You can use the ping2mqtt program Alex posted above
Or use the ping node in node red I mentioned above
1 Like
What am I missing? It took me only a few minutes to write an automation to change the ping interval to five seconds for those devices I want pinged more often than the default. Including our phones. My existing automations still work.
2 Likes
One thing to remember if youāre using ping to track people (phones). You can assign more than one device to a person. If you use the person.name in your automations, then you only need to change the underlying device trackers for the person and the automations will continue as before.
2 Likes
Consider_home is missing.
There have been 3 different versions of Ping for Home Assistant in the past two weeks - classic YAML configuration that worked that way for years, a UI 5 minute ping, and a UI 30 second ping. I was somewhat frustrated by the change to UI and only had one automation really relying on ping, so I can only imagine liminalās frustration, as their setup clearly was heavily reliant on ping. I moved this to Node Red with the initial 5 minute ping change being too long for me, so posted my suggestion for the request for a more stable alternative, as I can think anyone can agree 3 different versions of this in two weeks is not stable. The current/latest (for now) 30 second ping would work fine for me, but at this point, I have no intention of moving ping back into Home Assistant.
1 Like
besides the fix that is incoming for consider_home, you should really consider another approach to presence detection. Ping has been downright unreliable for that since its inception (nor was it designed for that) and I believe it was even stated in the docs that other methods should be used for presence detection.
there are a lot of threads in this community on the matter.
one of the more popular methods ofc is combining several trackers into a person entity. your problem would be solved immediately, and no automation required.
an even better detector is the custom Composite tracker by Phil Bruckner. (and it keeps the lat/long even when your wifi tracker is homeā¦)
iow, dont look back to your flawed so hacked to a solution of the past, but find a better for the future
2 Likes
Is it though? It was super simple, a reliable detection method for devices on a network. I dont know if I am comfortable with having some system geo tracking everyone at all times, I know some of my family wouldnt be.
Maybe I missed something and left a gaping hole allowing people to get this data, it is all home made after all. Far safer to just know when some devices are on a network and consider the person home.
They cut off the working system and didnt even implement the critical part. But I should trust this system with my full location data of my family?
That does not make sense
personally, I turn off wifi an BT when away from homeā¦ dont want to be tracked (more than already done by my providerā¦). consider others might too, and dont log on to your wifi at all. Happens to me all the time.
how would Ping be anywhere near reliable for turning on/off you alarm, or other vital systems in HA.
look, its all up to you, but, presence detection goes beyond a mere Ping sensor. Or a gps tracker for that matter. No matter how you abuse it to ping every second.
It thereās nothing to Ping, it doesnt mean no-one is homeā¦
We donāt need to get into an augment about this, different people, do different things. But as Iāve said and I guess why I am continuing to talk about this is. consider_home worked perfectly for me.
Thanks for taking the time to give this info 
Am I understanding this right?
{"dev_id":"device_tracker.phone_ping","location_name":"Away"}
Im using the one I created in the ping ad on and then Im turning off āEnable polling for updates.ā
Im getting an api error, so got something wrong?
Hey, i am on the same boat with you and it was all reliable until they removed consider_home option and it is coming back soon, just hang on
1 Like
Just two. And again, the fix was quite simple for me. And it has to be really simple for me to grok. I have six devices that I ping every five seconds. One Automation takes care of all of them. The UI method is in my opinion an improvement.
1 Like
I donāt use consider_home, but couldnāt you easily simulate it in an automation until the devops add it to the ping integration?
You shouldnāt have device_tracker., just phone_ping. The see service adds the device_tracker. itself.
Thatās an interesting approach. I need WiFi on as I want to access HA remotely plus I have some cloud dependent devices (eg Nest, TP-link). In my case I find ping reliable enough for my purposes - a positive response is enough t tell me something is home while I wait for several failed requests before deciding something is away.
Obviously itās s decision each of us has to make in our own situations.
You make no sense. Wifi is not needed for remote access.
Please donāt be rude. You have no idea about my situation. My HA (Raspberry Pi) is connected to my network by WiFi, running an Ethernet cable to it is not feasible in my home. Does that make sense?
Youāre mixing up terminology. Having HA on WiFi (on your home network) doesnāt mean remote. Remote access means access outside of your home network.
1 Like
Jeez. Is it pick on me day?! Explain how I would access my HA remotely if it wasnāt on my network which, as I have explained, has to be over WiFi?
Maybe, but weāre getting off topic 
1 Like