I just moved into my dorm for college and I brought a Google Home with me this year. It's a good speaker and alarm. Plus it's great for checking the news or weather.
Anyways, it's connected to the dorm WiFi which is secured. Unfortunately, anyone can connect to my Home and play music. I'm imagining this nightmare scenario where I'm asleep and some jerk decides it'd be funny to blast some song at full volume. Then I wake up AND get in trouble with my RA for playing loud music at three in the morning. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's a Do Not Disturb feature to prevent sound from playing at specific times. There also doesn't appear to be any way to make the Home private so others cannot access it.
Is there some way I can block all connections to the Home but allow the Home access to the network?
Because it's a dorm, I can't fiddle with any network settings. Am I doomed to nightly serenades of Darude "Sandstorm"? Do I have to unplug every time I want quiet?
03 Answers
You have two choices here:
- You could contact your University IT Department and ask them to create a white list for you. In other words, ask them to only allow traffic from your device to the Google Home and therefore everyone else will be blocked.
- This is a workaround:
- Open the iOS app (Sorry I don't have android)
- In the top right corner of the Home screen, tap Devices
- Now, scroll to find the device card for the Google Home you'd like prevent from sending cast notifications
- Next, in the top right corner of the device card, tap the device card menu. That's the three-dot menu.
- Under "Device info," turn OFF "Let others control your casted media"
- Open the iOS app (Sorry I don't have android)
This will prevent your Google Home from broadcasting your device onto the network. No one will see it and therefore, no one will be able to connect to it.
Please respond if this helped you...
I've been able to stop others from casting to my speaker using the Google Home Android App:
- Open the Home app.
- Select your speaker.
- Click the ⚙ (gear) icon in the top-right.
- Select "Recognition and Sharing"
- Turn off the "Let others control your cast media" setting.
I had a similar problem. Thankfully it's in my home network where I have a bit more control of how it's set up.
I have a network where my whole family is connected (wired and WiFi). My son thinks it's funny to play various crap on the Home Nest Hub in the living area while he's elsewhere in the house. I can't block him from the device without blocking him from the WiFi network completely.
I solved the problem by creating a second (guest) WiFi network on my router that only has Internet access and is not visible from the rest of the network. I then connected the Home Hub to the guest WiFi network. My son doesn't know the password to that network, so he can't do anything to the Home Hub from elsewhere in the house.
Two downsides that I see so far:
- He can still talk to it if he's in the same room. That was never the issue though so I don't mind.
- If I wanted to use the Home Hub for controlling other devices in the house I'd need to connect them to the guest WiFi also. This may not be ideal for some devices as I may want to connect to them from computers, etc. that are on the main network.
One benefit I do see, other than stopping my son from being annoying, is that if someone manages to hack the Home Hub they only have access to my guest network.
I'm sure there's probably a way to do this via VLANs instead, but this works for me.
In regards to the OP, perhaps they could use some sort of router to create a similar solution; connecting the router to the dorm WiFi and then creating their own secure WiFi network to connect the Home (and other devices) to. It would also help prevent other students from seeing their computer, iPad, etc. and then trying to hack in to those devices.
