How to sense smartphones nearby?

Question

How does euclid analytics (http://euclidanalytics.com/product/how/) get the mac addresses of nearby smartphones? (Turning wifi ap into a smartphone sensor !) Do I need to do some instrumentation work on the wifi AP? Or is there another way can achieve the same goal?

Answer 1

if you can sniff wireless packets, you can see every wifi device, what is communicating ( except if its in sniffer mode too ), so basically they scanning for wifi signals, what you can see, but just if wifi and scanning is turned on the phone.

take a look at Kismet

but you myght need a wireless card what can go into sniffing mode