Advanced Presence sensor for wifi devices

[ThunderboltsRock]

Hi Hubitat devs,
I was reading a thread for iPhone wifi presence sensor which got me thinking, if I have a device that monitors wifi devices (more than just ping, as all phones are requesting internet data for one reason or another) and the monitoring device was able to perform a post to a url when the monitored device becomes online or offline. Could this be incorporated into makerapi somehow for phone presence monitoring/detection? I.e how would one setup a virtual presence device to react to a post sent to makerapi (or some other method)?
P.s I use firewalla at home

[ogiewon]

Yes, that is very easy to accomplish. Take a look at the detailed instructions in the following post for how to set up Locative on the iPhone. It details creating a Virtual Presence sensor, adding it to an instance of Maker API, and then using the URLs in the Locative mobile phone app.

Instead of configuring Locative, you can hopefully just use the two URLs (one for arrived and one for departed) in Firewalla.

Locative Presence app for iOS full setup

Locative is a great app for presence sensing but is only available for iPhones. I previously used Life360 free version for over a year without any issues. I noticed that it would typically consume about 1% of my iPhone battery per day. I was not concerned with the privacy issues of being tracked. About a year and a half ago I saw a post by @ogiewon mentioning Locative. The cool thing about Locative - your phone decides when it is inside or outside your defined locations and only when your pho…

[sburke781]

(I really should take my Mon-Fri hat off... ) You might want to confirm what you mean by Wi-Fi devices. Phones and tablets can definitely report in to the HE hub or other non-ping alternatives, but devices like Bond or Hue hubs cannot. If you are wanting the broader net, then the solutions will likely be different, but options will also likely differ for mobile devices as well (Android vs Apple, etc)

[ThunderboltsRock]

That is the beauty of using firewalla ( firewall with dhcp, vpb, routing, monitoring, qos, reservation etc).

Firewalla: Cybersecurity Firewall For Your Family and Business

My thesis is that any device that the firewalla unit gives dhcp lease and therefore can see its LAN/WAN traffic it already reports online/offline status based on traffic and ip pings etc can already alert if device is online or offline. I just have to work with the firewalla devs (they are very responsive) and hopefully get a new feature added to allow to send a post to a url per device that is monitored.
E.g doesn’t matter if Android or iPhone as firewalla can see all the traffic’s of devices on the networks it manages and all phone are constantly chatty thus making its evaluation of if the device is actually online or offline more accurate. Once a state change the firewalla would theoretically send a post to makerapi defined url which would intern update the virtual presence device to the appropriate status.

[sburke781]

I think I get what you are saying... and maybe it could be something incorporated into HE or a Community App... I know I have dabbled (outside of HE) in platforms like Nagios running on a local rpi... Others may have dipped a toe (or more) successfully in Uptime Kuma....

For me.... most of my Wi-Fi / LAN-based devices in HE are one's that check-in regularly enough that I can assess their presence. Any monitoring that I want to setup (but have not bothered to do) I could likely drive based on activity, rather than needing to monitor them actively outside of HE or based on some other logic.