Faulty Home Assistant Device Tracker Problem triggers for no reason

While this does sound like a geeky satire news heading, it is a common device tracker misconfiguration problem. All presence based automations would trigger at the same time because the device_tracker component would temporarily mark me as not_home before returning back to home.

Not sure if this issue is specific to the fritz device_tracker component for Home Assistant, or not. This is what the logbook looks like in this situation:

How to fix the device tracker configuration problem

The root cause is with the intervals_seconds and consider_home parameter. After some trial and error I figured out that these not have the same value. The consider_home value must be a longer time duration than the polling interval defined by intervals_seconds.

The intervals_seconds parameter and consider_home parameter should not have the same value.

Defective configuration

device_tracker: 
  - platform: fritz
    new_device_defaults:
      track_new_devices: no
    host: 10.1.1.1
    username: admin
    password: !secret fritzbox_pw
    interval_seconds: 120
    consider_home: '00:02:00'

Corrected configuration

device_tracker: 
  - platform: fritz
    new_device_defaults:
      track_new_devices: no
    host: 10.1.1.1
    username: admin
    password: !secret fritzbox_pw
    interval_seconds: 120
    consider_home: '00:02:30' # 2.5 minutes instead

Conclusion

By giving different values you will be able to fix this strange device tracker problem that appears to trigger things for no reason. Check out my other post for resolving Home Assistant upgrade errors in custom Python Components.