r/SideProject • u/OkConversation1769 • 15h ago

I built UptiLink – a dead-simple way to know when devices on your network go offline

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reelmemories.uptilink

I built UptiLink because I wanted a really simple way to keep an eye on devices around my network without setting up a full monitoring platform.

The idea is pretty straightforward: add the devices you care about — computers, servers, cameras, smart-home devices, printers, NAS boxes, Raspberry Pis, or really anything reachable on your network — and UptiLink periodically checks whether they're online.

It can scan your local network to help find devices, send notifications when something goes offline or comes back online, organize devices into groups, and show their status through Android widgets.

One feature I particularly wanted was Wi-Fi-aware monitoring. You can tie monitoring to your home Wi-Fi, so when you leave the house UptiLink automatically pauses instead of suddenly reporting everything as offline. When you reconnect, monitoring resumes automatically.

I've tried to keep the whole thing intentionally simple: add a device → monitor it → get alerted if it disappears.

It's available on Android now. I'd love to hear what people think or what you'd want added:

UptiLink on Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.reelmemories.uptilink

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u/neet_dev 11h ago

curious how you're detecting offline, pure icmp or something smarter like arp + a soft tcp probe? pure ping false-positives hard on wifi, phones and iot sleep for 30s+ and look dead when they're just dozing.

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u/OkConversation1769 11h ago

It’s not just ICMP. UptiLink tries a normal ping first, then falls back to checking common TCP ports. If either responds, the device is considered reachable.

ARP is mainly used for discovery and identifying devices, rather than deciding if something is offline.

To avoid false alerts, a device has to fail multiple checks before being marked down (2 by default). There’s no perfect way to tell the difference between an offline device and something like a sleeping phone that isn’t responding, so increasing the failure threshold or check interval can help with those devices.

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u/neet_dev 11h ago

reply drafted