Taking over a Dead IoT Company

Post by fhars » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

danhor wrote: post #106

ben_w wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof. My electronics stopped before GCSEs, and even I know about 555s. I can believe someone might prefer software for prototyping, but manufacturing? Well, I've seen prototypes enter production, so yes, but still, ugh .

A attiny might not make sense, but you can get something like the PMS150C for around ~5ct, where it makes more sense to use a single MCU than a 555 with all the extra needed BOM Items.

Post by wferrell » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 7:33 PM UTC

rohansingh wrote: post #114

dom96 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me wonder how Tidbyt's business is doing. They seem to have a fair amount of employees. I actually built something very similar and all in my spare time. I've been wondering how realistic making a side-business out of it is, but if you are a single engineer that has to code the firmware, server, build the displays and market it all... it's pretty tough (especially in your spare time).

We actually only have 4 FTE's today and our business is both sustainable and growing. Our scale is also a couple orders of magnitude larger than the numbers from the article, and we have much better control over our BOM. Hardware is a tough business and managing cash flow & inventory requires you to be a lot more deliberate than a pure SaaS business. Fortunately we had a lot of examples going in of how not to do thin…

Post by wferrell » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 7:35 PM UTC

ColdHeat wrote: post #105

schubart wrote: post #78

I didn’t quite understand the need for an injection attack. Once you had bought the domain and could respond to the devices‘ API calls, weren’t you in the driving seat already?

I actually had written more about the exploit & vulnerability in my original drafts but I cut it out because it was a bit boring to read. You are correct that with domain control I am able to serve content to any sign but the content will only be loaded once at boot time. Any future updates would have needed to come from their defunct AWS IoT connection (ignoring full restarts). Using the exploit I remove the connect…

Post by xd1936 » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

klinquist wrote: post #48

sschueller wrote: post #9

I build something similar https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vbz-fahrgastinformation/ but with way less BOM and I keep getting asked that I should sell them. The primary reason I don't is because I don't want to support something like that for the next 10 years...

heh, same. I built a little custom sign for my airbnb. Part of my home automation system: https://imgur.com/a/8A5IKV6

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 10, 2023, 7:40 PM UTC

djhworld wrote: post #98

A few years ago I created something similar for the London Tube although it was much more crude, just a pi zero and a strip of RGB LED lights that represented the colours of the tube lines. The store that made the LED strip caught wind of it some how and they cut out a wooden enclosure for me to put the thing in, with the tube line names etched into the wood, which completely blew me away. My dad kept on telling me a…