ESP8266 Community Forum

- Sat May 19, 2018 6:48 am #75996

Almost a year ago I wrote a small proof of concept script using Arduino that keeps track of WiFi devices in the vicinity, without having them to actually connect to an AP, perhaps you can use it as a starting point or some inspiration.

Interesting code. Thanks

- Sun May 20, 2018 2:31 am #76005 There are two options:

One is to sniff around for traffic (incl. probe requests) and extract an compare the MAC. E.g. like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmhjtzmLrg8 Problem here are iPhones - they change their MAC periodically when not connected to avoid tracing like this.

The other option would be to set up your own AP (with out without password) on the ESP and handle the WiFi event EVENT_SOFTAPMODE_STACONNECTED. As soon as a MAC connects, you will get an event with with this MAC. And even iPhone use the same MAC once they connect. However, you wil have to make sure, that the phone doesn't connect to another WiFi in range (not completely unrealistic near your home).

A third would be to make sure that all devices in a standard home network always get the same IP (from DHCP - often the case with lonf lease times) and use the ESP to ping the IPs of the devices - if they respond, they are there...

- Tue May 22, 2018 4:30 am #76026

I'd like the pin to go HIGH when in range and LOW if no phone is connected. That would open the gate without touching the phone.

Would not the iBeacon scenario provide a better solution?

You could detect a BLE signal from your phone.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBeacon

And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upeHpyTW1ZM

Here we have "DIY Arduino Beacons as an alternative to iBeacon" :- https://evothings.com/diy-arduino-beacons/

- Tue May 22, 2018 5:51 am #76028 iBeacon means: BLE instead of WiFi (bad for the ESP8266), ESP32 would be an option.
But iBeacon also means: no security, perhaps bad for a gate...