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Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

hackernoon.com

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Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#51

Post by zaroth »

StavrosK wrote: post #43

There's a virtuous cycle thing going on here: Someone releases a product with hackable/open specs (Xiaomi has a good track record here), people are overjoyed because you can't easily get good hardware for cheap and build a bunch of software around it, thus (usually greatly) extending the capabilities of the product, other people buy that product because it's much more advanced than competitors (because of all the ext…

Except when the business model was to sell the hardware at breakeven and make it up with the monthly subscription, and people are buying subsidized hardware and skipping out on the subscription fees.

If the company sets out to create an open platform and has a business model which works in that world, that is a beautiful thing.

Is that the case here and are we seeing a virtuous cycle, are features contributed back to the company and actually integrated into their product? I think that’s a beautiful model but I’m not sure that’s actually what’s happenning here?

Literally the first sentence of the article;

“...its price is cheap but in exchange you are tied to the Xiaomi’s Mi Home App & Cloud.”

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#52

Post by StavrosK »

zaroth wrote: post #51
StavrosK wrote: post #43

There's a virtuous cycle thing going on here: Someone releases a product with hackable/open specs (Xiaomi has a good track record here), people are overjoyed because you can't easily get good hardware for cheap and build a bunch of software around it, thus (usually greatly) extending the capabilities of the product, other people buy that product because it's much more advanced than competitors (because of all the ext…

Except when the business model was to sell the hardware at breakeven and make it up with the monthly subscription, and people are buying subsidized hardware and skipping out on the subscription fees. If the company sets out to create an open platform and has a business model which works in that world, that is a beautiful thing. Is that the case here and are we seeing a virtuous cycle, are features contributed back to…

Xiaomi is, in general, quite good about opening its products up. The YeeLight bulbs, for example, have a nice open API.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#53

Post by creeble »

VectorLock wrote: post #39

I see a lot of products like this on Alibaba that I wish I could put my own firmware on. I've messaged a few of them telling them "I'd buy 1000 of these if I can put my own firmware on them" but haven't gotten any good responses. What I'm aiming for sometimes gets lost in translation, but mostly I think they just don't get the premise I'm presenting to sales people who answer the Alibaba inquiries.

Yes, it's notoriously difficult to find who actually makes the hardware for these devices! let alone who writes the firmware. Many cameras are much too hard to reverse engineer in order to run your own firmware.

Fwiw, I recall that this is exactly how Dropcam started: they reverse-engineered the firmware for (iirc) an Axis net cam, then provided their own.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#54

Post by hashgowda »

I want to buy bunch of them and setup a grid in small farm. My challenges are * how do I connect to wifi router which is located in the farm house, because some will be very far from the router. * Also another challenge is how to charge the cameras?

Has anybody worked on above issues ?

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#55

Post by 15155 »

hashgowda wrote: post #54

I want to buy bunch of them and setup a grid in small farm. My challenges are * how do I connect to wifi router which is located in the farm house, because some will be very far from the router. * Also another challenge is how to charge the cameras? Has anybody worked on above issues ?

Dropping wire is the absolute best way to go, however:

A properly thought-out wireless system is the second-best way.

This might consist of P2P links, multiple access points, etc. over the subject property.

That's not to say this is expensive, check out Ubiquiti and Ruckus products for examples of the kinds of radios you need to make this happen. All should fairly affordable in comparison to renting a trenching tool and dropping cable.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#56

Post by tomer_shalev »

samfisher83 wrote: post #46
VectorLock wrote: post #39

I see a lot of products like this on Alibaba that I wish I could put my own firmware on. I've messaged a few of them telling them "I'd buy 1000 of these if I can put my own firmware on them" but haven't gotten any good responses. What I'm aiming for sometimes gets lost in translation, but mostly I think they just don't get the premise I'm presenting to sales people who answer the Alibaba inquiries.

A lot of the seller in Alibaba are just buying camera OEM from a factory so they wouldn't be able to get you the software. The factory itself might be just copying the reference design from chip manufacturer and they might not have access to the code or under a NDA. The chip manufacturer does not have an incentive to provide you custom firmware. You aren't their customer.

These are exactly the same reasons which prevented mp3 players manufacturers back in the day from opening up their specifications to open source projects, such as Rockbox

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#57

Post by tjoff »

pdelbarba wrote: post #48
tjoff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the part where the company uses that profit and market penetration to stifle competition, lock down the hardware and lock in the users. And boom, current state of affairs.

What does this have to do with making hackable products?

It has to do with the intent and why the virtuous cycle isn't always so benign.

We should really value companies that actually make products you can take control over, rather than blindly relying on lack of security to being able to do what we want. Intent is quite important. It also sends a strange message when lack of security is seen as something good.

Now I don't have any criticism/knowledge about this product or xiaomi in general. IP cameras are generally quite overpriced in my uninformed opinion and you still almost always get locked into the cloud. So I really welcome this hack.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#58

Post by i2pi »

hashgowda wrote: post #54

I want to buy bunch of them and setup a grid in small farm. My challenges are * how do I connect to wifi router which is located in the farm house, because some will be very far from the router. * Also another challenge is how to charge the cameras? Has anybody worked on above issues ?

We have p2p wifi between our barn and farm house. The barn is powered by solar.

I use engenius WAPs, a 100Ah battery, 2 100W solar panels, a $15 solar charge controller, various buck/boost converters for other power requirements. The system also powers an LTE repeater and LTE modem, to provide the farm with internet access.

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#59

Post by leggomylibro »

StavrosK wrote: post #43

There's a virtuous cycle thing going on here: Someone releases a product with hackable/open specs (Xiaomi has a good track record here), people are overjoyed because you can't easily get good hardware for cheap and build a bunch of software around it, thus (usually greatly) extending the capabilities of the product, other people buy that product because it's much more advanced than competitors (because of all the ext…

On the other hand, they also open themselves to people just making their own versions of the product for much less.

If you choose them for their hackability, your core processors will probably have minimal development boards available for less than $2.50 each if you're using anything less powerful than a Cortex-M4 ARM core.

And now you have a huge part of your value proposition - the easy-to-use and user-configurable software - available for free. It will be cheaper for users to create their own version of your product unless you have some very complex or precise supporting hardware. End users will get a fun learning experience and customized product if they don't buy from you, and 3rd-party wholesalers will undercut you quickly and viciously.

So, hopefully your marketing department can pull at peoples' heart strings enough to make up for the order of magnitude difference in price. It works for companies like Adafruit and Sparkfun because they give back and people appreciate that, but how much room is there for companies that rely on goodwill to keep running?

Re: Hacking a $30 IoT camera to do more than it’s worth

#60

Post by blacksmith_tb »

diggan wrote: post #10
nickspacek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article is a guide to "hacking" a $30 Xiaomi Dafang IP camera. This camera is an "indoor motorized WiFi camera capable of 1080P resolution and decent night-vision, its price is cheap". If you bought one, all the "hacking" required is inserting a MicroSD card with a custom firmware on it and pressing and holding the camera's reset button to flash the custom firmware. From then on, the camera has the ability…

Thanks, I saw said article as I'm commenting in it's thread :) But I wanted to avoid the hacking and just buy something that I don't have to force into doing what I want but rather come in a clean slate.

I have a couple of Xiaomi Yi cams, which out-of-the box stream to a mobile app, don't require a subscription, and will save video locally to an SD card. They are cheap and cheerful (but you would want to keep them behind a firewall). That said, this hack clearly offers a lot more functionality (I think I will replace my Yi cams with these and relegate them to recording raccoons in my backyard).
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