Detecting a phone in my house (without home assistant app)

Configuration
1

Hello,

Thanks for reading my message. I have a person that lives with me now, but she doesn’t want to install the home assistant app on her phone. I made some rules that turn off the lights when I’m leaving home (from when I was still alone). But I would prefer to make it possible to detect that person in the house, so the light will not be turned off. To make things more complex. She is on my VPN router (192.168.2.x) and home assistant is on my internet router (192.168.1.x). I can send MQTT messages from 192.168.2.x to 192.168.1.x. How can I make a simple person detector (phone detector on the other network)? Can I use the ESP8266 friend detector perhaps (ESP8266 Friend Detector - Hackster.io)? I want to use MQTT to send her presence to home assistant? Did someone already make a program for the ESP8266? I want to use source that has home assistant MQTT auto discovery. This might be a simple button. That would be great.
Thanks in advance for your help.

Kind regards,
Erik

2

ESP devices can be used to look for specific Bluetooth addresses.
The routers ARP table can be used to lookup if specific MAC addresses are connected.

The issue is that these methods can also be used to tracking of persons, so modern phones have settings that change these from time to time, so it is useless to you unless you get person to deactivate the randomization setting.

1 Like
3

You closest shot is tracking her MAC address presence on the WiFi network. Address randomization is per access point I believe so that might work, but don’t quote on me on that.

4

Per SSID. You could turn it off for your home network and not impact it’s effect on public networks.

1 Like