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More awful IoT stuff

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Re: More awful IoT stuff

#131

Post by mschuster91 »

I'd like regulation agencies to mandate, as a condition of market entry, for each and every electronic product:

1) Full firmware source code and required toolchains/sign keys/... be submitted to the national libraries, to be kept for secure archival until the device is officially unsupported by the manufacturer.

2) For networked products, the full source code must be either published, or licensed institutes must perform a security check.

3) There must be provisions in place to ensure timely reactions in case of security issues. If the manufacturer does not respond to security issues, national libraries have the right to release the source code.

4) Required tools, service manuals, datasheets etc. must be submitted to the national libraries.

This should basically kill off GPL-abusing companies, as well as ensure serviceability, even for discarded products.

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#132

Post by komali2 »

ufmace wrote: post #87

Hold on - it sounds like this thing is running Android. Has reference to connecting with ADB, apks, and Android versions. But it's also running a SSH server and OpenWRT? What's going on there, is it running 2 different OSes for some reason, or did they somehow merge Android and OpenWRT?

Wasn't he referring to the phone app that integrates with the plug? I wasn't sure either.

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#133

Post by komali2 »

FussyZeus wrote: post #78
tunap wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree, the demand & the means exist. However, the intent of retail providers is anything but enabling simple, automated controls. Everything is about grabbing the data cash bag and, as an afterthought, let's personalize your experience. I have been pondering this and the only conclusion I can come up with is the market controllers(more than mere "forces") have much to gain by selling the perception instead…

I suppose but it still seems like a copout (not on you of course, on them) to play the brand lock-in game. You don't need a centralized server to personalize and operating those servers, even on something like AWS, costs money. Why not put that on the consumer instead? Many consumers I know would prefer the roll-your-own solution and it saves the manufacturer money.

Well, we are on a something.ycombinator.com website right now... why don't you throw together a prototype, register a company, and present to ycombinator?

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#134

Post by avn2109 »

matt-attack wrote: post #128
avn2109 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will there be soft start, and if so do you count that as another feature?

Curious what you mean by "soft start"?

E.g. water pumps or air conditioners might be sensitive to the characteristics of the current/voltage waveforms when they first turn on.

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#135

Post by steve-howard »

garduque wrote: post #120
gnur wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons would be that it isn't used that often and won't allow access to your network with commodity hardware.

I've installed tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Zigbee devices over the last handful of years. Zigbee may be uncommon in residential, but it is not uncommon.

Compared with wifi, though? Trying to screw with your wifi equipment requires just about any laptop sold in the last ten years. Trying to screw with your Zigbee equipment would presumably require me to go find some kind of dongle.

Of course, wifi has gotten more secure over time to the point that I'd be more concerned about giving the devices internet access than I would about intruders on the network.

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#136

Post by nbadg »

CaptSpify wrote: post #122
nbadg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you feel comfortable with end-to-end encryption via an open, documented, free protocol? This is literally my raison d'être as a company, so I'd be interested to hear your comfort level. What I've got is a platform that 1.) makes it substantially easier for IoT developers to get their devices to market and 2.} enforces end-to-end encryption and affirmative consensual sharing. It works by running as a background…

That absolutely sounds like a good starting point. Any more info?

Definitely. First a disclaimer: I've held off on creating a dedicated post for this until the code is stable (as in not crashing) enough for other people to play with the demo. That will hopefully happen tomorrow, or possibly Friday. At that point I'll be posting here on HN as well as several subreddits. Until then, I'd request it not be posted on social media, so I can maximize the impact of the potential exposure.

+ Golix is the name of the protocol: https://github.com/Muterra/doc-golix

+ Hypergolix is the background service I've written to implement it, which is backed by a PaaS on AWS: https://www.hypergolix.com

+ This is a demo of Hypergolix: https://github.com/Muterra/py_hypergolix_demos/tree/master/e...

Cheers, and thanks for the feedback!

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#137

Post by danielweber »

deelowe wrote: post #57
apozem wrote: post #12

> Eventually I plugged my phone into my laptop and ran adb logcat, and the Android debug logs told me that the app was trying to modify a network that it hadn't created. Apparently this isn't permitted as of Android 6, but the app was handling this denial by just trying again. I deleted the network from the system settings, restarted the app, and this time the app created the network record and could modify it. It st…

As a counter example, my brother who never uses a computer setup his chromecast in 5 minutes with zero help from me. I know b/c he called me and asked for help. I told him he wouldn't need it, but he didn't believe me. Things are getting better. There will always be more crap out there than good stuff. That's why walmart is so popular, but things will generally improve.

I absolutely couldn't set up my chromecast without getting help from the appropriate subreddit. It was the app (supplied by Google) that was at fault.

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#138

Post by FussyZeus »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #119
FussyZeus wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good example would be the smart outlet ones, so I could for example setup one to automatically power cycle my cable modem and router, or even one that could handle the load of a space heater I keep in my office during the winter months and switch it on 15 minutes before I get home. I don't even need the ability to manage it over the WAN, I'd be fine with just something my linux boxes at home could handle with cron…

Or you could -- in theory -- just buy a router that doesn't leak memory. Finding one -- aye there's the rub.

Hey if you've got suggestions. :)

Previously I had an Airport Extreme that was fantastic but didn't have UPnP which is more or less required to make our two XBoxes work. Right now I have a DD-WRT Buffalo N300 in front, with the Airport running most of the network and the wifi behind it. So far that's been the best solution.

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#139

Post by tzs »

beamatronic wrote: post #118
CaptSpify wrote: post #66

I just blogged about this yesterday. In short: > The line in the sand for me is: network vs cloud-based systems. I want things to be network connected, but I want it for my own network only. I want to be able to control my coffee pot, but only from home. If I choose to expose this over the internet, great! It's up to me to make sure it's secure. I don't want anyone making that decision for me. I also want it to be up…

I want a simple device like this: 1. It plugs into the wall 2. You can plug an appliance of some sort into it 3. The device has a USB interface 4. The device has a WiFi interface 5. When I plug in the device with the USB interface, it looks like a serial device 6. The device has a very simple protocol that you can use to set it up, over the serial interface 7. You can optionally have the device join a WiFi network, a…

If you are OK with building it yourself, you could do this with an ESP8266, a USB to serial cable, a solid state relay, a power brick, and some miscellaneous things like a power cord and a socket (and ideally some case to put all this in for safety).

The ESP8266 is a micro controller with built in WiFi and network stack and a serial interface, and several digital I/O pins you can use to interface to other things.

Various vendors sell small modules that couple an ESP8266 with some flash memory to hold your code. These often come with built in firmware that provides a serial interface similar to the old modem "AT" interface, but with commands for WiFi. There is a free SDK available for programming the thing in C/C++. There are several firmware replacements available. There is one that brings the Arduino environment to the ESP8266. There is one that offers MicroPython. There is one that offers Lua.

A solid state relay is a four terminal device. Two terminals are the control terminals, and two are the load terminals. Put a specified voltage across the control terminals, and the devices acts like a closed switch between the load terminals. If the control voltage is below the specified level, the device acts like an open switch between the load terminals. A typical SSR can handle AC voltage on the load terminals of well over what any standard household or office uses. The control voltage is typically around 3-30 V to close the virtual switch, which a logic one in a 3.3 V system (like the ESP8266) falls within, so you may be able to control the SSR directly from an ESP8266 I/O pin. (But you'd need to check the specs for the relay and make sure it doesn't require more current than the pin provides. If it does you might have to toss in a transistor to drive the relay).

This would be a good first project to get started in micro controllers or IoT or home automation or home sensing.

Re: More awful IoT stuff

#140

Post by drzaiusapelord »

deelowe wrote: post #57
apozem wrote: post #12

> Eventually I plugged my phone into my laptop and ran adb logcat, and the Android debug logs told me that the app was trying to modify a network that it hadn't created. Apparently this isn't permitted as of Android 6, but the app was handling this denial by just trying again. I deleted the network from the system settings, restarted the app, and this time the app created the network record and could modify it. It st…

As a counter example, my brother who never uses a computer setup his chromecast in 5 minutes with zero help from me. I know b/c he called me and asked for help. I told him he wouldn't need it, but he didn't believe me. Things are getting better. There will always be more crap out there than good stuff. That's why walmart is so popular, but things will generally improve.

Sure, they're getting better, but only with big name manufacturers like Google.

Go to your local home depot and look at all the home automation stuff. Its all no-name garbage and the stuff I recognize still aren't getting things right (all the QA problems with the nest, the documented security issues with garage door openers, everything relaying on the OEM's servers to keep things running with no fallback or no non-cloud options, etc).

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