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What's that touchscreen in my room?

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Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#91
>More out of desperation than anything else, I decided to look at sshd config of the host and finally found the offending line. sshd_config had PermitRootLogin no line included, which is a very sensible security measure as long as you are not providing a full disk access to anyone on the network.

Enjoyed this article because I've wasted countless hours of my own getting into devices I bought or poking around networks I've airBnB'd at. I'm not as smart as the author but I found his whole approach relatable.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#92

A fun read! I feel compelled to say that all British (type G plugs) _have_ to be fused as the ring main has a maximum current of (typically) 30A yet the plug and socket maximum is 13A. So every appliance plug is fused, and the consumer unit has an RCD on most accessible circuits in addition to a circuit breaker. Some plugs don't make the fuse obvious, but the traditional values are 1A, 3A, 5A, 7A, 10A and 13A (iirc -…

Why don’t you use a 13A circuit breaker in UK? That’s what we do in the rest of the EU, I think. There’s a main input to the house which usually is around 15A-30A , then we’ve got multiple sublines with individual circuit breakers, typically 10A or 16A.

I just read up about radial vs ring circuits; I had seen ring circuits only in industrial contexts here in Italy, so the fused approach makes sense I suppose.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#93

WiFi is not only reasonable but preferable. Because if a cat5 cable is going to be ran, it'll be done by an electrician. And when they get to the end of a spool, they will break out the wire nuts and splice away. I've seen it first hand. Not even electricians can screw up WiFi :D

It's a little more expensive but it's always worth it to get a low voltage specialist to run your ethernet. To an electrician a conductor is just a conductor no matter how you splice it.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#94
> C in IoT stands for “cost-effective” I guess

I know this sounds pithy (and it is!) but you'd be surprised exactly how cheap and cost effective Wi-fi enabled SoCs are. A lot of the time we're getting Wi-Fi for free, and most of those SoC's don't have the Ethernet controller by default, so it's more cost-effective to use Wi-fi if it can fit your use-case.

Other physical protocols/connection types can be supported of course (I wonder what the longest I2C run ever is), but when you're talking about a retro-fitted client like this is, Wifi or wireless protocols in general are best.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#96

WiFi is not only reasonable but preferable. Because if a cat5 cable is going to be ran, it'll be done by an electrician. And when they get to the end of a spool, they will break out the wire nuts and splice away. I've seen it first hand. Not even electricians can screw up WiFi :D

[deleted]

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#97

Hey Nikita, that was an excellent read. It felt like a pivotal scene in a movie that would change the course of the succeeding narrative. I envy the ability to write so nicely and clearly, making it enjoyable for most generally technical people and keeping us engaged. I will watch out for more articles.

[deleted]

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#98
post #53

> There were two strings printed with labels “SSID” and “Pwd”. I froze in horror. They wouldn’t dare. It is literally 3 meter distance. These are embedded devices, they do not need this complexity… Not surprising at all. I would expect that a lot of these are bought as retrofits, and not as a part of new construction. Running wires through existing walls can be annoying, and they don't want to put that barrier to sal…

> A 3A fuse would burn out in a fraction of a second if you tried to do that.

he bought it on Amazon. He has every reason to be worried that it won't burn out. Louis Rossman did a video[0] where he put 8 amps through a 2 amp fuse and left the room for quite a long time, I think it was several minutes with 8a going through a 2a fuse.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#99

> Turns out, I need a 3A fuse, so I ordered one from Amazon OP might want to watch Louis Rossmann's video about buying things from Amazon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

For US readers: The big orange or blue store are probably better for you for anything electric that would go in your walls. I went down a rabbit hole of amazon clones of popular brand things like switches/dimmers/outlets and what I found is dubious UL certificates shared by multiple "brands".

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#100
Interesting article but one thing stood out:

The landlord had no idea what this is. There are no buttons or labels on the thing, just a tiny yellow light to let you know it has the power.

You move in and find a mysterious device on the wall that, at least to me, appears somewhat ominous and it's not obvious whether it may have a camera and possibly a microphone (the picture of it on the manual appears to show that it does have at least a camera)...

Roughly a year ago I moved into my new apartment.

...and you were perfectly fine with living in its presence for a year? When I saw the picture, my first thought was closer to "that's a telescreen", and I'd certainly try to find out more about it ASAP.

From what I can tell, this is an Android 5, but I am not exactly sure.

I believe those icons are from 4.1-4.3 - Lines up with the Linux kernel version being mid-2013. Android 5 was released in 2014.

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