Frank's guests just need to get the Doorking 16120 default key and start letting themselves in.
Edit: undergrad shenanigans from ten years ago:
Our university student-run electronics lab had an issue: technically anyone with a student card was allowed on premises at any given time, but the department only gave us a small set of keys that we had to share with the rest of the student associations. Obviously we needed a solution.
We did some snooping and found that the request-to-exit button wire was running on a cable tray alongside all the other wiring and plumbing, as the lab was in the basement. We picked a suitably dark, inconspicuous spot and wired up a Raspberry Pi driving a transistor and in turn a relay which we then wired in parallel with that button. Users could then connect to the local lab wifi and then SSH into the device. Login shell was replaced with a script that pulsed the GPIO line for half a second and subsequently caused the door to open.
We never got caught and apparently all the evidence was destroyed when the building was renovated a few years later.
It's a little sad that, having realised that the simplest route for the hardware was the best, a simple route for communications wasn't explored. I suspect that cramming in a complex stack wasn't the best or quickest solution.
I’m actually pretty surprised how bad the intercom ecosystem is these days.
Why aren’t there more ‘semi dumb’ Ethernet or wifi products that just let you announce that dinner is ready? It doesn’t need to be a fully ruggedised commercial system like this one or a fully integrated cloud managed solution like ring.
The cheap no name wireless ones can’t handle comms between rooms, let alone across a house.
The security implications aren’t insurmountable - you could use pairing codes if there are multiple on the network.
I’ve accepted that it’s a niche market, and that the only solution is to use Asterix with a some cheapo voip phones.
> Why aren’t there more ‘semi dumb’ Ethernet or wifi products that just let you announce that dinner is ready?
Because of 2 reasons
1) this is very antisocial behavior.
2) so many people have a mobile phone at arm's reach a majority of the time so there you have your intercom.
Well educated members of an household would know when dinner is ready because they would actually help make it ready for everyone. Occasionally one teenager could legitimately focus on homework but it is not actually a bad thing that someone has to move its ass and walk upstairs to knock at their door and tell them. We call that free exercise, much cheaper than a fitness subscription.
When I hear about home assistant and domotic in general, the only image that comes to me is those scenes in Wall-E where people live in a flying armchair with a holo screen in front of their face 24/7, their only interaction with a physical world being to only move their arms once in a while to grab a soda.
When I was a kid I remember a house we rented for a while came with intercom using the electrical lines. Past the initial novelty, they mostly collected dust and ended up being unplugged.
We have Google Home Minis in every room and the screens in bedroom and kitchen and the only thing that works reliably to message intra-room is to say "Hey Google, broadcast message" because half of the time it will tell me it can't send messages yet. If someone knows what I'm doing wrong I'd love to hear it since this would be a great feature.
To be honest, I'm honestly sick of Google Home's approach to this since the Gemini update has turned everything really slow and I'm getting close to the point where I'd rather home-roll a full system myself that works reliably instead of the crapshoot that this is. Home Assistant seems to have a functionality bridge to Google Home connected devices like my blinds or cameras so I should be able to retain the edge devices but I have half a mind to just dump the whole thing and start over.
There's Butterfly and another company I can't remember and undoubtedly more, that have expensive systems for large complexes, so the niche is the small buildings that don't have a ton of money. Maybe the softwarepocalypse can help with that.
The first step is getting speakers in a room: there are tons of products that do this, apple, google, Sonos.
Most of them have the audio quality of a bag of instruments.
There are tons of class D amps that you can hook up to speakers: Wiim, acrylic and so on... this will run you anywhere from 100 bucks to 500 and thats before you buy the speakers. Most of these will be great for playing music and projecting your voice.
The moment you involve a TV... well things get ugly because your going to want arc for HDMI and your going to want a center channel cause with out it your likely in subtitle hell half the time. This will get expensive a Sonos sound bar is a few hundred and if you want something better well... Let's say you can get to the point of making a GPU look affordable real quick.
Now that you can play audio, how do you hear it... well your phone works and there are tons of satellites out there.
You're now going to need to run home assistant to "interrupt" what ever is playing (if something is) to play your message and then return what ever it was to its current state.
After trying out WIIM, Acrylic, some high end stereo gear I just settled on half assed audio quality and bought more Sonos gear. I kept a single WIIM unit, cheap amp, decent speakers and a sub around for when I want to really listen to music but other than that I tolerate sonos' middling quality for day to day use (and I am, by no means an audiophile).
That aside, I enjoyed this read and it's such a niche thing that there is almost no way they'll step on the toes of another resident wanting to do the same thing
I had the same problem and I've searched for ready made solutions for over an year before I found a guy that reverse-engineers and builds ready-made boards to install in my intercom for less than 30 euro.
I use a Ring Intercom Audio for a similar use. Works surprisingly well, I wish someone would clone the hardware and make an open version so Jeff didn't listen in every time someone rings my doorbell or buzz himself in whenever he wants.
I did similar in my apartment in Amsterdam but a little more low-tech. I soldered the relay on an Esp8266 directly to the unlock button on the intercom PCB in my apartment. Worked flawlessly for years
Related, I'm still upset at the lies told by landlords regarding phone number privacy in buzz-in intercoms. I've been told multiple times at multiple apartment buildings, "don't worry, while the system will call your phone when someone taps your entry code, your phone number won't be revealed". And then you sign the lease, get a delivery from Instacart in your new place, and find that your 'private' number is blasted out loud, heard a whole city block away, in a loud-ass DTMF tone sequence.
Confessing to felonies, in writing, under one’s real name is wild.
Here’s hoping nobody decides to bother them about this. I’m not a lawyer but this appears to this layperson at the very least a CFAA violation by accessing the router and resetting its root password, as well as possibly criminal mischief as well as whatever stealing AC power is.
You couldn’t pay me to do a writeup like this, and I’d be wearing gloves the whole time.
Frank's guests just need to get the Doorking 16120 default key and start letting themselves in.
Edit: undergrad shenanigans from ten years ago:
Our university student-run electronics lab had an issue: technically anyone with a student card was allowed on premises at any given time, but the department only gave us a small set of keys that we had to share with the rest of the student associations. Obviously we needed a solution.
We did some snooping and found that the request-to-exit button wire was running on a cable tray alongside all the other wiring and plumbing, as the lab was in the basement. We picked a suitably dark, inconspicuous spot and wired up a Raspberry Pi driving a transistor and in turn a relay which we then wired in parallel with that button. Users could then connect to the local lab wifi and then SSH into the device. Login shell was replaced with a script that pulsed the GPIO line for half a second and subsequently caused the door to open.
We never got caught and apparently all the evidence was destroyed when the building was renovated a few years later.
The upside is that this is perfectly SOC2-compliant, as long as auditors don’t find out about the Raspberry.
Brilliant!
It's a little sad that, having realised that the simplest route for the hardware was the best, a simple route for communications wasn't explored. I suspect that cramming in a complex stack wasn't the best or quickest solution.
I ended up using https://eu.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-bot -- just have a finger robot push the button
I’m actually pretty surprised how bad the intercom ecosystem is these days.
Why aren’t there more ‘semi dumb’ Ethernet or wifi products that just let you announce that dinner is ready? It doesn’t need to be a fully ruggedised commercial system like this one or a fully integrated cloud managed solution like ring.
The cheap no name wireless ones can’t handle comms between rooms, let alone across a house.
The security implications aren’t insurmountable - you could use pairing codes if there are multiple on the network.
I’ve accepted that it’s a niche market, and that the only solution is to use Asterix with a some cheapo voip phones.
> Why aren’t there more ‘semi dumb’ Ethernet or wifi products that just let you announce that dinner is ready?
Because of 2 reasons
1) this is very antisocial behavior.
2) so many people have a mobile phone at arm's reach a majority of the time so there you have your intercom.
Well educated members of an household would know when dinner is ready because they would actually help make it ready for everyone. Occasionally one teenager could legitimately focus on homework but it is not actually a bad thing that someone has to move its ass and walk upstairs to knock at their door and tell them. We call that free exercise, much cheaper than a fitness subscription.
When I hear about home assistant and domotic in general, the only image that comes to me is those scenes in Wall-E where people live in a flying armchair with a holo screen in front of their face 24/7, their only interaction with a physical world being to only move their arms once in a while to grab a soda.
When I was a kid I remember a house we rented for a while came with intercom using the electrical lines. Past the initial novelty, they mostly collected dust and ended up being unplugged.
Apple's HomePod Mini and Google Home and Alexa all support intercom modes. I'd presume they typically handle the home case for the majority of folks.
HomePod Mini is a waste of money, unless you like screaming at your dumb robot that never understands what you want it to do
Setting timers works well though
They're nice little speakers that also do well when controlling things through Apple Home, setting alarms, timers, reminders etc.
I'd love to know the % of Alexa Dots (whatever the small ones are called now) that are used for anything more than this.
We have Google Home Minis in every room and the screens in bedroom and kitchen and the only thing that works reliably to message intra-room is to say "Hey Google, broadcast message" because half of the time it will tell me it can't send messages yet. If someone knows what I'm doing wrong I'd love to hear it since this would be a great feature.
To be honest, I'm honestly sick of Google Home's approach to this since the Gemini update has turned everything really slow and I'm getting close to the point where I'd rather home-roll a full system myself that works reliably instead of the crapshoot that this is. Home Assistant seems to have a functionality bridge to Google Home connected devices like my blinds or cameras so I should be able to retain the edge devices but I have half a mind to just dump the whole thing and start over.
There's Butterfly and another company I can't remember and undoubtedly more, that have expensive systems for large complexes, so the niche is the small buildings that don't have a ton of money. Maybe the softwarepocalypse can help with that.
Everything involving audio is an annoying mess.
The first step is getting speakers in a room: there are tons of products that do this, apple, google, Sonos.
Most of them have the audio quality of a bag of instruments.
There are tons of class D amps that you can hook up to speakers: Wiim, acrylic and so on... this will run you anywhere from 100 bucks to 500 and thats before you buy the speakers. Most of these will be great for playing music and projecting your voice.
The moment you involve a TV... well things get ugly because your going to want arc for HDMI and your going to want a center channel cause with out it your likely in subtitle hell half the time. This will get expensive a Sonos sound bar is a few hundred and if you want something better well... Let's say you can get to the point of making a GPU look affordable real quick.
Now that you can play audio, how do you hear it... well your phone works and there are tons of satellites out there.
You're now going to need to run home assistant to "interrupt" what ever is playing (if something is) to play your message and then return what ever it was to its current state.
After trying out WIIM, Acrylic, some high end stereo gear I just settled on half assed audio quality and bought more Sonos gear. I kept a single WIIM unit, cheap amp, decent speakers and a sub around for when I want to really listen to music but other than that I tolerate sonos' middling quality for day to day use (and I am, by no means an audiophile).
*Asterisk
Of course it had to mention Claude and Rust haha.
That aside, I enjoyed this read and it's such a niche thing that there is almost no way they'll step on the toes of another resident wanting to do the same thing
I had the same problem and I've searched for ready made solutions for over an year before I found a guy that reverse-engineers and builds ready-made boards to install in my intercom for less than 30 euro.
I'm unsure if I should post the link or not as it's specific to Romania, but I love how janky the buids are: https://www.olx.ro/d/oferta/automatizare-interfon-electra-cu...
I use a Ring Intercom Audio for a similar use. Works surprisingly well, I wish someone would clone the hardware and make an open version so Jeff didn't listen in every time someone rings my doorbell or buzz himself in whenever he wants.
No native apple home - homebridge handles that.
I did similar in my apartment in Amsterdam but a little more low-tech. I soldered the relay on an Esp8266 directly to the unlock button on the intercom PCB in my apartment. Worked flawlessly for years
Was always wanting to do something like this before they swapped ours out for a SaaS+hardware butterfly mx thing.
Those Doorkings have had to get replaced at so many buildings in Seattle now that criminals figured out how easy they were to override.
Fun. I did this recently with mine. There's now a discreet USB cable running down from behind it...
Related, I'm still upset at the lies told by landlords regarding phone number privacy in buzz-in intercoms. I've been told multiple times at multiple apartment buildings, "don't worry, while the system will call your phone when someone taps your entry code, your phone number won't be revealed". And then you sign the lease, get a delivery from Instacart in your new place, and find that your 'private' number is blasted out loud, heard a whole city block away, in a loud-ass DTMF tone sequence.
BS.
Confessing to felonies, in writing, under one’s real name is wild.
Here’s hoping nobody decides to bother them about this. I’m not a lawyer but this appears to this layperson at the very least a CFAA violation by accessing the router and resetting its root password, as well as possibly criminal mischief as well as whatever stealing AC power is.
You couldn’t pay me to do a writeup like this, and I’d be wearing gloves the whole time.
How is it stealing power if the power is exclusively used for restoring a service or system that the tenant is paying for?
It's a repair from where I'm sitting. A really cheap one too.