I Automated Changing My Guest WiFi Password And You Can Too!!

[@Donhanichak]

I have also been in IT for 20 years. Love the videos. IM just getting in to HA and learning a lot from you. Keep the Videos coming.

[@fasthowto]

That's awesome! Glad to hear that my content isn't too basic for everyone. I sometimes wonder if I'm boiling things down too much - or in some cases, enough. Lol it's a fine line! I actually just celebrated 25 years! March, 1998 was my first professional IT job. Yikes, I feel old now. Lol thank you for the kind words, and thanks for watching!!

[@clevercompiler]

The contest is over but I wanted to say this video was great and I'll be incorporating this in my Airbnb.

[@fasthowto]

Actually, it's not.. I have to redraw since I never heard from the 500 or 750 winners, so make sure to subscribe if you're not so you don't miss it if you are drawn. Also, there's another draw coming uo, chosen a bit differently - check out a later video for info. Regarding the video - thank you for the kind words, and I'm glad you liked it. Thanks for watching!!!

[@branch407nalc7]

I don’t know what 90% of that tech stuff means but I get the big picture. Easy guest access with a protection against unintentional bandwidth bleeding is a brilliant idea. Nicely Done!

[@fasthowto]

Thank you! Not all content on the channel will end up being tech stuff, that's just sort of the streak I'm presently on. If you enjoyed the production & delivery, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future videos that may be about topics you are more interested in. :) Thanks for watching!

[@johnvbanta]

Nice solution to the “what’s your guest password” scenario. Going to have to try this.

[@fasthowto]

Thanks! My guests all seem to like it, and it accomplished my security goal. Win/win! Thanks for watching!

[@tmc5601]

Fricken Awesome!!! Well done and walked through. Implemented in less than an hour. Only gotcha I ran into was the Cam entity name, and resolved in a minute. Thanks for the solution, and yes, my guest wifi was terrible.

[@fasthowto]

Thanks!! I'm glad to hear you were able to set it up quickly and easily. Thank you so much for watching!

[@samlongnecker7250]

This is way cool! It took me way longer to realize that the IP Address in the configuration.yaml was suppose to be the IP Address of my Home Assistant instance and of course the SSID name needed to be replaced by in the still_image_url path but once I did that it worked great. I subscribed to your channel, please keep the Home Assistant content coming.

[@fasthowto]

Awesome! Thank you for the kind words, and thanks for watching!

[@Lonestar101]

Great idea. Thanks for the instructions. How do you handle adding a guest on a laptop or device without a camera to scan QR Code?

[@fasthowto]

That's a wonderful question - and to be honest, I haven't had anyone bring anything to my house other than a cell phone. I'll have to put some thought into that one. Thanks for watching, and if I come up with a solution to your question, I'll be sure to post a video about it!

[@crgarciamg]

@@fasthowto Maybe you can try generating 3 random words from a BIP39 wordlist, displaying them below the QR code... that has enough entropy (especially when refreshing daily) but is easy enough to type into a laptop.

[@fasthowto]

@@crgarciamg that's a great suggestion. I'll give that some thought - though, to be honest, with all the other projects going on around here (in addition to videos, I'm continually working on my actual, live deployment), I probably won't get to it until the need arises... But that gives me another idea........ We'll see what happens. :) thanks again!

[@shawnchristensen6506]

Great Idea! I am going to work on doing this for my Wifi Password. Thanks

[@fasthowto]

Thanks! It's super easy, and my guests love it. If we are out on the deck, I just hold up my phone for them to get on the guest wifi. Super convenient. Thanks for watching!

[@crgarciamg]

Cool idea! Hadn't thought of this before, and auto changing on Unifi is a bonus. My guest wi-fi password as of now is kinda in the middle between embarassing and hard :-).

[@fasthowto]

Thanks! I'm glad you liked the video. Let me know if you have any problems getting it implemented. Thanks for watching!

[@TwisTEDinLV]

been looking for this. Saw a video on doing this manually (print the qr code out on coasters) but never got it working right. Cant wait to get started with this and HA.

[@fasthowto]

Doing it manually & using coasters or similar is still better than trying to recite a lengthy, random password to guests - but it didn't meet my needs of making sure they were all forcibly disconnected every evening. Hence, this. :) Glad you found the video useful, and thanks for watching!

[@josedron5207]

This is the best free software Ive seen. Respect

[@fasthowto]

Thanks!

[@marioprzepiora]

Stupid question: How do you display the QR code for visitors to use? I do have the DMP, but nothing else that I can think of. I do have a few Control4 touchscreens that can display camera feeds, such as traffic cams, etc., so if this magic thing you've developed has an IP to do that, that would be amazing!

[@fasthowto]

The code to display the QR code is in the video and linked in the description. If you're asking about the physical device, it's as seen in the video - a tablet on the wall in my kitchen. Thanks for watching!

[@haydenmorgan]

Like your work man, keep it up man.

[@fasthowto]

Thank you so much for the kind words, and thanks for watching!!

[@vocra1]

Nice setup! I'm trying to get it working... Everything went well except when I try to scan the QR code it says QR code not valid, The QR code doesn't contain any info this app can use. Any idea how to fix this?

[@fasthowto]

Wifi QR codes are a standard format. Something must have gotten changed in the script when you copy/pasted it. If you download a QR code reader app, you can get the raw QR data and that should get you pointed in the right direction. Let me know if you get it sorted, and thanks for watching!

[@vocra1]

@@fasthowto it's giving me this: WIFI:T:WPA;S:Alex

[@vocra1]

Found the issue, it didnt like my special caracter in my ssd (&).Working now

[@fasthowto]

Glad you got it sorted. Enjoy!

[@eddegier1922]

Great vid! curious if there is a solution with the guest hotspot option in Unifi?

[@fasthowto]

Not sure I understand what you're asking?

[@mealiemorris1824]

So cool. Can’t wait to get a Dream machine

[@fasthowto]

They really are awesome. A bit of a spend for a home network, depending on how much you add to them, but the convenience of being able to manage APs, cameras, doorbells, and everything else from a single console is just so convenient - not to mention the integration between all the objects. One of my favorite things is using the Ubiquiti device trackers to determine if someone is home or not based on whether or not their phone is connected to WiFi. Super helpful for other automations - which I'll get into in future episodes. Thanks for watching!

[@PersonXes]

I don't have the dream machine but I have the unifi controller. Your video got me to do some research. There's an awesome node red node that allows to work with the unifi API I now have a button that enables/disables the guest WiFi and on my home assistant dashboard I get 2 types of automatically generated vouchers. 8 hour vouchers for occcasional visitors and long term vouchers for extended family etc. If no one is connected to the guest network anymore it will turn itself off after a while.

[@fasthowto]

Cool! I don't use vouchers, nor do I use the captured portal at all. I just have an ssid named guest. The automated password change just kicks everyone off every night to make sure neighbors don't stay connected accidentally.

[@PersonXes]

@@fasthowto 'node-red-contrib-unifi' also supports changing the password so your approach could also be done using this technique for those that don't have the dream machine

[@fasthowto]

@@PersonXes sweet! I'll have to look into that. Maybe I'll make an updated video since that's probably easier than this scripted nonsense. Lol thanks!

[@PersonXes]

@@fasthowto I posted my approach in the HA Community forums (reacting to an existing topic called "Node-red and Unifi")

[@fasthowto]

@@PersonXes cool, I'll take a look. Thanks!!!

[@MadMike78]

I need some help on this. I set it up but its not changing the password.

[@dominiquerichardson]

Hey, has anyone tried this recently? I can't get the qr code part to work. The home assistant is saying the camera qr entity isn't available

[@nicolasl9090]

really nice solution, i already got QRcode but same password for long time.

[@fasthowto]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it. Thank you for watching!

[@martinzipfel7843]

Hey, this is super awesome. I'm trying to implement it as well but can't get it to work. For some reason that automation doesn't seem to call the script. Not only does it not change the wifi password but it also doesn't create the QR code. Any idea what it might be or tip for trouble shooting? Thanks

[@fasthowto]

Did you add the line in your configuration.yaml file to define the script & variables? Any info in the logs?

[@djburdette]

Dude, I'm so doing this. Thanks for the tutorial.

[@fasthowto]

My pleasure. Thanks for watching!

[@sunnyp934]

Would this work with the Unifi Dream Router (UDR)?

[@fasthowto]

I don't know. I don't have one here to test with... If you try it, please let me know! Thanks for watching!

[@Mickman2009]

Great, i will give this a try!

[@fasthowto]

Did it work for you? What'd you think?

[@MrRodgersTech]

I tried this with the Unifi Network Application, but it must use different URL paths than the dream machines do because it does not work. Any help would be much appreciated.

[@aniljain5965]

In the same boat it does not work with UDM-Pro as well as UDM-SE. i tried it on both of them with no luck and trace does not give me any error

[@fasthowto]

It absolutely works with the UDM Pro. That's what the video was filmed with. Thanks for watching!

[@aniljain5965]

confirmed it is not working with UDM-SE .looks like UDM-SE does not use podman docker like udm-pro

[@fasthowto]

@@aniljain5965 from what I understand, UDM-SE is a completely different codebase than UDM-Pro. The current firmware versions don't even match. The solution in this video was developed for UDM-Pro, since that's what I have. If you'd like to ship a UDM-SE to me, I'd be happy to figure out how to make it work for you. Thanks for watching, and hopefully some of the other content works better for you!

[@aniljain5965]

@@fasthowto i have opended a case with Unifi for the above. i have one more question generate qr code is not generating the code on home assistant.

[@jagadeeshv2763]

Wow ... Nice and useful video bro, Now only I saw your channel, very good and useful for me. I subscribed and Liked all your videos. If it is possible can u please make one video about adding UDM sensors (temperature, CPU, RAM) into Home Assistant .... once again thank you for your video, I will keep supporting 🤓

[@fasthowto]

Thank you! I'll add that to my list of things to look into. Thank you for your support, and thanks for watching! :)

[@dominiquerichardson]

can you shine some light on the still image url ...is the ip adress my home assisnt server? do I set up an account somewhere lol you were just like yep this is what I'm doing and it worked lol

[@fasthowto]

Yes, the url for the image is the ip of your home assistant server. No account necessary for the image, but you'll need an account to access the udmp, of course. Great question, thanks for watching!

[@dominiquerichardson]

@@fasthowto ok thank you and I assume you upload a qr code image to the local media folder in home assistant?

[@fasthowto]

@@dominiquerichardson that's where the script puts it.

[@paulv9286]

this is an excellent way to give guests access. i have copied and pasted your code and watched the video2 times but for the life of me, I cannot get the QRcode to appear in the dashboard. the password gets updated and the QRcode image is created but will not show in the dashboard do you have any ideas. Paul.

[@fasthowto]

Did you change the name of the image to be the name of your ssid.png instead of the canned value in the posted code? It would be the camera definition in the configuration.yaml

[@fasthowto]

It's at 6:00 in the video, line 16 in the example shown. The "guest.png" should be the name of your ssid.png so, if your ssid was "paulsguestnetwork" then the end of that should be replaced with "paulsguestnetwork.png" it needs to match whatever you entered in the ssid field of the automation file, since that's the variable that controls the name of the qr code that gets generated. My apologies if that wasn't clear in the video. Let me know if you get it working, and thanks for watching!

[@paulv9286]

@@fasthowto still no luck.. network is guest. I can see the image get updated every time I trigger the event

[@fasthowto]

Ahh, I see what happened. That's what I get for having two HA systems at home and trying to "sanitize" code before posting it. I have fixed the source location at the link to avoid this in the future, but to fix your issue - under the camera definition in configuration.yaml, change the name: line to guestqrcode instead of wifiqrcode and reboot and you should be all set. Sorry about that! Thanks for your patience, and thanks for watching!!

[@paulv9286]

@@fasthowto Thank you very much I now have a qrcode on my dashboard😀

[@drdavidflynn]

Just going to do this!

[@fasthowto]

That's great! How did it work out for you? Thanks for watching!

[@ptejada365]

This is such a great idea.

[@fasthowto]

Thank you, and thanks for watching!

[@MountainDew-c3v]

YOu got to learn how to zoom in on your video so people can read what you are doing.

[@fasthowto]

You realize that YOU can zoom in yourself to see things more clearly, right? And you did, of course, read the video description, right?

[@renedrenk9453]

Hi which controller version are you using? I can't get it to work with 7.1.65. When I test "${3}:8443/proxy/network/api/s/default/rest/wlanconf/${4}" i get an error 404. With "${3}:8443/api/s/default/rest/wlanconf/${4}" i get a response but the password is not set. Best regards from Germany

[@fasthowto]

I am currently using 7.1.66. ${3} and ${4} are variables, you cannot test with that as a string literal.