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Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

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Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#61
This is a neat idea.

Personally, I would not find it useful as they seem relatively fragile and if the receiver is not bulletproof and VERY sensitive then it could miss state changes.

However, it would be interesting to see how it would work if you were able to have different ones on different frequencies with one main receiver. That would make a cost effective way to track cabinets, doors, etc in the same room.

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#62
post #25
post #24

For a brief, beautiful moment from the headline I thought "oh good, more PoE sensors finally happening!" doho. But no not just about battery but any power at all, and an interesting approach for further research. Of course to actually get data from still requires powered devices but in a lot of cases it'd be much easier to have that be a single or small number of more easily placed central units vs every single senso…

Children too. My own hearing extended to about 23 kHz until I was in my early 20s, and I don't think I was exceptional. There was a jewelry store in my town that I couldn't go in to because the "ultrasonic" motion detector was so painfully loud. But I doubt these devices would be a problem for children or pets because the pulse is so short.

My hearing is still keen enough that when I'm biking around, I avoid certain streets because those houses have anti-rodent ultrasonic systems that hurt my ears.

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#63
post #60
post #34

My father was an engineer at Zenith when they were developing the Space Command TV remote control. This was a couple years before I was born, so by the time I got interested in hacking, Zenith TVs with this remote were commonplace. When visiting my friends homes I would prank them by jangling my keys and making the TV louder or quieter and randomly change channels. This presents new opportunities.

Wow, I never heard of these. They operated on sound. Here's an article with photos, including some internals and the history of its engineering: https://www.theverge.com/23810061/zenith-space-command-remot... I wonder how reliable they were?

Not very reliable. The remote only had four buttons (volume up/down, channel up/down) and various sounds like kitchen appliances, flushing toilets, and jingling keys would be interpreted as remote control actions by the TV.

My grandfather had one; he seemed to find it more entertaining to talk to people about it than to actual use it.

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#64
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The microphone is on a smart watch the user is wearing.

Do you need a signal that tells you the window is open if you are in the same room?

Now imagine you're living with 10 people at a facility/station/factory/depot, and there are 5 windows across a dozen externally facing rooms.

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#65
post #24

For a brief, beautiful moment from the headline I thought "oh good, more PoE sensors finally happening!" doho. But no not just about battery but any power at all, and an interesting approach for further research. Of course to actually get data from still requires powered devices but in a lot of cases it'd be much easier to have that be a single or small number of more easily placed central units vs every single senso…

Out of curiosity what do you find missing from the PoE sensor market?

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#67
post #24

For a brief, beautiful moment from the headline I thought "oh good, more PoE sensors finally happening!" doho. But no not just about battery but any power at all, and an interesting approach for further research. Of course to actually get data from still requires powered devices but in a lot of cases it'd be much easier to have that be a single or small number of more easily placed central units vs every single senso…

I think we already established "eff anyone sharing the planet with us that's not us" the moment we made acoustic underwater sonars that make life hell for any whale or dolphin in 100 km range, so this is keeping that approach ...

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#68
Get an SDR, tune into the frequency, and troll the home automation system! Given that it’s not of a high frequency, the attack can be done from a distance with proper antenna, and the frequencies use a hardcoded algorithm. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised to see flipper zero addon to that (hardware through GPIO and software) for portability.

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#69
So, in the true spirit of the HN dismissive comment, but this time I think it really does have its place.

Ultrasonic is DOA, sorry, but that just won't do. It's already a nuisance to have all these switching supplies that mess up your hearing (and some can be surprisingly loud), using it for power delivery is really a non-starter.

There was a company that planned on using ultrasonic for power delivery to smart phones, every engineer with some ultrasonic experience said it wasn't going to work and they just kept going until they - predictably - went out of business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SonicEnergy (formerly Ubeam).

Just wishing it exists does not mean it is possible or practical, that's right up there with Theranos (and I think Theranos actually had a better chance of working even though that chance was extremely slim).

There are interesting start-ups around the theme of energy scavenging though, that's a far more realistic but still extremely challenging proposition.

Re: Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors

#70
post #8

Trivia time! The first practical wireless remote control for TVs also used ultrasound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLPk1Us62xQ

Right, and they were superseded by battery-powered infrared remotes for good reasons. I would recommend revisiting those reasons before proposing this sort of technology for wireless sensors.

And that's just signalling, not power delivery.
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