FingBox: Troubleshoot & Monitor Your WiFi
With the Internet Of Things cascading down upon us like a great waterfall of WiFi-connected junk (and some good things too, I’m sure) the humble home WiFi network is now playing the role of arbiter to a whole cluster of connected home devices. This tangled mess of technology leads to the common and frustrating of all life’s questions (at least nerd life, anyway): Why the hell is my broadband so slow today?
Among other things, Fing promise to answer this most perplexing of questions and give you the tools to shoot down bandwidth hogs, secure your network, set up parental controls, figure out where the WiFi black spots are in your home and generally keep your burgeoning battalion of broadband devices in check.
Fing gain their consumer pedigree from the Fing App, available on Android and iOS, which has collected a stupendous numbers of satisfied users who rely upon its simply presented but powerful networking tools to keep a lid on their wireless woes.
On the enterprise side, Fing is an offshoot of Domotz, a company who promise professional grade network monitoring that, surprise surprise, can be deployed to the Raspberry Pi as a cheaper alternative to their “Domotz Box” hardware. It can even be downloaded for free if you’ve got your own Pi.
I wonder what’s inside Fing Box? and how it stacks up to their Pi-powered professional platform 😀 The specs claim an ARMv7 processor with 512MB RAM, a 1 Gb/s Ethernet port that’s sure to make some people happy, and a Linux-based OS that absolutely screams of hackability. I’d be surprised if it’s not an AllWinner SOC.
Fing have raised $210,435 so far on IndieGoGo for their Fingbox platform smashing their tentative $25,000 goal. A figure probably set with the express purpose to be smashed, but still that’s a lot of support!
It looks like Fingbox will relieve your smartphone of the burden of network monitoring and do a much better job to boot. You know, I’ve convinced myself I want one now. D’oh! Even if you know you can slap some software on a Pi, there’s a lot to be said for a tidy, finished product with a neat companion app.
If you’re into home WiFi monitoring, or just potentially hackable home gadgets (hackable by you, hopefully, not some shady government sponsored operatives somewhere) then give Fingbox a look.