How can Mijia App share the router with family members? My mom changed the WiFi password to her birthday, so I started researching about family members.

Last month my mother came to live with me for half a month. The night before I left, the WiFi at home suddenly failed to connect. My wife's mobile phone, TV, and sweeper were all offline. I clicked on the router's backend and saw that the password had been changed. What was changed? My mother’s mobile phone number and birthday are easy for her to remember. When I asked her why she changed it, she said that the App on her phone (her phone was used to log in to my Mijia account) prompted "The password is too simple and it is recommended to change it", so she changed it easily.

That night I reconfigured more than a dozen devices in the living room, thinking about: I can't blame her for this, I gave her the account myself. Either continue to give accounts, the risk is greater than I expected. ； Or register her own account and study the family member mechanism of the Mi family. I have tried both paths and encountered all pitfalls. This article will explain the entire account clearly. If you have a Xiaomi router at home and more than one person has to manage the network, sooner or later you will have to avoid this problem.

First distinguish: Giving account numbers and giving them to family members are two different things.

My family’s original practice was the most common and worst one.: My family members share a Xiaomi account. The account registered on my mother’s phone is my account, as is the account registered on my daughter-in-law’s phone. Using it this way means that all the locks, cameras, and routers at home are tied to the same account. If someone loses his or her mobile phone, it means that the keys to the whole family's devices are lost together. We were startled when my wife's phone displayed a notification saying "Account is logged in on another device". After checking, we found out that it was my mother's old tablet that was still logged in. It was a false alarm, but I should have woken up that time. I later wrote a separate article about account security. .

Family members are another thing. There is a concept of "family" in Mijia App. One account can create a family and invite other accounts to join as members. Members log in with their own account and password, but what they see are the devices in this family.: I created a family and added my mother's account and my wife's account. When they use their own accounts on their mobile phones, they can see devices such as routers, lights, and cameras. The control rights are given away, and the key to the account itself is still in everyone's hands.

The biggest difference between these two roads is just one sentence, using the analogy of a router.: To give the account number, I copied the key to your door and the safe and handed it over. ； Give family members copies of door keys only . If the door key is lost, replace the lock cylinder. If the safe key is lost, that is a matter of another magnitude.

How to pull family members: The entrance is not very deep, but the order is easy to get wrong.

The first time I looked for the entrance, I looked in the wrong direction. I searched for home in the router's settings, and it took ten minutes to find anything. The correct location is on the "My" page of Mijia App: Click "Family Management" - the name is different in different versions. Some versions directly display the family name at the top of the homepage. You can also click on that name to enter. After entering, "add members", you can choose WeChat invitation or account search, the other party will accept it on their mobile phone, and they will come in.

There is an emphasis on the order: First, let your family members register their own Xiaomi accounts and log in to their own Mijia App before inviting them. I registered my mom's account on the spot on her mobile phone. I used her mobile phone number and received the verification code on her mobile phone. She was present throughout the process. Some people try to save trouble by registering with their own mobile phones and then giving her the account and password to use - this is a detour back to the old method of sharing accounts, which is equivalent to doing nothing.

After a member joins the family, all devices are visible to the member by default. The same goes for routers. As soon as my mother's account was entered into the home, a card for the router appeared in her Mijia App. Click on it, and the device list, WiFi switch, and toolbox were all in one row. Pay attention to this step: The device follows the family, not the account . I bind the router with my account, and the router is linked to the family I created, so members can see it as soon as they come in. I have encountered this mechanism before when troubleshooting an automation failure at my cousin's home - his door lock was stuck in the old home and could not be seen in the new home. I wrote that part of the investigation in the article about automation failure. .

What permissions do members have?: There are many things I can do. I tried them one by one.

It's not reliable to just read other people's opinions, so I used my mother's account and tried everything on my router one by one. List what you can do:

As you can see, the members' authority is beyond intuition. The ability to change WiFi passwords and child control are the two most sensitive operations at home. . My first reaction was to look for "Member Permission Settings" to turn these off. After searching for a long time, I found that Mijia family members did not have permission granularity for individual function switches - either members or all. ； Either not a member, nothing at all. The router itself does not have such a thing as "read-only mode". Unlike NAS, which can open read-only accounts for family members, I used the idea of ​​permission layering when configuring NAS. This is how you open a movie account for your wife , there is no equivalent on the Mijia router side.

Three moves to take back power: The router can manage it, but the member positions can be cut.

Since granularity cannot be achieved, structure must be relied upon. This is how my mother's affairs ended, three actions, in order.

The first step is to move the daily operation of the router to a place where members cannot reach it. 31.1 The backend of the webpage uses a management password, which is a separate system from Mijia accounts and family members - no matter how versatile the Mijia App on the members’ mobile phones is, they cannot touch the backend of the webpage. I left the really important settings at home (changing network segments, port forwarding, DMZ, etc.) in the background of the web page. Only I have the management password. I forgot how to retrieve it. I wrote an article Backstage password retrieval . WiFi passwords are an operation that can accidentally hurt the whole family. I pointed all the entrances that my family wanted to use to the "WiFi Password View" of the Mijia App - I can see and connect, but changing the password is my responsibility. Where are the two entrances to the password? WiFi password check that article It's written carefully.

The second move is to lay off redundant people. The more family members there are, the more convenient it is. Every additional person gives you more control over the router and camera. I took inventory: My mother (who needs to watch the cats remotely) and my wife (who needs to take care of the lights and sweeper) will stay, but no one else will. Mijia family members do not need to verify their identity, and seven aunts and eight aunts can enter easily - I mentioned this issue when talking about remote management security. Remote management article There are three lines of defense in the family, and the line of family members is one of them.

The third trick is to clear the member list regularly. If you change your mobile phone, sell your old equipment, or the elderly change your phone number, your membership slot will gather dust. My mother's old phone was later cancelled, but it is still in the family, and the location information is reported to the family. The Mi family uses the location of all members' phones to determine whether it has returned home, not just my phone. If the old phone is not clear, the scene of returning home will be disrupted by a phone lying in a drawer. I specifically confirmed this mechanism when checking the automation of my cousin's house. If the old members are not deleted, the app will think that there is always someone at home. The entrance to Qing is in family management. Click on the member's avatar and click "Remove Member" in the lower right corner.

Children must not give seats to members: If you can't control it, you can't control it.

I say this alone because I almost made a mistake. When I was setting up child control, I thought about "letting my son install the Mijia App to learn to manage his devices." I almost gave him an account and added him to the family, but my wife stopped me. I felt a chill down my back after I figured it out: Family members can change the rules for child control. If a child holds a member status, it means that the person under control has the key to change the rules - if the disconnection period is changed, the control will be immediately invalid, and if you look at the rules on your mobile phone, the rules will remain the same and you will not notice at all.

There is only one correct way to do it: Controlled devices can enter the home, but controlled people cannot. . My son’s tablet is connected to WiFi as the device identity, and is trapped by the control rules based on its MAC address. This is no problem. ； But his personal account will never enter the family. How to control children's devices and prevent them from detouring? Control that article I have written a complete, random MAC pitfalls are all in it. When it comes to controlling children's access to the Internet, the issue of permissions is more important than the issue of rules.

outside member path: There is also a "shared" path for a single device

By the way, another road that is easily confused is also mentioned. In addition to family members, Mijia also has a “shared device” function: Go to the "⋯" in the upper right corner of the device details page to share a single device with other accounts. The difference lies in the granularity - family members are in the whole family bucket, and shared devices are given one by one. I have a camera at home that I only want to show to the tenant downstairs, and I don’t want him to touch the router, so sharing is appropriate. ； In turn, family members have to manage the network and use the home daily.

The permission boundaries of sharing this road must also be clearly seen.: What is shared is the control of that device. The extent to which the other party can operate the shared device depends on the type of device. When the camera is shared, the other party can see the picture - this reminds me to check the sharing list every time I check the device to make sure it is not shared with an account I don't know. The method of translating is in the account security article.: Go to the upper right corner of the details page to see who you are currently sharing with. .

ending: The final configuration of my home and three reminders

The current pattern is: The router and all devices are hung under the family I created ； My mother and daughter-in-law each use their own accounts as members. ； The router is mainly configured to use the 31.1 web background and has a unique management password. ； My son’s device is at home, but he is not there ； Clean members and shared lists every quarter. My mother now uses her own account to watch the cat remotely and turn on and off the lights in the living room, all smoothly, and she has never touched the button to change the password again - she is quite proud, saying that she can be considered "a person with an account".

Three reminders. First, for families who share accounts, split them up before anything happens. The cost of splitting up is to register two accounts and add one member. It takes half a day. If something happens, splitting up again requires changing the password, kicking the device, and checking the sharing one by one. It is ten times the work. Second, family members do not have fine-grained permissions. Before pulling someone in, think clearly about whether the person can access the "Change WiFi Password" level - don't pull them if you can't figure it out, and let them ask you for help when needed. Third, the member list needs to be inspected just like the equipment list, especially during the replacement season and after selling second-hand. The old members hanging up not only have permissions, but also determine the location of the home mode. The fewer people who care about the router, the more stable the home will be.