A computing device may execute a device connection application on a processor of the computing device to provide operations including establishing an ad-hoc data connection between the computing device and a machine-to-machine device, the computing device configured to set up the machine-to-machine device to interact with a network-based service using a user account of the network-based service; receiving device information from the machine-to-machine device over the established ad-hoc data connection; and connecting the machine-to-machine device to the network-based service based on the device information received from the machine-to-machine device and according to authentication of the computing device as being associated with the user account. The computing device may further be configured to authenticate and authorize a user to configure the machine-to-machine device to join the network and network-based service.