Can iPhone on different subnet be detected?

[mydliar]

Hi,
It seems to me that iphonedetect cannot reach and probe devices that are on a different subnet than the HA host? I have Inter-LAN routing configured, but the device disappears and is set to 'Away' as soon as it connects to a different subnet (I have reconfigured the hostname IP accordingly in configuration.yaml).
Thanks,

Martin

[CorvetteCole]

looks like they can't, as of #74 . strange though, since I can ping it from HA. have the exact same issue :/

[P-Verbrugge]

Same issue here. I can ping my phone from the subnet that HA is in. However, when using this plugin, it does not work. :-( My phone is set to away too. I even added a firewall rule to allow all ports from HA to my iPhone. Does not help either. :-(

[jwoodhouse]

For those here that are still interested in tracking iPhones in subnets/vlans different to their HA host, you can achieve this by adding another network interface to your HA host so that it sits on both its current subnet, as well as the one your iPhone (or really any other IoT device you have segmented off) is on.

In my case I have HAOS running on a physical host, connected to a managed switch, so I was able to follow this process to create a virtual network interface within HAOS, to avoid adding a second ethernet connection to the host.

• Set up your HA host's switch port so that your native VLAN is where your HA host's main network interface resides (should already be done if you have HA running).

• Set up a tagged VLAN on that same switch port with the vlan ID associated to your iPhone's subnet.

• Load up the home assistant terminal and run the following command to figure out your network interface name:
  ha network info In my case this is enp4s0

• Run this command to set up a virtual network interface on the tagged VLAN you set up earlier:
  ha network vlan enp4s0 45 --ipv4-method auto --ipv6 method disabled This sets up the new interface on vlan id 45, set to DHCP.

If that ran correctly, the command ha network info should now return 2 intefaces.

On version 2.0.5 of iphonedetect, it doesnt seem to evaluate the multiple subnets that HA will now be on, so you will have to implement the code change detailed in #71 (comment)

After this you can add your iPhone device tracker as normal and it should just work.

[pointlevel]

HI, @jwoodhouse, i tried this solution but my HA switches over to only function on the tagged VLAN.
In my Unifi-setup i have HA connected to my SERVER-VLAN and tagged that port also with my CLIENT-VLAN where the phones resides. Is there any settings that has to be made? Thanks!

[P-Verbrugge]

@pointlevel perhaps you can look at the unify addon for HA.

It will import the list of devices in HA, that you want to track to see if it’s home or not. That is what I use now too. Works excellent.

[pointlevel]

@pointlevel perhaps you can look at the unify addon for HA.

It will import the list of devices in HA, that you want to track to see if it’s home or not. That is what I use now too. Works excellent.

@P-Verbrugge I tested it a long time ago and I thought it was a bit uneven in its behavior when it comes to home or not. There I think iPhonedetect has been 100% reliable.
Unifi integration might have improved now, I'll try it, thanks :)

[P-Verbrugge]

@pointlevel Here is it’s really reliable. No issues with it. Even when the iPhone is in deep sleep.

[pointlevel]

@P-Verbrugge Tried it now for a couple of days, and have been working ok. But now when i was out and away from the Wifi-range walking my dog for approx 30 minutes, it did not set me as away. When i got home i tried to disable Wifi on my phone, and it worked, i got away. And this is how i remember this integration, 98% ok, while iPhoneDetect has been absolutely 100% rock solid. (Until i started to segment my network of course).

Anyone, any ideas?

[P-Verbrugge]

@pointlevel Sorry to hear it does not work for you. I do not have that experience here. It takes a couple of minutes, before the systems says I am away. Perhaps it's a router setting?

[markfrancisonly]

my home assistance docker container runs with three network interfaces. my 2.x iphonedetect instance broke at some point, but I uploaded a pull request that allows a device ip address to be added from any attached subnet #111

so long as each network interface has a distinct subnet, the routing table should direct the unicast 5353 ping to the correct interface and create the necessary arp entry. check your interfaces subnets here https://my.home-assistant.io/redirect/network/

consider providing some feedback on my pr if you've tested. Btw, bluetooth room presence with $7 ESPresense boards is more fun, also instantaneous

[Passific]

I also faced this issue, but I came up with a different solution: a small docker container dedicated to that task.
Easy to setup, using HA MQTT auto-discovery, this way the devices directly appears in HA without any additional configuration.
You can fin it here: https://github.com/Passific/MQTT-iPhone-Tracker