Ping (ICMP)

The ping platform offers presence detection by using ping to send ICMP echo requests. This can be useful when devices are running a firewall and are blocking UDP or TCP packets but responding to ICMP requests (like Android phones). This tracker doesn’t need to know the MAC address since the host can be on a different subnet. This makes this an option to detect hosts on a different subnet when nmap or other solutions don’t work since arp doesn’t work.

To use this presence detection in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file:

# Example configuration.yaml entry
device_tracker:
  - platform: ping
    hosts:
      hostone: 192.168.2.10

Configuration variables:

• hosts array (Required): List of device names and their corresponding IP address or hostname.
• count (Optional): Number of packet used for each device (avoid false detection).

See the device tracker component page for instructions how to configure the people to be tracked.