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.rc7.1.1 (10/19/2023) - Replaces v3.0.rc7.1

This is really v3.0.rc7.1

For some reason, HACS and GitHub were downloading the original v3.0.rc7 files instead of the v3.0.rc7.1 files.

This releases fixes several bugs introduced in rc7, addresses an issue related to Apple account password changes and confirms discarding changes to the username/password on the Configure Settings screen. A new feature for Apple Watch's make exiting a zone quicker when there is another device that exited the same zone responding to an iOS app Exit Trigger.

Change Log v3.0.rc7.1

1. Zone-Device Count bug fix - Fixed a bug introduced in rc7 where the device counts were not being displayed correctly.
2. Exit Zone for Devices without the iOSApp (Apple 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.

Change Log v3.0.rc7

1. yaml Zones - Fixed a problem where zones configured using yaml were not being loaded when iCloud3 started.

2. 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. For Example, the following shows 2-devices are not in a zone (Away), 1 is at School and 1 is in the Warehouse zone.
   Zone > Away (2) > Home-2.45km, IndRivShores-6.53km, School-8.47km (1), Publix-10.3km, ThePoint-11.0km, 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)

3. Stationary Zones - Minor changes to the handling of deleting a stationary zone when all devices have exited from it.

iCloud3 v3.0.rc7 (10/15/2023)

Change Log:

1. yaml Zones - Fixed a problem where zones configured using yaml were not being loaded when iCloud3 started.

2. 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. For Example, the following shows 2-devices are not in a zone (Away), 1 is at School and 1 is in the Warehouse zone.
   Zone > Away (2) > Home-2.45km, IndRivShores-6.53km, School-8.47km (1), Publix-10.3km, ThePoint-11.0km, 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)

3. Stationary Zones - Minor changes to the handling of deleting a stationary zone when all devices have exited from it.

iCloud3 v3.0.rc6 Release Candidate 6 (10/10/2023)

This Release includes some bug fixes and a few updates. (rc5 was an internal update and never released)

Change Log:

1. Add Device Bug Fix - Fixes the bug where devices could not be added if this was a new installation.
2. Bug Fix - Fixed the error causing the "AttributeError: 'iCloud3_Device' object has no attribute 'interval_secs' message at line 680, in determine_interval_after_error" error.
3. China Users - Added an option to the Configure Settings - iCloud Account & iOS App Data Sources screen to enable the '.cn. Apple Web Server URL address suffix.
4. Monitored Devices - The iOSApp state value is no longer displayed on the Event Log if it is different than the iCloud3 zone and it is earlier the last FamShr update time since it is old and is probably incorrect.
5. iCloud3 Version - The version that is currently running is now displayed in the Configure Settings menu screen and more clearly on Event Log messages during startup.
6. Battery - HA has changed the battery 'state class' internal value from 'battery' to 'measurement'.
7. Prerelease Version number - This has changed to Release Candidate number to better conform to HA standards. Version pr1.5 was a developer test version and not released.
8. Configure Setting - Made some minor menu text changes for consistency.

iCloud3 v3, Prerelease pr1.5 (9/27/2023)

1. Bug Fix - Fixed the error causing the "AttributeError: 'iCloud3_Device' object has no attribute 'interval_secs' message at line 680, in determine_interval_after_error" error.
2. China Users - Added an option to the Configure Settings - iCloud Account & iOS App Data Sources screen to enable the '.cn. Apple Web Server URL address suffix

iCloud3 v3, Prerelease Version pr1.4 (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.

iCloud3 v3, Prerelease v1.3 (8/23/2023)

This is an update to Prerelease v1.1 that contains the pr1.2 & pr1.3 patch files.

Change Log:

1. Battery - Fixed a problem where the battery level/status was not being updated immediately in the Event Log when it went from 'charging' to 'not charging' or 'not charging' to 'charging'.
2. GPS - The 'Show GPS Coordinates' parameter is now applied when the event is displayed in the Event Log instead of when it is added to the Event Log. You can disable this parameter so they are not normally displayed. Later, if you need to review where a device has been, reenable the parameter and the location coordinates for previous events will be displayed.
3. Event Log - Fixed a problem where the event time was not displayed if the 'Zone Display-as' parameter was set to display the zone entity_id.
4. Event Log - Fixed a problem with the Event Log Card not detecting a version update.

iCloud3 v3, Prerelease 1.1 (8/20/2023)

New version and release name - pr1/pr1.1. Previous release version and release name was rc3/rc3a/rc3b
Fixes some minor bugs in rc3a and renamed pr1:

1. Reload iCloud3 - Fixed the Configure Settings > Actions > Reload iCloud3 so it works.
2. iOSApp location data - The location data from the iOS App is now updated based on the locations time earlier in the data analysis process. It was looking at whether or not the data needed to be updated instead of just doing it if it was newer.
3. Fixed a DeletedDeviceEntry error message being displayed when starting up.

This is a rerelease of rc3b that is renamed as pr1a (version is displayed as pr1) to keep it in sync with the iCloud3 repo prerelease. There was also a quick update to fix item 3 that did not get picked up correctly as a new commit in rc3b.

iCloud3 v3, Release Candidate 3 (8/19/2023)

I think this will probably be the final Release Candidate in the iCloud3_v3 repository. The next step will be creating a pre-release in the main iCloud3 repository that will get picked up by HACS. Both the iCloud3 and iCloud3_v3 repositories will be maintained for a while. Any issues identified and fixed will continue to be released in iCloud3_v3 before being promoted to iCloud3.

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. Reverted the 'manifest.json' file to prevent iCloud3 from hanging on an HA startup if there is a problem starting some of the HA components.
2. Configure Settings - Added a 'Restart HA, Reload iCloud3' to the Configure Settings > Actions list. You can now restart HA or reload only the iCloud3 component if the is a problem.
3. Migration - Fixed some v2 to v3 configuration migration issues.
4. Area - The device will be assigned to the 'Personal Device' Area when it is added or when iCloud3 starts if it is not assigned to one.
5. Old Location - The status of both the iOS App and FamShr location is now checked when seeing if the old location status/counter should be reset as soon as the data is available. It was being reset only when the FamShr data was updated and later in the tracking process.

iCloud3 v3, Release Candidate 2 (8/8/2023)

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 the problem causing the duplicate_msg error during start up.
2. Services - Added the iCloud3 Service Calls to the Developer tools > Services screen.
3. Cleaned up some code.
4. Direction of Travel History - Reformatted the history that is display when showing Tracking Monitors