Discover new people around

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Discover new people around

By eMMMM
- Sat May 20, 2017 9:29 am #66121 Hi everyone,

As I'm on the "Newbie Corner", I dont' need to explain I'm a newbie :)

I bought ESP8266 WeMoS device and should try to work with "IoT" at home.

I want the ESP8266 discover "new people" at home. I have a house on the field and want that, if someone is close to the house, the device discover this person and send me a message. With the MAC if it is possible... quite easy, eh?? :lol:

Sorry for my poor english... I'm better "spanish spoker" :roll:

Regards
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Re: Discover new people around

By QuickFix
- Sat May 20, 2017 5:15 pm #66140 The problem with your idea is that a device of "New people" is a "Client" which don't advertise themselves; only a "Host" does this (if SSID broadcast is enabled, which by default is).

The only way I can think off at the moment (but I'm also still learning, so please correct me if I'm wrong), is to set up a "Fake" open AP (thus without a password) and wait until clients request a connection.
When it tries to connect, make note of its MAC and put it in a list (so you can ignore it the next time) and send you a message that "New people" have arrived.
After that you may do with the connection what you want (drop it, work as a gateway, etc...)

The only problem is that it will only work with clients that have enabled the "Always connect to open AP's"-option (don't know if that's enabled by default on Android, iPhone, etc), so it's not an infallible solution (if there's any, but I'm always open for enlightenment) ;)
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Re: Discover new people around

By torntrousers
- Sun May 21, 2017 2:36 am #66147 A Wifi device does actually broadcast its presence while scanning for available Wifi networks so you can use that to detect people carrying a phone with Wifi enabled.

Most devices do active scanning that broadcasts a probe request which includes the devices MAC address. Read more about it in blogs eg here.

There's an ESP8266 example for that which comes with the latest code Arduino/ESP8266 code here.
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