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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

#251

Post by gregmac »

watty wrote: post #98
goodcanadian wrote: post #74

This is why I don't understand the "Internet of Things." A light switch is a pretty effective solution to the problem; there seems little advantage to networking it. Ditto for a toaster, refrigerator, et cetera, et cetera. Now get off my lawn!

This is not "Internet of Things", this is "Building Automation" and it's been the norm for decades.

Yes, but now it's "on the internet". Therefore it can be called Internet of Things.

IoT is an amazing, awesome, innovative and entirely new concept. Just like "The Cloud" was.

/s

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

#252

Post by tzs »

jerf wrote: post #163
eloff wrote: post #5

Turning lights on at 3 a.m. is a nuisance. Knowing when lights go on and off can tell you when the people are not in their room - which could help if you wanted to break in and steal their stuff. Overall quite disconcerting how lax they are with security.

Turning the lights on a 3am is a nuisance. Writing while true; do turn_on_all_lights $IPADDRESS; done is enough to ruin your night's sleep. Fighting with the lights that won't go off will probably pump enough adrenaline into your system to wake you up enough that you're not going back to sleep anytime soon. And why not do that to the entire block of addresses you can reach, of course? It's no "steal identity, rack up…

This might be more amusing:

  while true
    level = 0
      while level
The idea is to slowly raise all the lights from 0% to 100%, hoping that because it is gradual it will not wake the person. Then you turn them all suddenly off.

If that succeeds in waking the person, they will wake up in darkness, wondering what the heck woke them up.

More fun with lights: someone at Caltech once modified the wiring of a student's room and the adjacent bathroom so that the light switches in both rooms controlled the lights in both rooms. They they waited in the courtyard that the student's room and the bathroom both overlooked to watch the hilarity that they knew would ensue.

What happened was that the occupant of the room eventually went to bed, turning off his light. Then later someone went to use the bathroom, turning on the bathroom light (and so also the student's light). That woke the student, who got up, turned off the light, and headed back to bed. The guy in the bathroom shouts something, and a few moments later gets his pants under control and goes and turns the light back on and heads back to the stall to resume his business. Meanwhile, bed boy is shouting something and getting up to turn his light back off. What I'm told then happened is that the lights flipped on and off a few more times, with the time between flips getting smaller and smaller, until both guys are just standing at their light switch flipping it repeatedly, before they both go out into the hall to try to figure out what is going on, find each other, and figure it out.

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

#253

Post by grincho »

DanBC wrote: post #245
oh_sigh wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you may be able to start a fire in someones room by constantly switching lights/outlets on/off

How would that start a fire?

CFL ballasts can overheat if you do that.

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

#254

Post by noir_lord »

syntheticnature wrote: post #223
pidg wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is starting to sound like the plot of an NCIS episode.

Or CSI: Cyber, except they need to add something brain-breakingly wrong to those of us in the know for that.

"I've got RED CODE!!!" - Queue hacking montage.

It made Tron look technically accurate.

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

#255

Post by SiVal »

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #230
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…

I agree with you on all your points, except: > This is exactly the mechanism that gets people in trouble going to China for manufacturing. I keep hearing about the "cheap Chinese tech", even though nowadays a lot of high-quality gadgets are really Chinese. Even Apple's products are mostly from China. And it's not even for the cheap prices, it's because the entire production chain is there[1] The mistake is not going…

I was thinking the point would be that one reason for the low price is that the manufacturer wants your design so they can use it to build a competing product at their other factory down the road--a joint venture with the local Party boss. You'll never know, but even if you figure it out, what do you imagine you can do about it? Maybe get a court to block the product in the US (causing them a week's delay while they change labels and distributors), but if you're looking for cheap Chinese manufacturing, you won't usually have the resources for any worldwide legal battle against these guys.

And if the design you are paying them to take from you is for some IoT product, the local Party boss can even make bonus points with his superiors by offering them a chance to backdoor it.

I'll bet the cheap tablets in that hotel for tech conference attendees, the tablets with the ethernet and WiFi listening circuitry, could collect a lot of great technology for their makers, and I'll bet they were made in China.

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

#256

Post by gregmac »

goodcanadian wrote: post #121
zanny wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to have your lights come on at a certain time. You want to add motion detection to lights turning on. You want to attach light sensors to have variable intensity bulbs be brighter or dimmer depending on ambient lighting conditions. You want your lights to turn on inside your garage when the garage door opens. You want your front hallway light to come on when your door is opened. You want to be able to check…

None of these things sound like killer applications, and few of them require any kind of computational power let alone networking. There are much simpler ways of accomplishing the same things. That is my point; IoT proponents are adding unnecessary complexity for dubious gains. Some examples: You want to have your lights come on at a certain time. I can get a timer at a hardware store. You want to add motion detectio…

I've long been interested in "home automation" stuff, so I'll give you a quick example of what I have at my house now that can't be done with timers/motion sensors from the hardware store.

There's keypad in the entrance to the kitchen, with buttons labelled "Bright" "Dim" and "All off". If you press Bright, all of the lights (sink, under-cabinet, range hood, and island) turn on 100%. Dim sets just the under-cabinet lights are on at 50% and island is 10%. Without this keypad, you have to walk to 3 different switches on opposite sides of the room.

There's also a keypad by the front door. It has an 'all off' button which is great when we're leaving, and as we also walk by it on the way upstairs, handy when we're going to bed.

The front door keypad also has a "Garage" button. It lights up red if the garage door is open (as we can't see the door from anywhere inside the house). Press it and it'll toggle the door to open/close.

That stuff is just simple scenes, but I also have some more complex things..

The outside lights go to 20% from dusk until midnight, then turn off after midnight. On top of that, at any time between sunset and sunrise, if the garage door is open, or if the outside motion detector sees motion they go to 100%, and once the door is shut or no motion is seen for a few minutes, they return to previous level.

At sunset, if none of the lights in the house are on, one of the lights in the kitchen and one of the lights in the living room turn on (to make it look like someone is home).

At ~midnight, if only the one kitchen light and living room light are on (and nothing else has been adjusted, indicating someone is home), turn the lights off.

At sunrise, turn off all lights. (This used to be 3am until we had a baby, then it was annoying because, well, crying baby + preparing bottle + 3am + lights suddenly turning off = ..not good).

At some point I will also set up a motion sensor in the front hall (or maybe a door open sensor), so if the outside motion is triggered followed by the inside motion (or door opening), the inside front hall light turns on. A bit tricky, since I don't want to happen if I'm just walking around the house (or leaving).

Is any of this game-changing? Not really. It's interesting to me, it's not overly expensive (especially as I have built this up over time), and it's a nice albeit minor quality-of-life thing.

Btw, I can control this from a PC/phone, although I basically never do (the keypad/switch on the wall is always going to be faster). I could also set it up to work via internet, but I don't, because 1) there's an attack vector and extra security to worry about, 2) adjusting the lights while I'm not home is pointless, 3) I believe a key to home automation is the automation part. If I have to control it manually, it's by definition not automated.

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

#257

Post by SiVal »

zyxley wrote: post #215
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…

> I learned that before that clause had been part of the standard contract, there had been a manufacturer who decided unilaterally that half of the noise suppression capacitors in the schematic were "unneeded." I don't understand how putting that in the contract is supposed to help if the manufacturer being used is pulling stupid "you didn't say the product actually had to work" semantics games that would get them sm…

games that would get them smacked in any reasonable court

You're talking about a Chinese court, right? The guy you're planning to sue lives in China and is a long-time business "associate" of the judge who will decide your case.

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

#258

Post by potatolicious »

jkire wrote: post #238
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)?

Well that's just it, security is talked about but the buyer (the hotel in this case) is often not in a position to actually evaluate the vendor's claims.

You can put down "device should not be hackable" but without their own competent IT arm the hotel can't possibly verify the product delivers on the security promise.

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

#259

Post by r3bl »

mataug wrote: post #17

This whole IoT craze is turning into a nightmare. People are building all kinds of devices in complete ignorance of Security.

Just let them. The sooner people realize that buying a cheap $35 smart watch, or embedding the cheapest Android tablets into walls, or turning off your heating completely after the battery in your smart thermostat dies... the sooner we'll be in a place where the security of IoT is actually considered, not only as important, but as crucial. Then, we can have nice things.

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

#260

Post by geon »

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #230
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…

I agree with you on all your points, except: > This is exactly the mechanism that gets people in trouble going to China for manufacturing. I keep hearing about the "cheap Chinese tech", even though nowadays a lot of high-quality gadgets are really Chinese. Even Apple's products are mostly from China. And it's not even for the cheap prices, it's because the entire production chain is there[1] The mistake is not going…

The practice of unethical corner cutting seems somewhat rampant in China, though. And isn't there a reason why cheap tools that easily break are said to be made of "chineesium"?
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