4

I want to track people (carrying mobile devices) in a pedestrian street by using two "check points" A and B.

I'm planning to place mobile devices or netbooks with Android/IOS or Linux in each check point and log an id so I can tell how many walked from A to B. I know I can discover other peoples devices using bluetooth but can it be done with wifi? I thinking of turning my devices into wifi access points. People will of course not connect to the access point, just walk by.

So my question is: Can it be done on the mentioned platforms? It is important that I can tell if the same person passed both A and B by logging a "device id" i.e. the MAC address.

Martin Hoegh
  • 465
  • 3
  • 17
  • Is this one of those legally controversial apps that tracks owner usage without their knowledge or approval? –  Aug 18 '11 at 14:22

2 Answers2

3

You should be able to do this, but only for devices which have WiFi switched on, and are actively seeking WiFi hotspots, which may be relatively few of the devices which actual pass by. The MAC address of each device will be unique, and you can use this to map the same device between your two points.

Regards,

Mark

Mark Allison
  • 21,839
  • 8
  • 47
  • 46
  • 2
    Plus, even when actively seeking hotspots, the device usually makes several passes through the spectrum and then stops for many seconds (for power efficiency, mostly); so you'll be only seeing the devices which scan the band continuously - this is rare, and usually means the user is doing some sort of diagnostic or wardriving. – Piskvor left the building Apr 28 '11 at 14:56
  • @Piskvor Thanks for the note. The pauses in the seeking devices is also one of my concerns, which may render the wifi approach useless. – Martin Hoegh Apr 28 '11 at 19:08
1

I found Kismet, which can do what I want. But its *unix only, so I'm planning to use small "netbooks" instead of mobile devices. I've also tested Ubertooth One, which can detect all Bluetooth devices by sniffing lap addresses.

Martin Hoegh
  • 465
  • 3
  • 17