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What's that touchscreen in my room?

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Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#171

Post by knolan »

petepete wrote: post #167

On a related note, I had a new boiler installed last year with Vaillant's smart controls. There's a little puck shaped 'control unit' with WiFi/radio which allows the app to talk to it, and it to talk to the thermostat. Like most people in the UK, the boiler's in the garage. A brick rectangle separate from the house. Did Vaillant include an ethernet port? You bet they didn't. The support team suggested I installed Wi…

Most people in the UK don’t have a garage. Almost every home I’ve lived in has had a gas boiler somewhere inside.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#172

Post by calvinmorrison »

bradley13 wrote: post #168
jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

Being able to see your usage is helpful - at least, for those of us interested. For example, I was surprised to see how much our electronics (stereo, amplifier, TV, etc.) in the living room use, even when off (some devices are older, with high standby currents). It motivated me to put everything on a timer that only turns power own in the evenings, since that's the only time they get used. It's a small thing, but sma…

Not when you're on solar. Its more akin to being poor and shopping at dollar tree - cash/solar flow is more important than total cost.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#174

Post by b112 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #146
b112 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't seem like useful advice. Understanding reality is always useful advice. Wishing reality isn't as it is, won't help. The mindset I have described, is how one must view all electronics. Unsecure.

But what does that mean in practice? Throw them all into the fire and go back to pen and paper?

If that is your choice.

You may also understand that your devices are not secure, take steps to reduce risk, and so on.

Why do you think yubikeys are a useful thing? Or hardware crypto wallets?

Devices that reduce risk, that are designed with the thought that connected computers aren't secure, can never be secure.

Know where risk sits.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#175

Post by denysvitali »

cm2187 wrote: post #141

A bit of a dick move to remove the root password on an IOT device of a flat you only rent.

Considering that: - the Wi-Fi is password protected - root privileges can already be granted via the "backdoor" - exactly as the author did

I don't think it's a dick move, the device security wasn't decreased (or increased) since RCE was already possible via the tcf port

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#176

Post by M6WIQ »

The name of the company (Netthings) seemed familiar with me, turns out I had read an blog article regarding the hardcoded NTP servers that they used in their devices being firewalled off and therefore losing time sync.

Article: https://strugglers.net/~andy/blog/2018/12/24/the-internet-of...

It also appears that they went into liquidation in 2018, so good luck getting any support with that device from them!

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#177

Post by paradox460 »

girvo wrote: post #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…

ESP32s are basically universal at this point. You can have them for under a dollar if you order in any sort of bulk, and you get Wifi and Bluetooth right out of the box. At this point is more expensive to not use Wifi

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#178

Post by justinclift »

thrwwycbr wrote: post #138
miellaby wrote: post #136

I like how the author is surprised by the technological aberration that form Linux powered home appliances. A node server to power and publish over wifi a web site, an API, a web socket, while the site is being displayed by a outdated webview engine within an heavily constrained terminal which cant be reused for anything else. That's... the norm. All this is very common. And yet displaying a couple of digits and a ba…

The reason why the Mirai botnet is still at large is: Android. From a business perspective nobody wants to pay the costly people that can do microcontroller programming. Frontend devs are dirt cheap, especially for something as simple as that interface displaying the bar charts.

> nobody wants to pay the costly people that can do microcontroller programming

The embedded world isn't known for paying well.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#179

Post by petepete »

knolan wrote: post #171
petepete wrote: post #167

On a related note, I had a new boiler installed last year with Vaillant's smart controls. There's a little puck shaped 'control unit' with WiFi/radio which allows the app to talk to it, and it to talk to the thermostat. Like most people in the UK, the boiler's in the garage. A brick rectangle separate from the house. Did Vaillant include an ethernet port? You bet they didn't. The support team suggested I installed Wi…

Most people in the UK don’t have a garage. Almost every home I’ve lived in has had a gas boiler somewhere inside.

Fair. But I strongly suspect nearly every house with a garage has the boiler in it.

Edit. So having done a little research this probably isn't the case. Maybe it's a regional thing, all the (mostly suburban) houses I've lived in and visited, in the north west of England, are set up that way.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#180

Post by leoedin »

Symbiote wrote: post #50
azalemeth wrote: post #38

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 -…

Fuses in plugs in Britain are either 3A or 13A, by regulation. 5A used to be another value, but is no longer used (though replacement 5A fuses are easily available.) I've never seen 7A or 10A fuses, and I was the kind of boy to rummage through my grandparent's workshops. ..

I've had 10A fused cables before - IEC leads are pretty common. https://www.cablewarehouse.co.uk/10a-uk-plug-to-iec-c13-main... for example.
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