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Point – A smart house sitter

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Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#111

Post by ancarda »

headgasket wrote: post #69
ancarda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any plans to have an Ethernet model rather than Wi-Fi?

I'd second the want for ethernet with PoE, with slots for rechargeable AA batteries for power outages. I bet more than 10% of fire alarms currently installed in the USA have a dead battery.

I completely forgot about PoE. I have zero devices that support it since it seems to be so rare. I'd go out and buy a nice switch if it had more support. I really don't like this trend of low power IoT devices that only support Wi-Fi when Ethernet+PoE is perfect for them. I'm all for having Wi-Fi built in, just not the only way to connect.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#113

Post by meowface »

icebraining wrote: post #63
meowface wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>specific MAC addresses and make the access point invisible. Both of these measures do nothing if any other device is currently connected to the wireless network. A passive attacker will still be able to see your access point (by inspecting packets sent over the air by other devices to the access point) and can spoof a MAC address to connect to it.

Not if you're not at home and hence there are no "other devices" sending packets.

This seems like a rather silly edge case though. What if you accidentally leave a phone or tablet at home and it's sending packets intermittently?

Or what if someone decides to hack you when you are at home?

These are not real security measures.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#114

Post by owenmarshall »

nmattisson wrote: post #107
owenmarshall wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apartment was broken into because the security system was disabled. The security system was disabled because it used a cheap glass break sensor that would trip if both my dogs barked at the same time - both, not just one. Naturally this was untenable. I'm a bit leery about glass break sensors, to say the least.

We're combining data from different sensors, so if Point hears broken glass, and then notices the temperature changing or street noise being louder than usual we can more accurately detect broken windows.

OK, this is actually a really cool approach to what I gather is a common problem!

Does Point try to learn a baseline for temperature/acoustics/etc., and trigger when a deviation occurs? Or do you just say "when glass breaks + these other thresholds are tripped, ..."

Because the latter would probably solve the problem fairly well, but the former would be outstanding.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#115

Post by danielbarla »

kristiandupont wrote: post #19
danielbarla wrote: post #5

Glad to see at least some companies are taking an (at least semi-) offline approach to these things. With the way things have been going these last few years, the internet-of-things irks me. I've also often wondered why the home security industry seems to be so out of phase with the rest of the tech world; e.g. my house has a security system which seems to have been designed in the 70s (yet it was likely bought by th…

Our power budget gives us between one and two years of battery life. Your phone will give you a heads up when a change is required. It's a bit of a hassle, but we feel it's worth it to have the freedom from cables.

Hmmm, I'm not sure what battery we're talking about, but that sounds fairly impressive, if it's realistic. I agree with the other posters though, a simple plug for 12v power would probably not break the design / budget. Almost everyone I know that's tinkering with home automation is going all-out, and I know I'd prefer the option for permanent fixtures.

Re: Point – A smart house sitter

#116

Post by headgasket »

ancarda wrote: post #111
headgasket wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd second the want for ethernet with PoE, with slots for rechargeable AA batteries for power outages. I bet more than 10% of fire alarms currently installed in the USA have a dead battery.

I completely forgot about PoE. I have zero devices that support it since it seems to be so rare. I'd go out and buy a nice switch if it had more support. I really don't like this trend of low power IoT devices that only support Wi-Fi when Ethernet+PoE is perfect for them. I'm all for having Wi-Fi built in, just not the only way to connect.

no need for a switch, you can get 5$ injection power supplies. https://www.roc-noc.com/mikrotik/routerboard/power/rb-p54.ht...

BTW, mikrotik is a very nice platform for geeks, en attendant Godot (a high load open source linux based router distro. Yes I know of openwrt, but that's kind of limited hw, hackish and prosumer? )

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