How to track people in offline/local-only HA setup

Configuration
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Hello everyone,
I am thinking about ways to track if my wife or I am at home but my HA setup is not reachable from the internet (at least not without VPN connection).

The easiest would have been to track wifi connections. However, my routers/APs are not supported.
NExt best thing would have been HA companion app. But if the app cannot report updates to HA once I leave home, my device will remain listed as “at home” (unless I add a timer, which I do not really want to do).

So how do you track people/devices in offline/local-only setups?

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Many of qys are discussed in this af linked threads.

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A few days ago I stumbled upon the Nmap Tracker. I didn’t try it, but seeing your post i got curious if it can do this, and i googled and found this configuration online:

#Home Assistant: Presence Detection via NMAP Device Tracking
device_tracker:
#Detection using NMAP
  - platform: nmap_tracker
#IPs to Track
    hosts:
      - 192.168.86.100 # Marc’s Phone
      - 192.168.86.105 # Marc’s Workstation
#Only scan AT HOME phones every 10min
    home_interval: 10
#Wait 180 seconds before marking an undetected phone/device as AWAY
    consider_home: 180

For this to work, you need to set static ip(s) for the device(s) in the router so they don’t get the same ip every time. In the article it is mentioned that some phones, if not used for a while, disconnect from WiFi to save battery… If that is the case, HA might think you are no longer at home.
link to article with the config

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Thank you @duku, that looks like an interesting option. I will probably really need to find different solutions to combine that are all based on HA “polling” the person rather than the person “pushing” the information.

Thank you @WallyR, but unfortunately that thread is looking at the pushing of information, which will not work if HA is not accessible outside the home.

The problem is, that communication from tracked device to HA is only possible while in the same wifi network.
This means, that persons will not be detected if they have wifi disabled and they cannot report that they are no longer at home.

Ultimately I need to find a way to track bluetooth and wifi at the same time. But not based on the devices sending this information, but HA checking for this information.

Wifi would be simple if there was a way to check which device is logged in to the routers. None of my routers/APs are supported in HA. I would need to check if constant pinging or other snooping activities will trigger the firewalls.

I do have an esp32 running tasmota, so maybe there is a way to check the presence via bluetooth without the need for the device to connect. However, at least older smart phones do not support multiple bluetooth connections, so I am not sure if this will still work once the phone has a bluetooth connection e.g. to headphones.

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