Home Assistant

Home Assistant is an open-source home automation platform.

Colota has a dedicated Home Assistant integration that receives location updates via webhook and creates a location tracker, a battery sensor and a charging sensor per device. The integration source code is available on GitHub.

Setup

1. Install the Colota integration

Via HACS (recommended):

Colota is in the HACS default store, so no custom repository is needed.

1. Open HACS in Home Assistant
2. Search for Colota and install it
3. Restart Home Assistant

Manual:

1. Copy the custom_components/colota folder to your Home Assistant config/custom_components/ directory
2. Restart Home Assistant

2. Add the integration

1. Go to Settings > Devices & Services > Add Integration
2. Search for Colota and add it
3. Copy the webhook URL shown after setup

3. Configure the Colota app

1. Go to Settings > Connection
2. Paste the webhook URL as the Server endpoint
3. No authentication is needed - the webhook URL acts as the secret

The integration works with the default API format out of the box. Without a tid field all updates go to one device named colota. To distinguish multiple devices, add a custom field tid with a unique value per device (e.g. phone, tablet).

Entities

Each device creates three entities:

Entity	Source field	Description
device_tracker	lat, lon	Location, for automations, zones and the map
sensor	batt	Battery level in percent
binary_sensor	bs	Charging, on while bs is 2 (charging) or 3 (full)

Payload

The integration reads the following payload. tid is only sent once you add it as a custom field:

{
  "lat": 51.5074,
  "lon": -0.1278,
  "acc": 15,
  "alt": 20,
  "vel": 1.5,
  "batt": 85,
  "bs": 2,
  "bear": 180,
  "tid": "phone",
  "tst": 1704067200
}

The tid field is used as the device identifier in Home Assistant. You can customize it in the custom fields settings to distinguish multiple devices.

Notes

• If you use Nabu Casa, the integration will automatically generate a cloud webhook URL for external access
• The integration is added once per Home Assistant instance and all devices share its webhook URL - each unique tid value creates a separate device

Alternative: OwnTracks integration

If you prefer not to install a custom integration, you can use Home Assistant's built-in OwnTracks integration instead:

1. Add the OwnTracks integration in Home Assistant and note the webhook URL

2. In the Colota app, select the OwnTracks template and set the endpoint to the webhook URL

3. Add the following custom headers:

   Header	Value	Description
   X-Limit-U	e.g. john	Your username - used as part of the entity ID
   X-Limit-D	e.g. phone	Your device ID - used as part of the entity ID

   Without these headers, Home Assistant will not create a device tracker entity.