Person tracking does not trust zone name if source type is not GPS

[Ten0]

The problem

Person entities will copy the device_tracker's zone only if it has source_type: gps, or if the state is either home or not_home.
Otherwise, it will always set the state to unknown.

This is not desirable behavior: if I have another device tracker that reports zones without gps information, the zones it provides should be trusted when used as device_tracker for a person.

Specifically, it looks like this line:

core/homeassistant/components/person/__init__.py

Line 529 in 06b33e5

elif state.state == STATE_NOT_HOME:

should be replaced by: if state is not unknown nor unavailable, so as to allow using as fallback non-gps trackers that report another value than home or not_home. (Or better yet, the "not not_home nor home nor gps" should be an intermediate level, so that zone trackers are prioritized over stationary device trackers that only report not_home)

Is that something that sounds reasonable, and I could open a PR for it?

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2024.12.5

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant OS

Integration causing the issue

Person

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/person/

Diagnostics information

No response

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[home-assistant]

person documentation
person source

[mib1185]

there are two different type of tracking entities - ScannerEntity and TrackerEntities - the later are for tracking the location of a device, so it has always SourceType.GPS set. A ScannerEntity is network based, so it only has state home or not home (away).
So there can't be a device_tracker providing a location (zone) as state, without having SourceType.GPS set

[Ten0]

Thanks for your quick answer.

there are two different type of tracking entities - ScannerEntity and TrackerEntities

And then there's the entity I added in there via set_state, that improves detection of whether I'm in a particular place based on combining GPS data (or lack thereof) with "which wifi am I connected to" data to determine that I'm in a particular location without necessarily having GPS data (esp. if it hasn't reported in a long time if e.g. low phone battery or low accuracy).

It doesn't look like it would be hurtful to allow all device_tracker entities to report more precise location states than not_home even if they aren't GPS.

[mib1185]

A ScannerEntity reports the connected state of a device on the local network. If the device is connected the ScannerEntity will have state home and if the device is not connected the state will be not_home.

A TrackerEntity tracks the location of a device and reports it either as a location name, a zone name or home or not_home states. A TrackerEntity normally receives GPS coordinates to determine its state. Either location_name or latitude and longitude should be set to report state.

so a ScannerEntity should never report a location - but a TrackerEntity.

And then there's the entity I added in there via set_state,

your self created entity needs to be an TrackerEntity if it should provide the location

[Ten0]

your self created entity needs to be an TrackerEntity if it should provide the location

I understand this, however I feel like this should not be a requirement (if by "location" you mean "zone"), which is why I created this issue.

[mib1185]

The difference between these two types of device tracker entities is on purpose, so that consuming integrations know what to expect.