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I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

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Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#231

Post by aidenn0 »

uxp wrote: post #210
robotmlg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy to build it in a way so that the worst that the software can do is cause it to turn into a "dumb" fridge. If it's so easy, why don't more companies do it? Why didn't Nest build their thermostats so that when the battery runs out, it reverts to a "dumb" thermostat instead of turning off your heat? http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/15/bug-nest-t...

To be fair, most "dumb" thermostats still require an external power source to continue to operate. Very few actually pull operating current from the 24v C wire if it even exists on the given system. If it doesn't, R (the switched 24v power for Heat and Cold signals) isn't guaranteed to continually have current. Only when your Heat is turned on (probably a standard toggle lightswitch on the side of your furnace) will…

Really? Most thermostats I've seen are a bimetallic strip with either a magnet or a mercury switch for hysteresis.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#232

Post by digi_owl »

ethbro wrote: post #159
thoughtsimple wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be. I just spent some time on the modbus.org site. I haven't looked in a while. There is pretty much no mention of security though they claim that Modbus over TCP is an internet protocol.

Maybe embedded network is the new javascript ecosystem: rediscovering novel ideas (like authentication!) that were invented 50 years ago. /deploying CAN bus without security

I wonder if what is blindsiding all of these companies and people is routing.

That if you have a box that can talk to network A and B, suddenly anything on A can talk to anything on B.

A CAN bus, or older modbus installs, would be airgapped by its very nature.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#233

Post by seanp2k2 »

pjkundert wrote: post #208
thoughtsimple wrote: post #33

I'm amused by the use of Modbus. I worked on Modbus networking back in the 1980's at Modicon (a company that disappeared long ago that created the "standard"). Using a protocol invented before the internet to control devices on a semi-public network is insane. The original Modbus was designed to communicate with factory devices controlled by logic controllers over serial and eventually over a custom token ring networ…

I think if people actually knew the true extent of the debacle that industrial control protocols are, they would pass out. If you ever want nightmares, check out EtherNet/IP CIP protocol... Of course, there are no security provisions whatsoever. If you can get a device on the LAN, you're golden. Every device, fully open to monitoring and control of every attached piece of equipment. In the new world of inexpensive, b…

Moteino (arduino-based wireless dev platform) supports LoRa if anyone is interested in digging into some current sub-$10 ISM transceivers and their capabilities. http://lowpowerlab.com/moteino/#lora it's also a great project to get started with arduino if you've never worked with it before. Really solid documentation.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#234

Post by pgeorgi »

rdancer wrote: post #191
pgeorgi wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapest Chromebooks ship at $149 and have a pretty much unbrickable automated update flow that includes the firmware for the CPU and embedded controller(s). It's not a matter of luxury, it's a matter of having people work on it who care. Disclosure: I work with them. Much <3 :)

Except when you're abroad on roaming cellular charges, and your three laptops decided that since your iPhone's personal hotspot is WiFi, it's time to download today's ChromeOS image version, because the one you had downloaded the night before was not good enough anymore. Source: Chromebooks are awesome, and even with excesses like this, they're still the cheapest to operate by far.

Chrome OS tries to honor various DHCP server flags that state that the connection is metered. Unfortunately iOS doesn't seem to provide any such indication.

A comment in https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=323010 claims that the BSSID is used for a "suspected" state, but that may not be enough to actually stop it from downloading updates, but I'm far from an expert in that domain.

In short, identifying tethering states with iOS seems to be hard.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#235

Post by njharman »

corobo wrote: post #68
elorant wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in-mind that we're talking about always connected devices. Firmware updates could be done remotely without the end user needed to do anything, except perhaps give his approval.

Great my fridge just rebooted for a firmware update and bricked itself now the peas are rapidly defrosting and I am in a panic. Edit: Shoutout to Internet of Shit https://twitter.com/internetofshit

First, calm down. Defrosting peas is not in absolute or relative terms a big deal.

Nothing in remote/automatic updates requires being brickable. Don't buy such a crappy fridge.

Or, call a serviceman to fixe it, just like you would today with dumb fridge.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#236

Post by jkestner »

masklinn wrote: post #102
theseatoms wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add a physical switch for firmware updates, on an opt-in basis. How does Tesla implement updates?

> How does Tesla implement updates? Tesla has a pretty vested interest in shit keeping working considering it's a pretty luxurious and high-profile product. The cut-price manufacturer of your $20 lightbulb or $300 fridge? Not so much.

Then the opportunity is to convince customers why they should pay more for well-supported connected products. Easiest way is to make high-margin products.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#238

Post by jkire »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #206

So sad. I find the mechanics here really challenging to overcome. The hotel management no doubt wants "really cool tech" for their hotel to show they are up to date etc. And they send out an RFQ which someone bids on, really cheaply. Knowing that by only doing the things the hotel asks for, they can throw something together quickly and cheaply for a big payday. This is exactly the mechanism that gets people in troubl…

Genuine question: Don't the other companies talk about security in their replies to the RFQ? Wouldn't that cause the original company to stop and ask the other repliers about the security they would implement (if they didn't mention security)?

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#239

Post by masklinn »

jkestner wrote: post #236
masklinn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How does Tesla implement updates? Tesla has a pretty vested interest in shit keeping working considering it's a pretty luxurious and high-profile product. The cut-price manufacturer of your $20 lightbulb or $300 fridge? Not so much.

Then the opportunity is to convince customers why they should pay more for well-supported connected products. Easiest way is to make high-margin products.

That's the Tesla case. Or alternatively the Apple case. The vast majority of customers go with not that, and history shows you won't convince them the intangibles are worth it.

Re: I stayed in a hotel with Android lightswitches and it was as bad as you'd think

#240

Post by x0x0 »

stestagg wrote: post #193

When I stayed there, it was just as soul destroying to use these things as you might imagine. The implementation felt like they'd asked a VB6 dabbler to implement it in Java. Then stuck it in the cheapest 600mhz tablet they could find. The UI was purely a button grid with distorted graphics, and dodgy typography. Button presses took about 1/2 a second to respond, and every 5th press caused the app to crash (adding a…

Light switches that can fucking crash!

Now I'm living in the future.

I keep waiting for this iot/we put a chip in it/etc to produce results that are an improvement...

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