Automagic Forum

Hi there, I am absolutly new with Automagic and I was creating my first flows today.

I was playing with conditions based on the Location (like turn wifi on/off, Sound scheme, etc) when arriving/leaving home.

I was wondering what the difference between the Trigger Periodic Location Update and Location is and which one I should use.

I could use the Periodic Location Update and use a Location condition to check if I am at home ... or ...
I could also use the Location Trigger to check if I am at home (or arriving/leaving home) directly.

What is the difference? Are there Advantages/disadvantages in using one or the other method?

Thanks for Clarifying
Franco

Hi,

Trigger Location is based on a built-in function of the device itself and works pretty good on most phones but can not be fine tuned. It will execute the flow only once when entering/exiting a location.
The Periodic Location Update along with a condition Location can be used to build a similar flow but allows to configure the update frequency and the accepted locations better. You could decide to use the network location but ignore locations with a radius larger than 500 meters to ignore inaccurate locations determined by cell masts. Setting the update frequency to a high value (30m or 1h) can save battery when it's acceptable for your use case.
The periodic location trigger also allows to create flows which record your location to a file or to periodically send an SMS with your location.

For regular location flows I recommend to use trigger Location first and to check whether battery consumption and accuracy is OK on your device and switch to Periodic Location Update when you want to fine tune battery consumption and accuracy.

Regards,
Martin