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A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

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Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#381

Post by dghlsakjg »

borski wrote: post #321
brk wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is obvious in retrospect because this concept has been around for 30 years. A common killswitch mechanism that I remember being implemented in the early 90's was a system that tied into accessory devices. On my friends car you had to put the key to ACC, then turn the cruise control on and off, and then engage and disengage the parking brake before the car would start. No other obvious lights, buttons, switches, et…

Dropbox wasn’t a new idea either. rsync had existed for many years.

So does this “project”.

There are dozens of already existing products that are designed to do exactly this for pretty cheap.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mPSrPR0

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#382

Post by dghlsakjg »

positron6000 wrote: post #372
brk wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Dropbox made rsync more user friendly and available to people who weren't techies. The concept of a starter interrupter has been around almost as long as the automobile itself. Ways to engage and disengage that interrupter have evolved and advanced over the years. Older folks will remember cars with a keyswitch on the front fender, and then a keypad inside, and then hidden switches like I described in my OP, and…

"i'm not a 'car guy' - where can i get a simple interface for a killswitch that only needs to be installed once and can be controlled from an app?" ^ this is where the value is, which is what the $1.2m is intended to explore.

30 seconds on aliexpress found me this: https://a.aliexpress.com/_mPSrPR0

No Bluetooth, but it does have a dedicated RF remote.

Edit: figured out the keywords I needed for the exact product you want “bluetooth immobilizer”

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mNgigFk

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#383

Post by dahwolf »

Waterluvian wrote: post #14

I knew someone with a shitty pickup truck where he wired a light switch into the fuel pump and hid it under the steering column. The truck would be stolen something like 5 times a year and every time he would find it abandoned a km or so away when the gas in the line ran out. I drove in it once to get lunch and near the beginning the car begins sputtering and he's like, "oh right, you're thirsty" and reached under an…

When I was younger here in the Netherlands a lot of us had tweaked motorcycles/scooters that would go much faster than the allowed cap of 50km/h.

Many had a "cop switch". Cops suspecting you messed with the engine would put the scooter on a test belt to measure its maximum speed. The cop switch would instantly cap it to the allowed speed. Mine was hidden in the left mirror, a minor adjustment would activate it.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#384

Post by gruez »

postmortembees wrote: post #47
gruez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opportunity cost of the additional travel time[1] that you have to spend because you don't have a car. [1] Yes, I'm aware of european cities where cars aren't necessary or are actually slower than public transit. That's not applicable to most of the US though.

I wonder how many instacart/uber orders I would need to have to offset the cost of a car, assuming I can bike to most of my needs. The only reason I have a car is because there are some specialized transportation needs (towing) that I cannot get from my bike. I use my bike for everything from hardware to Costco to groceries to child care to ... lots of stuff.

> I wonder how many instacart/uber orders I would need to have to offset the cost of a car, assuming I can bike to most of my needs.

Not that much. One site[1] lists the TCO of a compact car at around $33k/year if you drive it for 15k mi/year for 5 years. That works out to $550/month. Of course, if you're comparing this to getting ubers, there's no way that you'll be driving anywhere near 15k mi/year, so the TCO of a comparable car is probably $450/month. That's a lot of money to spend on uber/instacart, but keep in mind that if you have a modest commute of $20 each way, that only works out to 11 round-trips a month, or half the working days. So if your lifestyle is such that you don't need to drive to work most days, and you don't any other similar uses for cars (eg. picking up kids from school and/or driving them to extracurriculars), then by all means uber everywhere rather than owning a car.

[1] https://www.kbb.com/new-cars/total-cost-of-ownership/

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#386

Post by coldtea »

K0balt wrote: post #84

1.2 million grant for this? Now I’ve seen grift, but come on. I want to hire their grant writer. Literally a relay in the starter lead. This looks like one of my afternoon projects, and I’m not even joking. I have a 1990s montero diesel and it leaks power, and I often forget to disconnect the terminal. So I bought a relay from AliExpress (same one shown in this photo but one size up) and hooked it up with an esp32 an…

>That way I can basically forget that it exists, problem solved. It has been working flawlessly for two years now. The whole thing took me about 3 hours to put on strip board and program, another half hour to enclose and mount it. Give me an hour more in micropython and I could make it require a passcode entered on your phone with a secret wiper switch sequence as a backup.

So, basically a custom rig, with some shit that might or might not work from AliExpress, is out of the question for anybody not knowledgable in electronics ("hooked it up with an esp32 and some discrete components"), and needs even more work to have a functionality that would come in standard in a commercial solution.

Some of the strongest https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 vibes...

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#387

Post by dcow »

rocqua wrote: post #314
gruez wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about a classical mechanical key? can be picked >The problem is relay theft, where thief's relay the signal of your fob key inside the house to the car via a simple antenna and amplifier system. Cryptographical signing won't help. AFAIK the attack you describe only applies to keyless entry systems (ie. you can open and start a car without having to pull your key out), which is related but not the same as an im…

The modern versions of these keys cannot be cloned, they are challenge response. So you need to relay the challenge from the key, and then relay the response from the key back to the car. This is often used by thiefs who bring the relay close to the front door, hoping for the keys to be in a bowl or a hook near the door. Then they can open and start the car using the relay. The car then won't turn off when it loses c…

> (because that is dangerous)

I've always wondered why the car doesn't warn the driver that there's 100 yards left before it will cut the engine (or limit it to idle), keep the power steering, turn on the hazards, and warn the driver that the vehicle won't continue to function because the key is not in range. Doesn't seem dangerous at all...

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#388

Post by EGreg »

kube-system wrote: post #352
EGreg wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many tanks and materiel did Ukrainians take from the Russians? On October 2022 it was an estimated 453 Russian tanks. I guess 1, 2, 3 don't work that well in battle https://www.newsweek.com/how-russian-tanks-captured-ukraine-... Also for other things too: https://nypost.com/2023/05/11/ukrainians-strike-russians-wit...

Are you suggesting that locks would have prevented this?

Certainly kill switches would

Every TV show has a self destruct mechanism to prevent a ship from falling into enemy hands and blabla etc

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#389

Post by fnimick »

boobsbr wrote: post #341
janalsncm wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. In theory, investors can behave as rational actors. In practice, you get all sorts of chasing the Next Big Thing because there’s too much money flowing around to too little fundamental research. So I’m ok if we spend $1.2M on research. That’s like 5 developers for one year who would otherwise be allocated by the invisible hand into effectively useless endeavors like high frequency trading or ad tech. Cut to the…

> So I’m ok if we spend $1.2M on research. I'm not. Where do I opt out of funding government grants? At least I can decide not invest in something if I don't want to risk losing money.

You don't get to, because you don't get to opt out of the social benefit that they result in.

(remember that government spending basically created transistorized logic, microchips, and computer networking as we know them today. would you have opted out of those too?)

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#390

Post by LadyCailin »

oxfordmale wrote: post #103
gruez wrote: post #16

>At the end of the three-year project, the team aims to have a commercially viable prototype that can be scaled up to commercial production, first as a theft deterrent device, and potentially later as a complete vehicle entry and control system that could replace traditional keys and fobs. What's the point of this? Modern cars already have engines that are cryptographically tied to keys[1]. They're not perfect, but i…

What about a classical mechanical key? I am referring to a laser cut key, the type that can't be easily lock picked, other than in Hollywood movies. The problem is relay theft, where thief's relay the signal of your fob key inside the house to the car via a simple antenna and amplifier system. Cryptographically signing won't help. However, this can be fixed by adding a motion sensor that makes key fobs go into a slee…

> The only reason this is not yet widespread as increased car theft is good for car manufacturers.

Not if your brand is one of the ones known to be easy to steal. I doubt I’d buy a Hyundai in the future given my understanding of their reputation as easy targets.

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