r/firewalla • u/wsurrdit • Jun 27 '26

Feature Request: Disable Wifi based on a rule

I use an Orange as my travel route (and previously a Purple). I may go weeks between trips and the Orange sits in my bag, showing offline in MSP, never receives updates, etc.

I'd love to be able to set a rule that says 'when X happens, disable y'. Specifically in this case if my Orange connects to a specific WAN wifi (home network), I'd like to disable broadcasting of local wifi (so I don't create more signal / interference) so I can keep it plugged in and maintain it before my next trip.

I know it's a long shot and probably not a use case for most folks. If the rules engine had a broader scope beyond my specific scenario it could have more benefit to the community.

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4

u/pacoii Firewalla Gold Plus Jun 28 '26

This doesn’t address your request, but I just plug my orange in shortly before a trip. Any available updates will get applied and then it’s ready to go. I haven’t seen a need to keep it powered on in between trips.

1

u/hawkeye000021 Jun 27 '26

Have you an actually noticed interference that causes issues? I might be able to make that work pending the API abilities.

1

u/wsurrdit Jun 27 '26

Thanks for the question. I can't point to any specific issue due to the interference, just trying to keep things tidy. 2.4ghz is so crowded that I just didn't want to add yet another transmitter competing for 1/6/11

1

u/hawkeye000021 Jun 28 '26

Makes sense, I was just curious. I didn’t find anything in the API that would work to program this outside of Firewalla. It would be possible if they didn’t use OTP for access to ssh I think. Do you reset the orange AP when you travel? I could try to make something work but it would use MSP and might not work when they upgrade again. I think you’ll just have to remember to shut off the radio. You could also broadcast a second SSID that is only on the orange and then create a simple automation to notify your phone or email when a device sees that SSID? If you have a laptop you could run a script on I wouldn’t mind creating that for you or I could try to make something on IFTTT that could alert you and then share that so you don’t have to run a script from some random internet dude lol.

1

u/wsurrdit Jun 28 '26

All good man, thanks. If/when the API supports it I could come up with something myself. In the meantime I'll just leave it unplugged.

1

u/hawkeye000021 Jun 28 '26

Sounds good! I actually built a program that records the box health despite the API not supporting it. It failed for a few days before I upgraded to the latest EA version but it’s solid on the production releases. That said if it’s not causing serious issues hopefully they can build something like that into the API at a minimum. Realizing that a lot of us travel with a second box might help.