What’s on our Wi-Fi?
No guessing.

Open the router’s app and you get a list of names nobody chose: nine devices called “wlan0,” two called “phone,” one just called “Google.” Some are ours and some are mysteries. When something stops working, that list is no help at all.

I wanted one place with a real name for every device, what it does, and where it connects, with the gaps marked as gaps. And I wanted something my wife could use on a bad internet day without calling me: one button that checks this PC, the router, website names and the internet, and answers in plain English.

So the job had two audiences from the start. Simple mode for her: names, purposes, plain statuses and a troubleshooting guide. Technical mode for me: addresses, the evidence behind every claim, and the maintenance tools.

While the app runs, it refreshes the device list and runs the connection checks every five minutes, even with the page closed. Only one job runs at a time, every step has a time limit, and a failed refresh keeps the last good map. Repairs back up the files they touch first and put them back if anything fails. The notes file is never restored from a backup, so nothing we typed gets rolled back.

The router’s side matters most. It is the only source that knows which Wi-Fi unit each device is using, and it confirmed the mesh itself: four units, each matched by model and address, one of them the main unit the other three report to.

The first map put 46 devices in two rings around the router and ignored which Wi-Fi unit each one used, so the labels piled on top of each other. It was honest, and it was hard to read. So I handed it to Claude with that one line.

Claude rebuilt the map around the router’s own answers. The main unit sits in the middle, the other three units orbit it, and every device sits on the ring of the unit it actually uses. Devices the router won’t place get their own amber arc. Remote devices fan out from the PC. A pass at the end nudges every label until none of them overlap, and switching between Simple and Technical never moves a device.

Then the motion, because I asked for it. Behind the map runs a grid drawn on the graphics card that pans and zooms with the devices, dips into a soft well under each Wi-Fi unit, breathes, and leans toward the mouse. A radar sweep circles the main unit. Select a device and brackets lock onto it while its path back to the main unit lights up. The legend says it plainly: the light is decoration, and none of it is Wi-Fi range or traffic.

Identify devices walks through the unknowns one at a time in three steps: choose, compare, name and save. The compare step has a guide for each kind of device, like where a TV hides its network details or why a phone shows a different address for each Wi-Fi network.

The strongest match is the device’s hardware address. The record shows it as six boxes. Type what the phone or TV screen says and each box lights up cyan if it matches or amber if it doesn’t. An exact match offers to fill in the “how did you identify it” note for you.

Saving writes only the fields that changed into the notes file, adds a dated note about where the fact came from, and rebuilds the map. If someone else changed the same record in the meantime, the save is refused and nothing in the form is lost.

After the redesign, 26 devices still had generic names or no make. So I asked Claude to find them by any means it could, where Codex hadn’t. The rules didn’t move: read only, nothing logged into, nothing switched on or off, and no addresses sent anywhere off the PC. A Claude agent spent about 18 minutes listening and asking politely.

A TV named itself. It showed up only under the name of the company that made its network chip. But the TV publishes a small music-streaming info page on the home network, and that page answers with the TV’s own brand and model. It’s the only record that went to “confirmed” that night, because the device itself said so.

The nine “wlan0” devices are Tuya. Each one broadcasts Tuya’s local smart-home protocol with its own device ID, and they fall into two product groups, six and three. Tuya’s software runs inside a lot of plugs, bulbs and switches, but the broadcast doesn’t say which, so the make stays blank. The fix takes five minutes: the Smart Life app shows a Virtual ID for each device, and every record now has its ID written down to match.

Two phones said Android. Their network names answered as Android devices, which fits one guess and narrows the other.

Everything else stayed quiet: a laptop, a game console, a couple of smart-home gadgets, a doorbell that sleeps, a few phones. Phones and laptops don’t announce themselves, and that silence proves nothing.

Checked so far

37 backend tests cover the server’s safety checks, saves and the inventory rules. 50 browser checks across three suites cover search and filters, offline use, phone widths, Simple and Technical modes, the naming walkthrough with a test save, and the live tools, with no automated accessibility violations or outside-site requests observed during those browser checks. That is evidence about the tested flows, not a complete accessibility or privacy audit. The router confirmed all four Wi-Fi units by model and address.

Not proven yet

This is a map of what the network admits to, not proof that every device was found. Sleeping devices, guest networks and smart-home gadgets that hide behind a hub can be missing. 27 questions are still open. How smooth the motion runs on our real PC and phone hasn’t been measured. And the review that counts is still pending: my wife, on a bad internet day.