Specific device polling

[AaronLionsheep]

If I do api.devices[0].location() will that only request the location for that device or will it end up telling all of my devices to send their location back to iCloud? I currently have a script polling an iPhone every 30 seconds for testing, but I noticed that my Apple Watch battery has drained significantly more than a normal day.

[torarnv]

Yes, the way things work right now is that calling location() will result in a call to FindMyiPhoneServiceManager.refresh_client(), which passes selectedDevice: all in the request.

I don't know what format selectedDevice takes, but you could look at the network request in Chrome and figure that out, and then e.g. add a deviced = all argument to refresh_client.

[walthowd]

Would love to see this resolved, Home Assistant uses pyicloud for presence detection and the fact that all devices are polled causes battery drain for a large number of users.

[coddingtonbear]

It wouldn't take a very large effort to figure out the format following the instructions above; maybe you could post a pull request adding this feature, @walthowd?

[northtree]

I have changed the selectedDevice param. However, iCloud still returns all devices information.

diff --git a/pyicloud/services/findmyiphone.py b/pyicloud/services/findmyiphone.py

-    def refresh_client(self):
+    def refresh_client(self, device_id='all'):

-                        'selectedDevice': 'all',
+                        # 'selectedDevice': 'all',
+                        'selectedDevice': device_id,

     def location(self):
-        self.manager.refresh_client()
+        self.manager.refresh_client(device_id=self.content['id'])
         return self.content['location']

[northtree]

I have also tried to capture packets through iCould website via Charles. It looks like iCloud always return all devices information and ignore the selectedDevice parameter.

1. Refresh on all devices

2. Refresh on one devices

[asherkin]

selectedDevice is only respected for refreshClient, not initClient.

[northtree]

@asherkin I was discussing about refreshClient.

[dsouzarc]

Any luck/update with this? Using the Find iPhone app, it seems like all devices' locations are returned even when clicking one device and pressing the refresh button for that specific device

[coddingtonbear]

I'm afraid that this library is built entirely upon reverse-engineering how iCloud works; it's not likely to make much progress without investigation and further research by folks like you who are affected by the issue.

[dsouzarc]

I'll try it out; I've always had SSL issues when using Charles on my Mac to do a MITM attack from using iCloud services from my iPhone (even though I added the Charles SSL certificate to my iPhone and enabled SSL Proxying for all URLs), but maybe I should have tried to do it from my Mac? What's the best way/approach you've found?