How can I merge my Fingbox network with the WiFi network detected by the Android App?

pnmyers · August 2020

I have a Fingbox connected via Ethernet to my "Home" network. This shows up in the app.fing.io portal as "Home". When I use the Android App, it connects to this network's WiFi access point (which has an SSID named "bob"). This shows up in the Fing portal as "Bob" and is completely separate from the Fingbox network "Home".
I can select "Merge Networks" for "Bob" but I can only merge it with another network detected by the Android App. It does not allow me to Merge "Bob" with "Home". Is this a bug?

Lee_Bo · August 2020

Interesting. I know the desktop and mobile apps, at this time, will not integrate with each other, but it's beed addressed.
However, since this is the website, I'd think that whatever you see with your mobile app should be the same on the website and therefore should, again should, be able to merge together. May have to wait for any of the staff/devs to chime in.

Robin · September 2020

pnmyers said:

I have a Fingbox connected via Ethernet to my "Home" network. This shows up in the app.fing.io portal as "Home". When I use the Android App, it connects to this network's WiFi access point (which has an SSID named "bob"). This shows up in the Fing portal as "Bob" and is completely separate from the Fingbox network "Home".
I can select "Merge Networks" for "Bob" but I can only merge it with another network detected by the Android App. It does not allow me to Merge "Bob" with "Home". Is this a bug?

Have you added all the access points in your network to Fingbox? If all access points are added to your Fingbox then it wont create separate network. In order to add the access point for Fingbox, first you need to be connected to the access point network which you want to add. Then open the Fing App and choose the Fingbox network from the dropdown list. Go to the ‘Network’ tab and select either Wi-Fi Intrusion Protection or Wi-Fi Performance and you will be able to add the Access point for the current network your device is connected to. You can only add the Access point either from the Wi-Fi Performance tab or Wi-Fi Intrusion Protection tab.

After Adding the access point, you will receive the New Access point alert and you need to accept it as a trusted gateway and the access point will be added successfully.

pnmyers · September 2020

Thanks for that idea Robin, but I don't think that will solve the problem.
In the "Home" network created by the Fingbox, I do see all 3 access points listed. (I have a router with WiFi and two satellites acting as WiFi extenders). All three show up in the list of discovered devices and the icons are listed as "Router" for one and "WiFi Extender" for the other two.
On the "Bob" Network detected by the Android Fing App, I also see the same three devices and they are also listed as Router and WiFi Extenders, respectively.
The devices in both the Home (Fingbox) network and the Bob (Android detected WiFi network) have the same MAC addresses as well, so they are definitely the same devices listed in two separate networks in the Fing web application.
Any other thoughts?

Robin · September 2020

Are you using Fing desktop application by any chance or did you scan the network without choosing Fingbox network?

pnmyers · September 2020

Hi Robin.
I am not using the Fing Desktop Application (though I used it a while back). The "Bob" wireless network shows up in the Fing web application from being scanned by my Android phone using the Fing Android App.

That said, I tried using the Fing Desktop Application in the past, and uninstalled it and removed the networks it created. The reason I stopped using it was because the network that the Desktop Application created were separate and duplicate to what the Fingbox created. I was never able to logically combine the network created by the Fing Desktop App with the network seen by the Fingbox.

So, it would appear that the issue really is that a network detected by a Fingbox is logically separate from either/both:
1) A network scanned via WiFi from the Android Fing App
or
2) A network scanned by the Fing Desktop App
Or said another way, if you use a Fingbox you can't really use any of Fing's other services because they are not compatible with having a Fingbox on your network.

Robin · September 2020

Hi @pnmyers
Have you ever scanned the network selecting "Continue scan" option like from the screenshot? Have you used any apple device to run the Fing app? Also, Can you try to delete the duplicate network and then check if anything changes.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031733/uploads/editor/l2/zgxeyu6kuzll.jpg

pnmyers · September 2020

Thanks Robin. Interesting, I've never seen that screen before in the Android App. How does one trigger it?
I have never used an Apple device on my network (I don't own any, so I can't try it out)
I just deleted the "Bob" wireless network detected by the Android Fing App, using the app.fing.io web interface. I cannot delete the "Home" network that is detected by the Fingbox, as it is not an option to delete a Fingbox detected network from what I can see.
I then cleared the Storage and Cache for the Android Fing App on my phone (so that I could start with a fresh Android App experience), re-signed in to my Fing account and got in to the main screen of the Android Fing App.
What I see on the main screen in the App is a pane for "Home" which is my Fingbox network, and I can View that network.
The pane below "Home" is another pane which says "Bob" which is the wireless network that my phone is connected to. And I can "Scan for devices" or select "WiFi information"
If I "Scan for devices" for "Bob", it creates a new network in app.fing.io called "Bob" and does not recognize that the "Bob" network should be the same as the "Home" network that the Fingbox reported.
And at no point when I did this, did I see the screen you pasted above, asking me to switch to the Fingbox network rather than continuing with the network scan.

pnmyers · September 2020

Also, interestingly... when I delete the "Bob" network from app.fing.io, it also deletes my Fingbox network "Home" as well. And the "Home" network won't come back, until I scan the wireless network from my phone, so that it creates both "Bob" and "Home". I think there's a bug going on here...

Oh, one other thing. In the Android App for "Home" (the Fingbox network) I can see that it has an SSID of "Bill" and not "Bob". "Bill" was the SSID I used several years ago for this Fingbox network, and since then I've changed the WiFi access points to "Bob" as the SSID. But I see no way in the Android App or app.fing.io to correct this. Is that SSID of "Bill" permanently associated with the Fingbox network and unchangeable?

Ah, and I just figured something else out... I renamed my Fingbox network from "Home" to "Bob" so now my Fingbox network and the current SSID for my WiFi are BOTH called "Bob". Now that I've done this, when I go to "Scan network" from my phone, it brings up that screen above saying that a Fingbox was detected on this network.

It seems that if you name your Fingbox network anything other than the current WiFi SSID that it doesn't detect that it is the "same" network. Using SSID for this seems like a bad idea, because many networks have multiple SSIDs (for example different SSIDs for 2.4g vs. 5g signals). Perhaps it would be better to detect that the network is the same using some other method (like detecting the MAC address of a known Fingbox on the network?)

Robin · September 2020

Hi @pnmyers
Unfortunately, as of now, there is no way to change the name of the SSID with the current SSID. The problem here is due to the fact that the SSID is saved in the network when the user perform the scan using the Fing App (also when onboarding the Fingbox). After this 1st scan, all other scans are being done by the Fingbox itself, but since the Fingbox is connected through a wired LAN cable, it's not capable of detecting new SSID(s) in the network. At the moment, apart from uninstalling the Fingbox and reinstalling it, there is no way of updating the SSID.

pnmyers · September 2020

Thanks Robin, that answers the question about correcting the SSID (which was sort of an offshoot of this thread).
But I guess we can still continue chasing down why the Fingbox detected network disappears in the app.fing.io web application if I delete the "Bob" network which is wirelessly scanned. It seems like I must have at least one network scanned by the Android App, otherwise none of the Fingbox networks will show up in the app. This seems like it could be a bug of some sort. I can reproduce it pretty easily and send screenshots of what I'm seeing to somewhere secure if it helps.
And then it would be good also to figure out why I cannot merge the wireless scanned network ("Bob") with the Fingbox network "Home". It seems like you can only merge two wireless networks together, and you can't ever merge a network with a Fingbox network. Is that intentional?

Robin · September 2020

Hi @pnmyers
Can you delete all networks from your Fing app and then go to account settings and then to Account storage and hit Synchronize. After that please scan the network and add Fingbox and then let me know the steps you followed to recreate the issue so I can investigate? Thanks

pnmyers · September 2020

Hey Robin. So, one thing to note is that there is no way to delete a Fingbox network, as far as I can see. Because the Fingbox is a piece of hardware, installed in my house, the network seems permanent as long as that Fingbox is running and is associated to my account. (Note: I have two different locations, with two separate Fingboxes on my account).
Are you suggesting that I remove both Fingboxes from my account entirely, and then re-add them? If so, I can do that but... Will I lose ALL of the customization I've done to device names, locations and settings (like alert timings) if I do that? I have several hundred devices that have accumulated over the years, and the thought of having to reset everything up seems a bit heavyweight. Let me know.

Robin · September 2020

Hi @pnmyers
I was not sure if you had 2 Fingboxes. Can you confirm if both Fingboxes are monitoring different networks. Can you please select the Fingox network and go to network tab and then check the SSID name and access point address. I believe some access points are sharing among these 2 fingboxes and thus it is creating separate network.
Also, to address your query, if you remove/deactivate the fingbox, you will not lose the device customizations as it is saved on Fing app rather than Fingbox.

pnmyers · September 2020

I can confirm that the two Fingboxes are two different networks. They are in two different houses, a few hours apart from each other.
Let's call the two Fingboxes "home-a" and "home-b". The SSID for each of those networks is also "home-a" and "home-b"
In "home-b" Network Tab, the SSID is <unknown>. The BSSID is a MAC address that is not even on my network, so I'm not sure how it got there.
In "home-a" Network Tab, the SSID is "bob" which is the SSID I used years ago when I originally set up the Fingbox. I can't change this in the UI. The BSSID in here is the same MAC address seen as BSSID in "home-b", which is odd.
There are NO access points in common between home-a and home-b. Each physical location is on a separate network, hours apart from each other. They each are using a single SSID (home-a and home-b, respectively) and separate physical routers and wifi access points.
If you think at this point removing both Fingboxes and readding them to reset things completely makes sense, I can do that. Maybe there's just some weird state issue that my account has gotten into. Let me know if that is the logical next step.

Robin · September 2020

Thanks @pnmyers
In your case, I can only suggest to reset the Fingbox and remove all BSSID from Fing app and then add again one by one so correct access points are monitored. Also, make sure location permissions are enabled for the Fing app so that it can read SSID correctly. Please let me know if you go ahead with this.

pnmyers · September 2020

Thanks Robin. A lot of my home network automation is based around Fing (tied into IFTTT). Given this, I may just leave things alone. Deleting my two Fingboxes and recreating things from scratch would likely be a bit time consuming and might end up creating more problems than it resolves. if at some point there's a natural point for me to start my home networks over from scratch, I'll do that at that point. Thanks again for all of the assistance!

pnmyers · September 2020

@Robin I just figured something out that may help other users.
In the app I went into the Fingbox network I wanted to update, then into Network tab. In there I went into "Wi-Fi Performance"
I selected Test speed now, and it prompted me to add a new BSSID to the Fingbox network. I repeated this for all of my access points in the Wi-Fi (Netgear Orbi) mesh network, so I had all 3 BSSIDs. Then I deleted the old BSSID that was no longer present. (You can only delete a BSSID if you have at least one other present)
This allowed me to get all of the right BSSIDs associated with my Fingbox network, without removing and reinstalling the Fingbox from scratch. The only thing that appears to be unset still is the SSID which is still <unknown>. But that seems like a minor issue.

How can I merge my Fingbox network with the WiFi network detected by the Android App?

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