Help dealing with device tracker for device with partially randomised mac address

Configuration
1

I have a device on my network that always changes the last 6 digits of its mac address when it connects.
Is there any way, maybe with templates or similar, to use wildcards to add all these devices under a single person entity, or perhaps a sensor? (i.e. device_tracker.AA_BB_CC_* to give me all devices beginning with that combination…)
Appreciate any pointers in the right direction.

2

Personally, I’d look into turning that MAC randomization feature off for your home network. E.g., on my Samsung Android phone, it’s a setting per WiFi network: Randomized MAC or Phone MAC.

3

Thanks, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be switchable on the device itself. It’d be a handy fix.
So hoping for a solution on the HASS side for the moment…

4

Ok. The only solution I can think of right now is to use the device_tracker.see service to sort of make a composite/compound device tracker out of these via an automation, then use that for the person entity. If you could tell me what attributes these entities have, I could provide a concrete example.

5

Thanks, Phil.
I’m not 100% sure I follow tho, do you mean the device tracker entity attributes?
If so they only have source_type and friendly_name, which is automatically populated with the current mac address of the device when it connects.

6

And source_type is router?

Ok, how about something like this:

- trigger:
  - platform: event
    event_type: state_changed
  condition:
  - condition: template
    template: >
      {{ trigger.event.data.entity_id|regex_match('device_tracker\.AA_BB_CC_.*') }}
  action:
  - service: device_tracker.see
    data_template:
      dev_id: AA_BB_CC
      source_type: router
      location_name: "{{ trigger.event.data.new_state.state }}"

This should create/update entity device_tracker.AA_BB_CC whenever any device tracker entity is created or updates whose entity_id starts with device_tracker.AA_BB_CC_.

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7

Amazing, thank you. I’ll try this out and see how I get on.

1 Like
8

This appears to be working perfectly @pnbruckner, thank you so much for your help!

9

No problem. I used that service before I wrote my custom composite tracker integration. (Which, BTW, I would have recommended if I had thought it would solve your problem, but it wouldn’t. :wink:)

1 Like
10

Thank you for this example. It has a couple new things in it for me to learn.

One question though, won’t this automation run for every state_changed event for all entities? Is that a problem?

I don’t see an alternative, I’m just checking.

11

Yes, it will. This is an old post, and I haven’t reviewed the details, so I don’t know if there’s a better way to do what you want. You might want to open a new topic if you’d like further help.