zones and file name format is specified for each device you want to monitor. You can monitor multiple zones for one or more devices.

The file name format is:
- 'zone_log-[year]-[zone]' to store the data by a specific zone for multiple devices. For example, you can keep records for Gary and Lillian in the Warehouse zone file.
- 'zone_log-[year]-[device]' to store the data for a specific device for multiple zones. For example, you can keep records for Gary when he goes to the Warehouse and Storage Facility zones.
- 'zone_log-[year]-[zone]-[device]' and 'zone_log-[year]-[device]-[zone]' to store the data for more than one device and more than one zone in the same file. For example, you can keep records for Gary when he goes to the Warehouse zone in one file and Storage Facility zone in aqnother file. The two filename formats allow you to sort the spreadsheet file by device or by zone.

3. FIXED INTERVAL - A device can now be set to used a fixed interval between location requests instead of calculating the interval using the distance from Home. The device w...

iCloud3 v3.0.rc8 (Rerelease)

This is a rerelease of v3.0.rc8 to resolve a problem with the GitHub commit duplication problem. See the rc8 description below for information about this release.

iCloud3 v3.0.rc8 (10/25/2023)

This release fixes several bugs, adds some new features, updates the sext and messages on the Configure Settings screens. It includes both rc7 (released to the developer repository only) and rc8.

Change Log:

rc8 - 10/25/2023

1. Configure Settings - Made the following changes:
   • Minor text changes to field names and screens.
   • Improved the error messages when experiencing a problem logging into the iCloud Account.
   • Fixed a bug when selecting the Enter Verification Code screen before logging into the iCloud account.
2. Old Location Error Notifications - Fixed a problem where Old Location notifications were constantly being sent to a phone when the maximum number of old location errors (20) had been encountered.
3. iOSApp Location Time - If the location time is older than 3-hours, it's age is displayed (4.5 hrs ago) instead of the time (6:15:00p).

rc7.1/rc7.1.1 - 10/15/2023

1. Zone-Device Count bug fix - Fixed a bug where the device counts were not being displayed correctly.
2. Exit Zone for Devices without the iOSApp (Watch) - When a Device exits a zone, all other devices that were in the same zone that do not have the iOS App installed will be updated immediately. They were being updated when their next update timer was reached. Hopefully, this will make Watch zone exit updates to be done when they happen.
3. Apple account password - When iCloud3 starts, the password is checked to see if it is encoded in the configuration parameter file. If it is not and it should be, it will be encoded and the configuration file will be updated. Previously, there were times when the file was not being updated.
4. iCloud Account username/password changes - When the username/password is changed, the Apple account is logged into. If you select 'Save' the configuration file is updated. If you select 'Return', the updated username/password is not saved and the menu is displayed. This can lead to login problems the next time iCloud3 starts if you really wanted to save them but didn't. An additional Confirmation Screen is now displayed that lets you save them or not save them.

rc7 - 10/15/2023

1. yaml Zones - Fixed a problem where zones configured using yaml were not being loaded when iCloud3 started.
2. Stationary Zones - Minor changes to the handling of deleting a stationary zone when all devices had exited from it.
3. Zone-Devices Count - New feature -

• The number of the devices within a zone is displayed with the tracking results on the Event Log. The counts are the numbers (x) after the zone name.
  • Zone > Away (2) > Home-2.45km, IndRivShores-6.53km, School-8.47km (1), Quail-12.0km, Warehouse-16.5km (1), GPS-(/±47m)
• An item is also posted to the Event Log when another device changes it's zone:
  • Zone-Device Counts > Home (4), School (1), Warehouse (1)

iCloud3 v3, Prerelease Version 1.4 (9/22/2023)

Notes:

This is an update to Prerelease Version pr1.3 that fixes a few bugs and changes the way Stationary Zones are handled.

Change Log:

1. Bug Fix - Fixes a "type object 'GlobalVariables' has no attribute 'this_update_tine'" error. it should be '_time', not '_tine'
2. Fixed a problem adding the first device to a new iCloud3 installation that was generating a 'TypeError: 'NoneType' object is not callable -- Gb.async_add_entities_device_tracker(NewDeviceTrackers, True) error message.
3. Stationary zones - Stationary zones are now removed from HA Zones instead of moving them back to their 'base' location when all of the devices have exited the zone. Monitored devices will no longer create a stationary zone since they are not actually tracked.
4. Error handling - If a device goes offline for an extended period of time (in Airplane mode) the longest interval was changed from 2-hours to 1-hour. An iOS App Location Request will be made when the interval time changes to see if the device is now available for tracking.
5. China - Fixed a problem updating the Apple Web Server URL for China. This uses the HA Country Code or the Configuration File icloud_server_endpoint_suffix: "cn" parameter to add .cn to the https://www.icloud.com and https://setup.icloud.com URLs in the iCloud3-iCloud Account interface module.