Domoticz

The solution to this is to use something that does request a reply from your phone (or another device) and will get a response whether the device active or not. Arp-requests are generally answered by all phones, so why not use this? Indeed, checking with 'arp', only performs a lookup in an existing table in the OS.
But, there is a tool called 'arping' which will send an arp-whois and report the response. Use it like this: I've altered the script from https://www.domoticz.com/wiki/Presence_detection to use arping as it is much more reliable AND will detect when a device is disconnected / leaves the network.
Note: I've installed Domoticz on a Raspberry Pi, so above mentioned method may or may not work for you. Arping is available on most OS's though.
Caveat: arping uses a system call that requires root-access, so you need to prepend 'sudo' to the command.

I think also arping will give problems with Android's doze function (Android 6)

To be honest: I haven't got a clue if that's the case or not.
Experience (meaning, the past few days) arping has worked flawlessly for me. Which doesn't mean that other versions than our Android 7 phones may provide different results.

Place your android 7 phone on a flat surface, no charger attached and wait a few hours. See what happens.

Anyway,
What's the working solution? I tried both ip-presence detection and this arp methode but both off them don't work.

With arp I get the following error

pi@raspberrypi ~/domoticz/scripts $ ./arpdetect.sh 192.168.0.110 635 10
PING 192.168.0.110 (192.168.0.110) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 192.168.0.110 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 215.874/215.874/215.874/0.000 ms
./arpdetect.sh: line 60: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'

Anyone an idea or an other solution to detect if my phone is in the house or not?

Thx

I get exactly the same error as what Koensk is describing.
What are we doing wrong?

SOLVED: There was an error with one or the <">-signs in line 50. Copy/paste issue, I assume.

Strange thing for me is that arping to the IP address of the phone (Android) works, but not using the MAC address (I wanted to use the MAC to avoid having to give the phone static IP).

And I am sure I use the right MAC address since arpinging the IP address gives med the MAC as response, so I can copy it and paste.

This is probably something with my phone, but it shows that is may be hard to find a foolproof method.

Perhaps i'm going a little ot...but..
i've found that using nmap (i've tried arp-scan too..totally unreliable) is the more "reliable" method for network presence detection.
gives a list of mac addresses alive into the network range 192.168.50-100 (dhcp scope in this case...you can put all subnet but slower).
You can search for your phones mac addresses into this list.
Android issue can be "solved" considering a time range detection for the "absence".
Infact i've also found that with 1 minute check you can consider offline the phone if the script doesn't find it for 12 minutes (with 10 minutes i get some false positives).
If you use the absence for alarm activation, it could be a reasonable activation time.

The version of nmap I have installed (6.47) does not seem to have options -sP or -PR...

Oh, it did... but I didn't see them in the manpage.... strange.

You are right...
-sP is the actual -sn (no port scan), both are the same.
-PR (Arp ping) is the default with local network.

So "nmap -sP -PR 192.168.1.50-100" is equivalent to "nmap -sn 192.168.1.50-100"

rif. https://nmap.org/book/man-host-discovery.html

Koensk wrote:Anyway,
What's the working solution? I tried both ip-presence detection and this arp methode but both off them don't work.

With arp I get the following error

pi@raspberrypi ~/domoticz/scripts $ ./arpdetect.sh 192.168.0.110 635 10
PING 192.168.0.110 (192.168.0.110) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 192.168.0.110 ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 215.874/215.874/215.874/0.000 ms
./arpdetect.sh: line 60: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'

Anyone an idea or an other solution to detect if my phone is in the house or not?

Thx

Koesnk, dit you find the reason for the EOF error and did you get the Arp script working?

I get the following 2 errors:

./arpdetect.sh: line 60: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
./arpdetect.sh: line 62: syntax error: unexpected end of file

Anyone an idea?

Thanks

Jasper

zedd wrote: I've altered the script from https://www.domoticz.com/wiki/Presence_detection to use arping as it is much more reliable AND will detect when a device is disconnected / leaves the network.
.

Zedd, Can you share your modified script?

micksel wrote:Zedd, Can you share your modified script?

I actually altered the script in the Wiki page...

zedd wrote:

micksel wrote:Zedd, Can you share your modified script?

I actually altered the script in the Wiki page...

Feeling stupid, thanks

When trying this
results in This goes on until I stop the script.

It seems my phone (Android 7) goes to doze after some time. Can't find a place to turn that off. Trying to add a ping in the script I'm not sure off doing.

Manually setting the switch to 'on' results the script in answering that the phone is online, of course. But I'm sure that isn't the right way of working with it.

Seems that the used a big W in the script and not a small w, so start by changing that, I hade that problem, but I also changed by removing the timeout so that will use the default value and set a -c of at least 15 because my android is something very slow on responding.

EdKo66 wrote:When trying this

Code: Select all

python check_device_online.py 192.168.0.117 168 10 30

results in

Code: Select all

python check_device_online.py 192.168.0.117 168 10 30
23:25:12- script started.
23:25:12- according to domoticz, 192.168.0.117 is offline
Usage: arping [-fqbDUAV] [-c count] [-w timeout] [-I device] [-s source] destination
  -f : quit on first reply
  -q : be quiet
  -b : keep broadcasting, don't go unicast
  -D : duplicate address detection mode
  -U : Unsolicited ARP mode, update your neighbours
  -A : ARP answer mode, update your neighbours
  -V : print version and exit
  -c count : how many packets to send
  -w timeout : how long to wait for a reply
  -I device : which ethernet device to use
  -s source : source ip address
  destination : ask for what ip address

This goes on until I stop the script.

It seems my phone (Android 7) goes to doze after some time. Can't find a place to turn that off. Trying to add a ping in the script I'm not sure off doing.

Manually setting the switch to 'on' results the script in answering that the phone is online, of course. But I'm sure that isn't the right way of working with it.

I think I've the same issue. Since the update to Android 7 my online device checker won't work as good as it did. When I put my phone in just stand-by mode. After a little while, it says it's not "on" anymore in domoticz. When I put the mobile on again, the pushnotification that "someone's home" immediately appears. When I try to ping it directly on the pc, it says request timed out (when it's a little while in standby mode). I think in Android 7 something has changed the pinging?

Correct, Android 7 does put the WiFi much more in sleep mode than older releases, meaning any MAC or IP checking will be flawed. I am using both Ping and Bluetooth Check to determine the presence of the phones and that works like a charm.

Jos

I created a script to detect all devices on the network.
Installation instructions are here: https://github.com/thijsdebets/networkdetectz/wiki

It uses a combination of arpscan, ping and even supports bluetooth detection.
I use it very succesfull to detect who is at home and to set the lights to TV-Mode when the tv switches on, etc.

It requires one arp-scan every minute via cron making it low on resources.