I just gotta say, I really like the animated gifs. Kudos to the blogger.
Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
131–140 of 232 posts
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#132We've moved to an new apartment (house) and we had to do a full renovation. It doesn't have modern insulation and I calculated that for the time being the ROI on insulation isn't worth it. It's a multi-floor semi-detached house and I wanted the best comfort and the most economical heating possible. In particular: stable and individually adjustable temperatures for bedrooms and living rooms; underfloor heating in some…
I'd like more details on your home assistant setup as I'm trying to optimize mine.
Btw, you can use $5 LYWSD03MMC thermometers with ble or zigbee.
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#133One doesn’t actually need any extra hardware for this… just 8cm of wire and this https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx (use at your own risk of course)
This did come up when I was researching this but it’s incredibly dangerous as you’ll be spewing all over the spectrum due to harmonics, I considered it too much of a hack for my liking
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#134Funny how the manufacturer proudly claims that the protocol is encrypted, but completely forget to mitigate replay attacks,thus making the encryption completely useless
Which raises the question whether the OP now unknowingly also controls the heater in the apartment next to his...
The thermostats are paired, if my setup was able to control another apartments boiler then the original thermostat would also do that
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or perhaps go for the opposite of subtle - in many places it's quite normal to see people in hi-vis vests taking readings etc.
That's an excellent additional thing to consider and I'm a bit mad that I neglected it since I have accidentally been that guy. My job requires me to wear hi-vis (as well as other PPE) and it is crazy how little security pays attention to me in some of the very-big-name plants I visit, often with a laptop bag full of flash drives and a bunch of other tools that allow me to get into the machines. Early in this part of…
One should not practice these things in actual high security areas, but it can be fun to simply walk around a strange place with a look of purpose and velocity. Not making eye contact, perhaps on a phone. As long as you won't get in trouble it's easy to practice the body language of belonging and that skill can be really useful even if you are not trying to use it for malicious purposes (i.e. if you are actually supposed to be there, the best thing for everyone is you look the part and don't cause more worry than required).
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#136Some risk of collateral damage in the form of randomly controlling other peoples' boilers if your transmitter turns out to be more powerful than the one in the thermostat, tho...
The thermostat is paired with the boiler, the signals bundle the unique ID’s of each so this won’t happen. Otherwise there would be a risk the original thermostat would do the same.
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're trying to transmit (only) on e.g. 433 MHz, but you actually transmit on 433 MHz and a bell curve around it.
so, severe LO clock drift?
Not exactly, the transmitted power tends to be centered on the frequency you desire, but there are unwanted harmonics off the center frequency. Its like having a fire hose that hits the desired target with water (something on fire), but it also hits everything else around the target in a large radius as well which may be very sensitive to water (precious art, high power transformers, etc)
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#138The Flipper Zero is great, and could handle all of the hacking/investigation part by installing custom firmware. The original product understandably arrives with heavily-restricted firmware (I imagine to reduce the amount of flak the company receives). However, it is incredibly easy to install Flipper Unleashed or similar, which removes all said restrictions and adds a lot of additional functionality. Possessing the…
> Possessing the tools that could be used to commit a crime is not necessarily a crime in and of itself! While I do agree 1000%, I also want people to be careful with this thinking since I have gotten in some minor trouble in the past. Always assume the authority questioning you can and will create whatever narrative they wish, that it will be accepted, and that your own reasoning will likely be used against you. I w…
> "Always assume the authority questioning you can and will create whatever narrative they wish, that it will be accepted, and that your own reasoning will likely be used against you."
And with that, I give you:
Don't Talk To the Police:
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s an artifact of how heating is setup inside your home. Which is more efficient depends on where you’re dumping heat inside the home, levels of insulation, etc. Energy moves from hot to cold linearly with temperature differences. Hypothetically, if the pipe was the same temperatures as the inside of your home all the heat transferred would be outside the envelope. The hotter the pipe the better this ratio become…
Look at ISO 7730, a lot of comfort comes from non-cold walls and their radiant heat and small difference of wall temperatures to air temperatures. So having a thoroughly heated home allows you to lower your air temperature. Apart from that modern gas and even more heat pumps greatly gain efficiency by lowering flow water temperatures.
It’s a deep rabbit hole as condensation, humidity, etc also enter the picture. Efficiently lowering temperatures for sleeping further complicates things.
That said, heat loss is through exterior surfaces so you really want to avoid spot heating of poorly insulated exterior walls. Thus the design of baseboard heaters can make a larger impact than you’d think.
Re: Attacking My Landlord's Boiler
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work entirely remote so, other than travel, there are not many long periods when the house is unoccupied. I target the long run time to maximize efficiency. A 160°F pipe will lose more heat to the part of the building that I don’t want to heat as well as more heat to the wall right behind the radiators. It also results in the house going micro too-hot, too-cold, too-hot, too-cold as it cycles. Mine is constantly tr…
> Another large effect is that low return water temperatures into the boiler allow for greater condensation of exhaust gas energy to be used in the building instead of sent outside. Correct. > Walking by my house on a cold day, you’ll see minimal steam plume during operation. All that steam I see my neighbors emitting is energy they paid for and delivered to the outside… (They paid a lot for a boiler with a 95% or 98…
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