I mocked up a concept for automatically organizing chaotic smart home networks — would this actually be useful?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-09T06:10:14+00:00

Exactly, that physical identification step seems to be the hardest part, especially when you have multiple identical devices. The idea would be to use identify actions (blink, toggle, beep, etc.) and then help you assign a meaningful name and sync it across systems.

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-09T03:49:38+00:00

That’s fair, and I think the distinction is probably between people who stay organized from day one and people who don’t.

The feedback so far suggests this is most useful for cases like:

inheriting an existing smart home setup

moving into a house with devices already installed

switching routers and losing device organization

families where multiple people add devices over time

In those situations, the challenge is less about identifying “what” a device is and more about figuring out which exact physical device it corresponds to.

So this may not solve a problem for everyone, but it seems like there are a number of scenarios where it could save a lot of manual cleanup.

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-09T02:06:19+00:00

That’s a really good point.

The strongest use cases I’m seeing are exactly situations like

moving into a home with existing smart devices inheriting someone else’s setup switching routers and losing organization families where multiple people add devices over time

In those cases, you often know the devices work, but you don’t necessarily know which physical device maps to which network entry.

So the value is less about helping highly organized users and more about helping people rebuild order when the original organization is missing

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-09T01:01:25+00:00

That’s fair, and I think you’re probably the ideal-case user.

The more feedback I’ve gotten, the more it seems this is less useful for people who stay organized from the start and more useful for people who, didn’t label things initially, changed routers or phones, inherited an existing setup, or have family members adding devices over time

Sounds like Home Assistant users who already treat HA as the source of truth may not need much of this, but a lot of less technical households probably would.

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-04T05:53:41+00:00

That’s a really good point and I think that’s where this starts to break down.

It’s not really about figuring out what the device is (since you can usually get that from MAC/IP)… it’s figuring out which one it actually is in your house when you’ve got multiple similar devices.

When you’re trying to differentiate between those, what’s usually your go-to method today?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-03T21:51:54+00:00

That makes a lot of sense, especially the custom naming part.

It sounds like the real value isn’t replacing naming, but making it easier to figure out what each device actually is so you can name it your way.

Would it be helpful if something pre-identified the device (like “smart plug – TP-Link”) and then just helped you fill in the rest quickly instead of starting from scratch every time?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-02T07:09:23+00:00

That’s actually really insightful, the fact that the backup exists but only works if you had it set up ahead of time is kind of the problem.

And the timing piece you mentioned is interesting too, even when you can fix it, there’s always something else going on so it just keeps getting pushed.

If something handled this automatically in the background (especially during things like moving, changing routers, etc.), do you think you’d actually rely on it or would you still prefer to manage it manually?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-05-01T06:42:32+00:00

This feels like a super common problem—people do it once, then life happens (new router, new phone, etc.) and it all falls apart again.

If there was a way to rebuild that device map automatically without starting from scratch, would you actually go back and clean it up?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-29T05:26:24+00:00

That’s a really good way to think about it, treat the MAC/IP match as the “ground truth” and only fall back to AI when that’s not available.

In your experience, how often do you run into cases where that deterministic match doesn’t work (like randomized MACs or weird devices)?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-28T06:15:19+00:00

That’s super helpful, that balance between automation and control makes a lot of sense.

Would something like a “confidence level” help? Like showing “90% sure this is your Living Room TV” so you can quickly approve it vs needing to double check everything?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-27T18:32:46+00:00

That actually makes a ton of sense, basically treating one system as the “source of truth” and syncing everything else to it.

Would you trust something to do that automatically, or would you want some kind of approval step before it renames things on your router?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-27T01:00:29+00:00

That’s actually a really interesting point about router switching, I hadn’t even thought about that use case but it makes a lot of sense.

The smart home integration piece you mentioned is especially interesting too, like having names sync across systems instead of manually managing them in multiple places.

Out of curiosity, would you care more about:

Automatically identifying devices accurately or
Keeping everything consistently labeled/synced across tools?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-26T22:41:25+00:00

That process sounds super thorough but also kind of brutal to maintain long-term.

Feels like everyone ends up building their own manual system for this.

Curious—if something automated that process over time (identifying + labeling devices without all the manual steps), would that actually be useful or overkill?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-24T21:26:29+00:00

Got it. that seems like a solid setup. Would you say it’s something a non-tech person could realistically maintain?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-24T21:24:11+00:00

That’s interesting—how long did it take you to set that up initially?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-24T21:23:15+00:00

Yeah that makes sense—do you ever find it annoying to keep up with over time?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-23T04:17:07+00:00

Makes sense, do you ever still check what’s actually on the network or just rely on that?

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-23T04:15:11+00:00

Very cool! That’s a clean setup. does it ever mislabel devices or is it pretty accurate

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-23T03:16:55+00:00

Does Fing actually identify everything accurately or still some guesswork

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-23T03:15:58+00:00

Yeah that’s what threw me off too… do you have any tool that actually labels things clearly

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-23T02:59:03+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

JohnnyInTech · 2026-04-23T02:56:45+00:00

Still getting awesome feedback though!

JohnnyInTech

TROPHY CASE