Home Assistant Padavan Device Tracker

This device tracker component allows you to get wireless devices presence from Padavan-based routers.

Devices support:

• tested on Xiaomi MiWiFi Mini Router with Padavan 3.4.3.9-099_195eba6
• reported working on Asus N56U Router with Padavan 3.4.3.9-099

Probably need additional changes to make it work on other devices.

Purpose

Detect ANY Wi-Fi clients (=Android/iOS/Windows Phone smartphones...) with 100% accuracy at any time moment.

Why not ...?

• Nmap - mobile devices (Nexus 5X, iPhones) can go to a deep sleep so nmap can send dozen different packages and get nothing. It's very unreliable. You need at least 3 minutes to understand client is really offline and not ignoring your requests.
• OpenWrt luci - can't check, but from source code it checks ARP table which is totally wrong, because it doesn't remove client immediately after disconnect.
• OpenWrt ubus - looks promising, but doesn't exist in Padavan firmware out of the box.
• Xiaomi - works like this solution (=perfectly), but only in router mode. Padavan tracker works in AP mode too.

Installation (Xiaomi MiWiFi Mini Router only)

1. Download stock Xiaomi dev firmware http://www1.miwifi.com/miwifi_download.html.
2. Flash it via web interface.
3. Install Android app (ru, en).
4. Attach router to your Mi account.
5. Download ssh unlock firmware http://d.miwifi.com/rom/ssh, remember login/pass - it's ssh credentials.
6. Put it on USB FAT32 stick:
   1. Turn on Router while reset-button pressed and USB stick plugged in
   2. Release Reset-button after the orange LED starts flashing
   3. Wait a minute to complete flashing and device is online again (shown by blue LED)
7. Check SSH to your device.
8. Go to http://prometheus.freize.net/index.html:
   1. Download utility.
   2. Build Toolchain.
   3. Build Firmware.
   4. Flash Firmware.
   5. Flash EEPROM.
9. Add the following lines to the configuration.yaml:

device_tracker:
  - platform: padavan_tracker
    consider_home: 10
    interval_seconds: 3
    url: http://192.168.1.1/ # web interface url (don't forget about `/` in the end)
    username: admin # Web interface user name
    password: admin # Web interface user pass

Notes

• Sometimes/most of the time web interface will be inaccessible while this component is working. That's because Padavan firmware doesn't allow >1 users authorized from different IPs. Check the possible workaround for this.

Useful links

• Firmware sources: https://bitbucket.org/padavan/rt-n56u
• Firmware build and installation utility: http://prometheus.freize.net/index.html
• OpenWrt wiki related to Xiaomi MiWiFi Mini: https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/xiaomi/mini