That ping functionality sounds good.
Can I also further suggest a specialised button widget that indicates connected/disconnected status, and connects/disconnects when pressed.
This would allow the UI design to explicitly address connectivity (or, of course, to leave such issues to the existing implicit mechanisms.)
And thanks for pointing out the side-swipe menu access - I now see it's documented in the manual in Fig 2. Mentioning it in the text that follows might help emphasise this (and give careless readers like me a second chance to catch it).
Actually, I wonder if this suggests a second specialised button widget, that opens this menu (independently of the target).
Cheers