Collaborate Disseminate
Voice-activated smart speakers can be pretty handy around the house, but they come with a privacy trade-off. Paranoid is an appropriately named start-up that’s now unveiled a set of devices that can make sure smart speakers are only listening when you … Continue reading Paranoid security systems block smart speaker ears until called on
Who knew there were so many “smart” ways to unlock a lock? For years companies have been trying to get people to use their phones or keypads or fobs, and now a new startup called Yeeuu Tech has thrown a bunch of methods into one device. The S1 Smart Lo… Continue reading S1 Smart Lock unlocks through fingerprints, NFC, passcodes or app
Two years after researchers Billi Rios and Terry McCorkle first flagged serious vulnerabilities in automatic, smart car wash systems by US manufacturer PDQ, the company is finally acknowledging the danger. What changed since the initial discovery? Rios, founder of Whitescope, and researcher Jonathan Butts, founder of QED Secure Solutions, have managed to finally prove that the vulnerabilities can be exploited in a live setting (in their case, a car wash facility in Washington), and that … More → Continue reading Hackable smart car wash systems can hurt people
[Uri Shaked]’s lamentation over the breaking of his smart bulb was brief as it was inspiring — now he had a perfectly valid excuse to hack it into a magic light bulb.
The first step was disassembling the bulb and converting it to run on a tiny, 130mAh battery. Inside the bulb’s base, the power supply board, Bluetooth and radio circuits, as well as the LED board didn’t leave much room, but he was able to fit in 3.3V and 12V step-up voltage regulators for the LiPo battery.
[Shaked]’s self-imposed bonus round was to also wedge a charging circuit — …read more
Continue reading A Magic Light Bulb For All Your Bright Ideas
Marketing and advertising groups often have a tendency to capitalize on technological trends faster than engineers and users can settle into the technology itself. Perhaps it’s no surprise that it is difficult to hold back the motivation to get a product to market and profit. Right now the most glaring example is the practice of carelessly putting WiFi in appliances and toys and putting them on the Internet of Things, but there is a similar type of fiasco playing out in the electric power industry as well. Known as the “smart grid”, an effort is underway to modernize the electric …read more
When makers take to designing furniture for their own home, the results are spectacular. For their senior design project, [Phillip Murphy] and his teammates set about building a smart table from the ground up. Oh, and you can also use it to play games, demonstrated in the video below.
The table uses 512 WS2812 pixels in a 32 x 16 array which has enough resolution to play a selection of integrated games — Go, 2-player Tetris, and Tron light cycle combat — as well as some other features like a dancing bird party mode — because what’s the point of …read more
As you may have heard, the iPhone 7 is ditching the 3.5 mm headphone jack in the name of progress and courage. Whatever your take on that, it leaves the end user out in the cold if — for instance — their preferred headphones still use the old format. Here to save you from an untimely upgrade is YouTuber [Kedar Nimbalkar], who has modified a Bluetooth Smartwatch to incorporate a 3.5 mm jack to allow continued use your current headphones.
After opening up the smartwatch [Nimbalkar] removes the speaker, solders in a 3.5 mm headphone jack and clips out an …read more
Continue reading Smart Watch Hack Lets You Use Your 3.5mm Headphones With An iPhone 7
The Internet of Things (IoT) is slowly taking over consumer markets in every category, from coffee makers to fitness trackers. Yet while smart automation might seem like the ideal for consumer convenience, when it comes to home security systems, connecting to the Internet can lead to increased vulnerability. In this article, we take a look […]… Read More
The post Could Your Smart Home Put You at Risk? appeared first on The State of Security.
Smart home tech is on the rise, but cost or lack of specific functionality may give pause to prospective buyers. [Whiskey Tango Hotel] opted to design their own system using a Raspberry Pi and Bluetooth device connectivity. Combining two ubiquitous technologies provides a reliable proximity activation of handy functions upon one’s arrival home.
The primary function is to turn on a strip of LEDs when [Whiskey Tango Hotel] gets home to avoid fumbling for the lights in the dark, and to turn them off after a set time. The Raspberry Pi and Bluetooth dongle detect when a specified discoverable Bluetooth …read more
Continue reading DIY Smart Home Device Means No More Fumbling in the Dark
