Installing Presence Detection on an OpenWrt Router

The Szélessáv Műhely presence detection module can be installed separately on a standard OpenWrt system, so using this feature does not require installing the complete Szélessáv Műhely firmware.

The installer automatically detects whether the OpenWrt system uses the apk or opkg package manager, installs the required dependencies, and then installs the LuCI and configuration files required for presence detection.

Installation

Connect to the OpenWrt router via SSH and run the following command:

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/szelessavalapitvany/openwrt-presence/main/install.sh | sh

The installer automatically installs the required packages and files. At the end of the installation process, it restarts the services required by LuCI.

Installed Components

After installation, a new Smart home menu appears in the LuCI interface with the following pages:

• Presence – network-based presence detection using DHCP information and ping.
• Wifi presence – presence detection based on currently connected Wi-Fi clients.
• Access points – configuration of additional OpenWrt access points used for Wi-Fi presence detection.

Presence – Network-Based Presence Detection

Presence mode determines the IP address of the configured device from DHCP lease information and then checks whether the device is reachable using ping.

Multiple MAC addresses can be assigned to one presence group. The group is considered active if at least one of the configured devices responds.

The ping timeout can be configured from the LuCI interface.

Wifi Presence – Wi-Fi-Based Presence Detection

Wifi presence mode directly checks the list of active Wi-Fi clients maintained by OpenWrt.

This method is generally faster than ping-based detection because the system does not need to send a separate network request to every device.

Clients are identified by hostname, which is associated with the corresponding MAC address using DHCP lease information.

Using Multiple Access Points

If the home network contains multiple OpenWrt routers or access points, they can also be included in Wi-Fi presence detection.

The Access points page allows you to configure:

• the MAC address of the access point,
• the protocol used: HTTP or HTTPS,
• the REST endpoint providing the connected client list.

The default endpoint is:

/cgi-bin/luci/get-wifi-clients

A separate client-list module must be installed on secondary OpenWrt routers or access points to provide this endpoint.

Using Presence Groups

The state of the configured presence groups can also be retrieved using HTTP requests.

For network-based presence detection:

http://ROUTER-IP/cgi-bin/luci/presence/GROUPNAME

For Wi-Fi-based presence detection:

http://ROUTER-IP/cgi-bin/luci/wifi-presence/GROUPNAME

If at least one device in the group is present, the response is:

true

If none of the devices in the group are present, the response is:

false

This makes the presence detection module easy to integrate with DSVT, Domoticz or other automation systems.

Important Setting for Mobile Devices

Modern phones often use randomized or private MAC addresses for Wi-Fi connections.

For reliable presence detection, the MAC address used for the home Wi-Fi network should remain unchanged. In the phone's Wi-Fi settings, disable randomized MAC addressing or configure the device to use its hardware MAC address for the home network.

Reinstallation and Updates

The installer can be run again at any time. Existing configuration files are preserved, so previously created presence groups and access point settings are not overwritten.

wget -qO- https://openwrt.szelessavalapitvany.hu/smarthome/OpenWrt_ALL_version/presence/install.sh | sh

System Requirements

• OpenWrt
• LuCI web interface
• Internet connection during installation
• SSH access to the router

The installer supports both newer OpenWrt systems using the apk package manager and older versions using opkg.