174
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
174 points (99.4% liked)
Selfhosted
60951 readers
768 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil.
-
No spam.
-
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
-
Submission headline should match the article title.
-
No trolling.
-
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
-
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Little known feature on Home Assistant is the ability to have any phone who has home assistant installed to be able to use it as a trigger. So you can see things like battery left and gps location. I have an automations that will ping the last location of my family members when the phone hits 2% power so I can see their last location right before the phone dies.
I use home assistant and have a dashboard button that triggers an automation.
Using the notification action, I turn off do-not-disturb, turn off Bluetooth (so it doesn't pipe sound to earbuds or remote audio), set notification mode to on (not vibrate) and set the notification volume to max. I used to loop the default notification sound, but then switched so that the notification uses a new channel entirely and set each phone with a song so it will play for a while. You can silence it with the volume key.
Took a little tinkering to get it right, but works really well.
great idea, but a suggestion.
instead of just one ping at 2%, do three within 10 seconds of each other. this would determine direction and rate of travel.
You can just remotely enable high accuracy mode for a minute and it will trace their path on a map cleanly.
_action: notify.mobile_app_your_fone metadata: {} data: message: device_high_accuracy_mode data: silent: true high_accuracy_mode: turn_on channel: loc __wouldn't that either be disabled due to the low battery or eat up the remainder of the battery?
I would think snapping coords, even at low accuracy, would be more power efficient since it technically doesn't have to connect to more satellites and requires less compute.
Ohhhhhh fantastic idea!!
Well that's pretty cool. So when You ping, does it save this data or do you have to actually be present for the ping (on your phone)?
How do you ping a location update? I've tried sending the hidden sms that's supposed to do is but it only seems to work about 25% of the time, and I have to run the actual location check like 3-4 minutes later
Don't use sms. Use the home assistant notify skill. It will notify my phone using the notify.notify skill.
But if I'm going to do 3 pings for the direction of the pings, then I gotta figure out a different solution.