simple wifi blocking

I've been using a device called a fingbox to selectively block internet/wifi access for several months. I thought I'd pass it along in case anyone else needs something like this.
https://www.fing.io/

It has several nice features that help with monitoring and blocking kids use of wifi.
It works with an app on your phone.
It can disable wifi on demand for a specific number of hours
It can schedule wifi to stop working for specific devices
It can alert when devices are connected to the wifi or leave wifi (not perfect - it's +/- 20 minutes or so and sometime false notification when devices just go to sleep. But this does give pretty good indication when a kid disables wifi in order to use cell data)
Tells you all devices connected to your home network plus other options - wifi speed, internet speed, etc.
Easy to install and use (at this point my kids haven't even figured out that it's there - just me and my wifi have the app on our phones and can disconnect wifi at will ... pretty nice when it's time to get chores done or come to dinner)

So, not the most feature rich technology safety tool, but the easiest to use that I have found.

About $120 and it connects to your existing wireless router.

skiddlyarcus wrote:I've been using a device called a fingbox to selectively block internet/wifi access for several months. I thought I'd pass it along in case anyone else needs something like this.
https://www.fing.io/

It has several nice features that help with monitoring and blocking kids use of wifi.
It works with an app on your phone.
It can disable wifi on demand for a specific number of hours
It can schedule wifi to stop working for specific devices
It can alert when devices are connected to the wifi or leave wifi (not perfect - it's +/- 20 minutes or so and sometime false notification when devices just go to sleep. But this does give pretty good indication when a kid disables wifi in order to use cell data)
Tells you all devices connected to your home network plus other options - wifi speed, internet speed, etc.
Easy to install and use (at this point my kids haven't even figured out that it's there - just me and my wifi have the app on our phones and can disconnect wifi at will ... pretty nice when it's time to get chores done or come to dinner)

So, not the most feature rich technology safety tool, but the easiest to use that I have found.

About $120 and it connects to your existing wireless router.

Thank you! This is helpful. Do you have to set up each device or will the app find each device? Can you exclude devices or set up an individual profile with different wifi rules?
I've been looking at the eero router as that has a family profile for $99/yr and allows restrictions by device but I'll check this out so I can keep my current router.

The fingbox finds and inventories every device on your network. It can identify most of them. It rescans your network every few minutes looking for new devices.
In the phone app, you add a list of people and then associate a device to a person.
So, for example, if your child gets a new phone, the app notifies you about the new device and you associate the device to your child.

The wifi blocking is based off of each person - you set schedules for each person and the fingbox will disable/enable all devices associated with the person at the scheduled time.

You can download the app and use some of the features without purchasing the fingbox. That will give you a small idea of some features.

Thank you! This is really helpful. Many a time in my class WIFI getting slower down at church, I will definitely look upon this.

josephhiltonflorida wrote:Thank you! This is really helpful. Many a time in my class WIFI getting slower down at church, I will definitely look upon this.

fingbox isn't going to help with slow wifi at church - it's for home use.

from what I've seen slow wifi at church is generally caused by
1) too many people on the wifi using up bandwidth/airtime (especially when you have 2+ wards in the building at the same time
2) poor signal strength (common in older building) or
3) buildings that don't use the church-approved equipment (meraki APs).

When you are teaching class you need to download all video offline before class ... most buildings will be unable to stream video when there are 400-600 people in the building connected to wifi. This is why we turn off wifi before stake conference broadcasts and in some instances it has to be turned off for ward sacrament meeting broadcasts.