PingKit for Smart Homes

Every smart bulb, camera, and speaker is a small computer on your network. PingKit shows you all of them, flags the ones exposing services they shouldn't, and helps you spot anything that doesn't belong.

Your Smart Home Is a Network of Computers

A typical home now has dozens of connected devices, many running web servers, open ports, or advertised services you never see. Some ship with weak defaults and rarely get firmware updates. The first step to a secure smart home is simply knowing what's on it.

PingKit's Bonjour Browser on iPhone, grouping discovered services by type and showing the device, address and port advertising each one. — What those computers announce about themselves. A camera advertising an unauthenticated web page shows up here as a service, before it shows up anywhere else.

The Tools You'll Use

Goal	PingKit tool
List every device on the network	LAN Scanner
Score your network for weak settings and exposure	Security Scan
See what a device is exposing	Port Scanner
Discover advertised services (AirPlay, etc.)	Bonjour Browser
Automatic alerts when a device joins	Mac Agent (free)

A 10-Minute Smart-Home Audit

Scan the LAN. Open the LAN Scanner and list every device. PingKit identifies devices by vendor, hostname, and advertised services. Anything you can't identify gets investigated.
Run a security scan. It scores your router and network configuration for weak settings or exposed services.
Check the Bonjour Browser. See which devices advertise services like web interfaces, AirPlay, or SSH - a camera advertising an unauthenticated web page is something you want to know about.
Port-scan the suspicious ones. Use the Port Scanner on any device that looks off.

Put IoT on a guest network. Most cheap smart devices are the weakest link. A separate guest/IoT network keeps a compromised bulb away from your laptop and phone. See the full home WiFi hardening guide.

Catch Intruders Automatically

The free Mac Agent watches your network continuously on a Mac that stays awake and alerts you the moment a new device joins - so if something connects at 3am, you know. More on detecting unknown devices.

The Alerts pane in PingKit Agent for Mac, listing network events the Agent raised while it was running. — The audit, but continuous. Anything that joins after today is raised on the Agent's next scan, every five minutes on mains power, rather than waiting for your next audit.

Related Use Cases

See Everything on Your Network

PingKit finds and identifies every smart device, then flags the risky ones. 19 free tools, no ads.

Download PingKit Free