Presence Detection
I want to be able to tell when a family member (me or Julie) is present in our domicile, so that the house can respond appropriately.
Two easy ways I can think of to do this are DHCP via DNSMASQ and association with the access point. I've already tested both and today I am working on the Unifi access point approach.
Unifi
Unifi is this Ubiquiti system where you run a Unifi server (for example on Bellman on port 8443) and it watches all the supported WiFi APs on your LAN and lets you manage all of them from one place.
I have just one AP right now. I live in a small house, it's all I need. It supports two separate networks "wildsong2" for 2 GHz and "wildsong5" for 5 GHz. They could be combined but if I do that I can't control or see which network a computer connects to, so I lose control over the bandwidth. (Plover likes to chose the slower 2 Ghz for some reason.)
FYI my AP can run for months at a time without ever seeing Unifi Server once it is set up. The server is for management and logging, packets will fly and authentication will work without server being online.
Unifi API
I can run python scripts to pull data from the UniFi server via REST, see https://github.com/calmh/unifi-api
This is pure coolness.
sudo pip install unifi ./unifi-ls-clients -c bellman -u readonlyuser -p YOURPASSWORDHERE -v v5 -s default NAME MAC AP CHAN RSSI RX TX vastra-preseed 3c:15:c2:dd:15:9c eLab 60 47 400 400 SqueezeboxRadio 00:04:20:2a:c6:3f eLab 6 39 54 54 android-e6e08e8b3a7b051f a0:0b:ba:e8:c5:8a eLab 6 38 39 65 Swift 60:c5:47:00:90:5a eLab 60 32 162 117 android-d16cb9f5371c2cf6 30:85:a9:5b:af:57 eLab 6 27 6 63
That's actually not the information I need though.
Unifi logs
Using the Unifi log I can see when a device becomes visible and when it leaves.
The log file "server.log" I need is in a Docker volume called unifi_log
I can build a Docker container to run my microservice and let it have read-only access to the log. Here is a test
docker run -it --rm -v unifi_log:/unifi:ro busybox ash
Now I should get a shell prompt and be able to do
/ # cd /unifi /unifi # tail -2 server.log [2020-01-02 16:03:55,943] <inform-64> INFO inform - from [80:2a:a8:90:cd:65](80:2a:a8:90:cd:65, U7LT, 4.0.69.10871): state=CONNECTED, ext/stun_ip=192.168.123.66, dev_ip=192.168.123.66, up=2461 [2020-01-02 16:04:09,042] <inform-66> INFO inform - from [80:2a:a8:90:cd:65](80:2a:a8:90:cd:65, U7LT, 4.0.69.10871): state=CONNECTED, ext/stun_ip=192.168.123.66, dev_ip=192.168.123.66, up=2474 /unifi #
Way cool.
Here is a full "conversation": I turn on Wifi on my phone then turn it off.
Turning on WiFI generates an event like this:
[2020-01-02 16:06:03,541] <inform-85> INFO event - [event] AP[80:2a:a8:90:cd:65] event: { "arp_reply_gw_seen" : "yes" , "assoc_delta" : "10000" , "assoc_status" : "0" , "auth_delta" : "0" , "auth_ts" : "2577.827989" , "dns_resp_seen" : "yes" , "event_id" : "1" , "event_type" : "success" , "ip_assign_type" : "dhcp" , "ip_delta" : "4380000" , "mac" : "d4:63:c6:5b:28:57" , "message_type" : "STA_ASSOC_TRACKER" , "vap" : "ath2" , "wpa_auth_delta" : "1020000"}
Turning off WiFi generates this.
[2020-01-02 16:06:12,551] <inform-90> INFO event - [event] AP[80:2a:a8:90:cd:65] event: { "assoc_status" : "0" , "event_id" : "1" , "event_type" : "sta_leave" , "mac" : "d4:63:c6:5b:28:57" , "message_type" : "STA_ASSOC_TRACKER" , "vap" : "ath2"}
Walking out the door will generate the same "sta_leave" event as soon as the phone drops off the network.
I will have to debounce because it could drop out momentarily inside the house (for example if I go in the
basement) and it could pop on and off a few times as I walk away down the hill and go around a building.
I will need to experiment with it.
Flask project
I started a flask project and it's in source/presence on Bellman.
Originally I was doing a micro web server but it's morphing into an MQTT publisher.
It will listen to STDOUT from the Unifi Docker container (which is where log messages go by default.)
