[HN Gopher] Box of Secrets: Discreetly modding an apartment inte...
___________________________________________________________________
Box of Secrets: Discreetly modding an apartment intercom to work
with Apple Home
Author : jackhogan11
Score : 254 points
Date : 2026-03-23 12:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jackhogan.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jackhogan.me)
| greggsy wrote:
| 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.
| fragmede wrote:
| 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.
| unsnap_biceps wrote:
| 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.
| arjie wrote:
| 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.
| mystraline wrote:
| If they're that bad performance (and terrible spy devices
| to boot) why haven't you removed them?
| pprotas wrote:
| 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
| samcolson42 wrote:
| 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.
| raesene9 wrote:
| +1 to this we had a set of HomePod minis for intercom and
| not only do they not work reliably, but the diagnostics
| provided when they fail are non-existent, making it hard to
| improve the setup.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| I have one for settings timers when cooking and playing
| music.
|
| Maybe I'm just not creative enough, but I don't see
| anything else I would want it to do.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Setting timers works well though
|
| This is Siri's primary use case, at least I assume so based
| on my experience.
|
| As long as the timer isn't for 50 minutes.
| mrloop wrote:
| Or between 13 and 19 which intermittently is interpreted
| as 30 or 40 etc. Maybe it's just my enunciation.
| jon-wood wrote:
| HomePod Mini is primarily a speaker you can AirPlay to
| which happens to have some basic voice control
| functionality. I'd really love them to be a bit more usable
| (in particular I want to be able to change the app it sends
| reminders to) but my experience has been that they're fine
| for music, timers, and basic smart home control.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > they're fine for music
|
| I guess my age is showing, but isn't it just a mono
| speaker? so much is lost in music without stereo imaging.
| it's one of the main eyebrow raising things to me about
| most bluetooth portable speakers. If you're mainly
| listening to podcasts or playing lullabyes to a kids
| room, sure, but we're adults here and personally I like
| listening to stereo way to much for these to be an
| option.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Definitely showing how deep down the Apple rabbit hole I
| am but I have a pair of them connected to my Apple TV
| which are the ones I use for music/TV/games. The single
| one in the kitchen really only gets used for podcasts and
| audio from the iPad I have for watching YouTube and
| trashy TV while cooking.
| dylan604 wrote:
| are you saying you have 2 pod minis that act as a stereo
| pair? what is that experience like?
| ornornor wrote:
| Even cheapo BT speakers can "team" together to make
| stereo. I think it comes standard in BT speaker SoCs and
| that's why they all do it.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Yup, its about as slick as you could ask for. They appear
| as a single device to anything connecting and then
| distribute the left/right channels between each other.
| I've also got the Apple TV set to use them as its default
| set of speakers, and that handles ARC over HDMI from the
| TV to send audio from anything else plugged in to them.
| greggsy wrote:
| Tried that. Hated it.
| adamesque wrote:
| At least on the HomePod side, intercom is at best a half-
| baked feature and at worst an infuriation machine. It uses a
| cumbersome voice trigger ("siri, tell <room>...") to begin
| recording audio, with no clear indication of when recording
| began and no way to know for sure that the audio was directed
| where you wanted it to go.
|
| To respond is similarly cumbersome and soon you give up
| completely. I can only assume it was designed by someone
| whose parents were killed in an intercom-related disaster and
| has sworn revenge.
|
| I bought a mini for my office with this purpose in mind, but
| it has been a total waste.
| lnx01 wrote:
| *Asterisk
| bombcar wrote:
| I had a surprisingly working intercom setup with Asterisk and
| some old Cisco phones set to auto-answer on speaker. But ...
| complicated setup and eventually it fell into disuse.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| 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).
| prmoustache wrote:
| > 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.
| greggsy wrote:
| It's not antisocial... at all?
|
| I'm genuinely confused why you would think that.
|
| > Well educated members of an household would know when
| dinner is ready because they would actually help make it
| ready for everyone.
|
| This is one of the most obnoxious things I have read all
| year.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Needing an app or tech device to announce to your spouse
| and children at home that dinner is ready is beyond
| antisocial, actually. It's ridiculously sad and pathetic.
|
| And then people will complain that children these days
| spend their time in front of a screen...
|
| I think @prmoustache is also referring to manners in
| general.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Maybe you live in a smaller space than I'm imagining, but
| if Dad's in the kitchen making dinner and other Dad is in
| the garage trying to figure out what he's going to need
| for the backpacking trip next weekend and the youngest
| kid is in the office with her headphones in listening to
| music while doing her homework and the eldest is upstairs
| chatting with his friends on Discord, then the options
| are
|
| A) scramble around the entire house going "dinner in 5
| minutes"
|
| B) yell the same, hope people hear it, and negatively
| affect your mood
|
| C) have some sort of system that lets everyone know with
| the tap of a button.
| prmoustache wrote:
| You might want to learn the concept of delegation. Kid in
| the office can tell their sibling who can then tell other
| dad.
|
| Additionally, cooking in group is a great moment to have
| a conversation, much more than the actual dinner where
| everybody is chewing.
| fragmede wrote:
| > Kid in the office can tell their sibling who can then
| tell other dad.
|
| The trope is mom tells the kid to tell dad dinner's
| ready, and kid just yells really loud to dad, while mom
| looks on with exasperation. Or was that just my
| childhood?
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Or was that just my childhood?
|
| I guess so, I wouldn't have done that as a kid, nor do my
| own kids do that or they would quickly lose privileges.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Cooking a family dinner together is a fun group activity,
| like a board game night. Which is great, say, one night a
| week. Feeding a family has to happen every night, where
| more can be done, faster, by a single person. And if you
| can't figure out how to eat and hold a conversation, you
| have failed at quite possibly the single oldest human
| activity.
|
| And the delegation approach defeats the entire purpose of
| the fore-warning, which is to allow people to wrap up
| whatever they were doing, out of respect for their time.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I think you are being needlessly argumentative and a
| little insulting, too, starting from your reply to my
| previous comment (with the quip about the size of my
| home...) and now this one to @prmoustache, which is quite
| uncalled for
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Cooking a family dinner together is a fun group
| activity, like a board game night. Which is great, say,
| one night a week. Feeding a family has to happen every
| night, where more can be done, faster, by a single
| person.
|
| There is a limit where having more people won't really
| help but if one needs to peel some vegetables, press
| garlic, cut other vegetables, prep and season some meat,
| clean necessary hardwares and surfaces, one person will
| never be faster alone with only 2 hands available.
|
| Besides it is not only a fun group activity but a good
| teaching moment as well for kids / teenagers, especially
| if you want them to develop healthy and cost effective
| habits instead relying on buying preprocessed food most
| of their life.
|
| > out of respect for their time.
|
| What kind of castle do your typical family live that it
| takes hours to reach to other people? We are talking
| seconds literally even if you have to reach someone in
| the barn at the extreme end of a typical garden. I am not
| talking about the royalty here.
| stavros wrote:
| The Home Assistant Voice will let you do whatever. I wrote a
| small server that accepts the audio and plays audio back, but
| you can also send audio whenever you want. They're very nice
| little devices.
| jeffwilcox wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Naming the product "dorkings" was certainly a choice.
| FlorinSays wrote:
| 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...
| close04 wrote:
| Some years ago I had an older analog intercom and added some
| intelligence for the open button, ignoring the audio part.
| Doing it with an ESP01 was trivial and I only needed access to
| my intercom box inside the apartment. The first issue I ran
| into was that no matter how much I optimized, the power
| consumption was _high_ and made the thing semi-useless. Then I
| got smarter and powered it from the 24V lines coming from the
| intercom system. That worked great until I realized that where
| I live this counts as stealing electricity so I scratched that,
| why take the chance that the building administrator notices
| something and I get burned.
|
| Eventually I got a Nuki Opener which works with all kinds of
| intercoms and is way less effort. Janky builds are awesome but
| better for the playground than as a solution you really want to
| be reliable for the whole family.
|
| P.S. The code from the article should be linked more
| prominently [0], for anyone who wants to tinker.
|
| [0] https://github.com/ImTheSquid/doorbell2
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I don't understand how the Nuki Opener works. You still need
| to open your intercom and solder, right?
| close04 wrote:
| Most intercoms I've seen don't need any soldering, you'll
| usually hook into the existing screw terminals of the
| intercom unit inside your apartment. The Nuki software
| comes with wiring "recipes" for many popular intercom
| models and tells you what to hook where. Sometimes your
| model isn't recognized so you have to get creative, but
| nothing crazy. Analog intercoms are easy, at worst you hook
| in just the wires that trigger the "button push", maybe
| even the one that detects when the intercom rings and gives
| you a notification.
|
| But it also supports more complicated setups like digital
| intercoms where it will hook on the bus and learn the
| various codes that are sent for different operations, or
| enable the voice function through the phone app.
|
| The biggest benefit is that if your intercom is compatible,
| it just works. It's the convenience, not that you can't get
| the same with a janky solution with enough elbow grease. No
| need to tinker with the firmware, the batteries last
| forever, and even in the most basic setup you'll have a few
| more advanced features.
| FlorinSays wrote:
| > Janky builds are awesome but better for the playground than
| as a solution you really want to be reliable for the whole
| family.
|
| I have it configured with a delayed opening so that it's not
| obvious, it doesn't require an app, and by the time you reach
| the door, the guest is almost there.
|
| When I'm done with it, I flip the switch. It's hard to have
| it more reliable than this for me.
|
| I've been considering smarter iterations for myself, but I
| didn't find enough time to fix something that is working
| really well.
| wzdd wrote:
| Fun. I did this recently with mine. There's now a discreet USB
| cable running down from behind it...
| cryptoz wrote:
| 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.
| anilakar wrote:
| 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.
| nunez wrote:
| Brilliant!
| eastbound wrote:
| The upside is that this is perfectly SOC2-compliant, as long as
| auditors don't find out about the Raspberry.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| What Raspberry? I don't see any Raspberry.
| ChiefTinkeer wrote:
| ...and if your compliance provider is Delve then you don't
| even need to worry about that!
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| A whole ass pi just for that?!
| nkrisc wrote:
| What would you have used ten years ago?
| anilakar wrote:
| We had to come up with something wireless for authentication
| as we did not want to install anything visible like RFID
| readers. We also had a few Pis lying around.
| sneak wrote:
| 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.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| How is it stealing power if the power is exclusively used for
| restoring a service or system that the tenant is paying for?
| hparadiz wrote:
| It's a repair from where I'm sitting. A really cheap one too.
| vntok wrote:
| Does the system work for other tenants? No? Then it's not a
| repair, just a backdoor.
| qaadika wrote:
| I felt myself starting to sweat as I read. I can't imagine
| doing this at my apartment complex, let alone at someone
| else's. Messing with building controls (old or unused as they
| may be) sounds like a great way to get your lease nixed and
| your ass out the door quicker than a lawyer can say "Yeah, I
| can't help you here, they're well within their rights to evict
| you for that."
|
| I was hoping they'd mention something about the legality (or
| lack thereof), but I guess that's an exercise left to the
| reader who wants to try this out at their own apartment.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > sounds like a great way to get your lease nixed and your
| ass out the door quicker than a lawyer can say "Yeah, I can't
| help you here, they're well within their rights to evict you
| for that."
|
| For repairing a broken thing? After provably trying in vain
| to get the landlord to fix it?
| qaadika wrote:
| Well he didn't "fix" it, he hacked it to work for one
| tenant. And to allow said tenant's non-tenant's friends
| free access into the building. "fixing it" would be
| restoring the voice call ability to its original function.
| Not modding it for one random tenant's Apple Home setup.
|
| And it's definitely possible to get in trouble for "fixing"
| something if you're not authorized to fix it.
|
| I would call this "bypassing building controls to allow
| unauthorized access to the building." Frank has access to
| the building through the allowed means per his lease, not
| through any means. If his lease is like mine there's a
| whole page to initial about being granted access through
| the gates or pool or whatever with only the complex-
| assigned keys and RFID tags.
|
| (I presume Frank lives in the US, and his state's tenancy
| laws similar to mine apply.)
| st_goliath wrote:
| > For repairing a broken thing? After provably trying in
| vain to get the landlord to fix it?
|
| Down the hallway from my office used to be the management
| of a small hotel chain. We often had lunch together and I
| got to hear a bunch of interesting anecdotes over the
| years.
|
| Way back when they started up and didn't yet have enough
| cash to actually _own_ the buildings they operated in, they
| rented. One of the buildings turned out to have numerous
| issues (holes in the roof, gaps near exterior walls,
| etc...). To the point that they eventually didn 't pass a
| fire inspection. They _repeatedly_ asked the owner to have
| it fixed. Pressed for time, they themselves eventually
| payed someone, out of their own pocket, so it would at
| least be up to code for the fire inspection.
|
| From what I was told, the owner threw a tantrum over them
| modifying the building, terminated the contract and sued
| them. _Successfully_.
|
| If you are a tenant in a rental apartment, you'd probably
| have more leniency on the legal side (compared to a company
| renting a business property). But still, I'd be very
| careful making any assumptions about the legal situation
| rather than risking some sort of Kafkaesque legal mess.
|
| Over here at least, it is very common in apartment
| complexes that the apartment owner is a different
| person/entity than the building owner and only the later
| has the rights to mess with stuff installed in the walls
| (e.g. plumbing) and especially stuff elsewhere in the
| building (e.g. an external intercom system). If you ask the
| landlord to fix it, the best they could do is forward that
| request to the building owner. If you pulled a stunt like
| the OP did, there's a good chance that the building owner
| will sue your landlord.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > the owner threw a tantrum over them modifying the
| building, terminated the contract and sued them.
| Successfully.
|
| Was the unauthorized modification permanent or undoable?
| If the latter, I think some people should really get
| their judge card (or landlord card) revoked.
|
| Did the judge at least suggest what alternative action
| the tenant should have taken to comply with the law and
| code?
| drabbiticus wrote:
| Most likely the (legally) correct thing to do in the US
| is to first report the landlord to the relevant agency,
| possibly named something like Licensing and Inspections
| or Fair Housing or somesuch. Each local jurisdiction will
| have it's own agencies for this, so do research. Failure
| to respond to that would next involve a landlord-tenant
| lawyer.
|
| Whether or not it's worth all the trouble and time is a
| different matter. For most people, I'd say reporting to
| relevant authorities to make the landlord's life harder
| without needing much continuing effort is probably worth
| doing, but the lawsuit side is likely to be a huge time
| and money sink and it's almost always easier to just
| move. Let the city sue them for continuing to accrue
| complaints of unsafe living conditions.
|
| In the same way, a landlord cannot evict you themself if
| you just fail to pay rent, but there are multiple legal
| mechanisms to eventually get the sheriff to do it for
| them. Basically, if landlord-tenant negotiation fails, I
| think the only legal recourse is to involve governmental
| third parties unless you technically open yourself up to
| legal reprisal.
| quesera wrote:
| In the US states that I know well, a residential tenant
| may perform necessary repairs to bring the space up to
| health and safety codes, and may deduct the cost from
| their rent. They have an obligation to notify the
| property manager, in advance in the case of non-emergency
| repairs, or after the fact otherwise. There are
| additional details to consider as well.
|
| I don't know if this would apply to a commercial tenant.
|
| But it would definitely not apply to non-violating
| conditions like the OP's case.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| Meh. Plenty of landlords suck, if anything his only mistake was
| not making it available to others in the same building.
|
| The last apartment I rented (London) I never even met my shitty
| landlord hiding all the way up in Scotland. Randomly one day
| after getting home from a long day at work, my fob wouldn't let
| me in at the front door. Message the landlord ("SMS only, no
| calls") and it turns out that he'd got another copy made in
| case he needed it - when he got this copy made, the security
| company disabled the current fob (my one).
|
| Initially he was going to make me wait until a new fob could be
| sorted out. After much anger and aggression I got his fob sent
| down to me in the post. Was still not able to access my home
| for several days and had to emergency crash with some friends.
|
| Didn't get a discount on the rent and the fucker came up with
| every excuse under the sun to take my security deposit upon
| moving out as well.
| blitzar wrote:
| 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.
| sharklasers123 wrote:
| 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
| dwedge wrote:
| 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
| dosinga wrote:
| I ended up using https://eu.switch-bot.com/products/switchbot-bot
| -- just have a finger robot push the button
| foota wrote:
| Hah, I did the same exact thing and came here to say that :) I
| was looking at wiring diagrams and telling myself I could wire
| up some arduino circuits for it but gave up when when I
| realized I could just press the button!
|
| edit: although mine was an ancient system from the early 90s.
| It was just replaced with a modern system a couple months ago.
| At my previous apartment I had wanted to set up a system that
| would allow either my then partner or I to activate the callbox
| and have it set for a VOIP number since we could only put one
| number on the box.
| beardyw wrote:
| 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.
| xmlninja wrote:
| Great, the esp32 will probably never be discovered. Because when
| the landlord decides to fix the original problem, the whole unit
| will probably be replaced.
| robjampar wrote:
| I have a similar Apple HomeKit integration to my apartment door
| system in a much simpler way;
|
| When you buzz the apartment from the intercom it connects to a
| dedicated landline phone, That landline is setup to automatically
| go straight to voicemail, and then the voicemail message is just
| a recording of the tone required to open the door.
|
| Then I have a smart power socket that the landline phone gets its
| power from - which I can toggle in the home app.
|
| So if you turn on the power socket and dial the apartment code at
| the entrance, it buzzes you straight in. Or turn the power socket
| off and it doesn't.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's pretty cool! If it were me, though, I'd be afraid that
| I'd forget to turn the socket off after using it.
|
| I guess I'd also set it up so right after the voicemail message
| runs and lets someone in, it would turn the socket off.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This is cool.
|
| But it wouldn't work for OP, whose door intercom can no longer
| make phone calls.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| I do something similar with voip.ms (hosted Asterisk).
|
| The intercom calls my voip number, which can be set two ways:
| 1) play DTMF tone 9 to let the person in, then hang up (which
| is a security risk if random folks at the intercom buzzed me up
| trying to get in.
|
| Or 2) plays audio "enter passcode", then:
|
| - if the visitor enters the code that I told them, it plays
| DTMF 9 to let them in
|
| - if the code is incorrect, plays "incorrect passcode" and
| hangs up
|
| It also sends an email and SMS whenever someone triggers the
| intercom so I know about it. With passcodes, I can even set up
| multiple passcodes to give out to various people (like Amazon,
| friends) and my notification will display which code was used.
| jojobas wrote:
| Backdooring common property with questionable technology? Sad.
| matsemann wrote:
| This reminds me of another annoyance I have. We have a wall
| mounted thermostat using batteries at the cabin. It controls how
| much water is let through from the central heating to the floors
| by sending some radio signal. I would like to be able to control
| this remotely, for instance to turn on heating a day before
| arrival. But the only way to do this is to buy a new unit
| connected to the pipes as well and upgrade the whole thing, which
| was quoted like $2k++ and need their app and their subscription.
| But why can't something just mimic the radio signals? That
| already works today! Why do I have to rebuild the whole heating
| setup for this? So stupid when technology locks you in without
| need.
|
| I'm tempted to have a remote controlled screw driver that can
| twist the knob remotely or something.
| kapep wrote:
| Take a look at SwitchBot. They have a device that can tap
| buttons to solve these kinds of problems. They also have a
| device for tilting blinds by twisting the rod, which could
| maybe be modified to twist a knob.
| gib444 wrote:
| I know some cabins are quite remote but do you have a trusted
| neighbour who would do it for a case of beer?
|
| My mum's neighbours buy milk and bread and turn the heating on!
| I don't quite trust my own neighbour to do that but it's
| awesome for her
| matsemann wrote:
| I like your approach, it's one I try to use at work as well.
| Not every problem is a tech problem, many things can be fixed
| by just talking to humans or changing the process.
|
| In my case the cabin is actually in the town where I grew up,
| and used as a way to be closer to home and family without
| overstaying my welcome and also be a bit more free when here
| (heh). So I do have family that now helps with this, it was
| mostly in a "can I pay a little not inconvenience them". I
| arrived here sunday with the heat on and some easter eggs and
| bunnies on the table put there by my mother, so it's not all
| bad. :)
| gib444 wrote:
| > Not every problem is a tech problem, many things can be
| fixed by just talking to humans or changing the process.
|
| Absolutely!
|
| > I arrived here sunday with the heat on and some easter
| eggs and bunnies on the table put there by my mother, so
| it's not all bad. :)
|
| Awww! That's very nice of your Mum! :)
| ffsm8 wrote:
| There are often controllers which do indeed just mimic the
| signals. Doesn't work with every appliance, it depends on the
| way it's implement and if the manufacturer wanted to make that
| approach infeasible.
|
| But there absolutely are options to record such Signals and
| then replicate them via home assistant - I used them before to
| control a ceiling fan and various infrared devices (same idea,
| but not a radio there instead a "blaster" - I think it was
| called)
|
| I didn't set it up again after my last move though, as I
| couldn't mount the ceiling fan in this apartment and the
| Infrared devices were just my media center (tv, audio), which
| are hardly in use currently
| bombcar wrote:
| The key with all furnace/heating/cooling automations is to
| start at the source of heat - figure out what IT needs to do
| what it wants, and work from there.
|
| They're almost always incredibly simple at the furnace/boiler -
| you just need to make sure that you never turn the heat on
| without the pump/blower or whatever is required.
|
| My complicated Eco controller ends up with three outputs:
| blower on, heat on, cooling on. Three wires.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| If it's actually using radio, almost certainly there is a radio
| receiver unit at your furnace which converts the radio commands
| to simple voltages on physical wires, likely to power a 24v
| solenoid. All you need to do is hook in a esp32 or similar to
| also send those voltages when it receives a command.
| peralta wrote:
| For some European intercoms, there is Doorman [0]. Their authors
| reversed engineered the protocol used by Koch and built an ESP32
| + Home Assistant solution that works quite nicely (including
| board). The "party mode" [1] was a life saver for me when doing
| events on the rooftop.
|
| [0] https://doorman.azon.ai/ [1]
| https://doorman.azon.ai/guide/features/ring-to-open
| secure wrote:
| I built something similar!
| https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2021-03-13-smart-interco...
|
| > I bought the cheapest compatible BTicino intercom device (BT
| 344232 for 32 EUR) that I could find on eBay, then soldered in 4
| wires and added microcontrollers to make it smart. It now
| connects to my Nuki Opener Smart Intercom IOT device, and to my
| local MQTT Pub/Sub bus (why not?).
| mememememememo wrote:
| Tldr: he found the wire to the solenoid. Cool stuff. Do the easy
| thing! The rabbit hole avoidance was impressive. Like an escape
| room of sorts. Questionable legality notwithstanding.
| bdeol22 wrote:
| This is a good way to breathe new life into existing tech for
| your smart home ecosystem. My setup mainly consists of Philips
| Hue lights at the moment, which. I have hooked up using Openclaw,
| I'd love to add more smart functionality and like an intercom,
| thermostat and digital lock, but the current devices are stuck in
| the past, so cant do much at the moment.
| rsafaya wrote:
| What are your thoughts on OC security?
| randallsquared wrote:
| Part of the plan: Write firmware for an unfamiliar
| microcontroller. Also part of the plan: Don't spend the entire
| vacation...
|
| I love the future so far.
| detourdog wrote:
| When I was shopping for an intercom system for my 8 unit building
| I purposely went for the dumbest system I could find. I wanted it
| as a foundation and isolated from the rest of the world. I also
| wanted no cameras.
|
| Here is the installation documentation I have the 4-wire system.
| I installed it using Cat-5 and standard 548B wiring layout. The
| rest of the electronic door locks uses the Identiv Liberty key
| fob system. This was the only system I could find that allowed
| self-hosting.
|
| I wouldn't mind another layer of integration that would add
| smartphone access control. The way the 2 systems are currently
| deployed I could ignore the TekTone side and just integrate the
| key fobs with the smartphones. I think this might already be
| possible be possible as the key fob readers already react to the
| NFC radios on my smartphone.
|
| https://www.tektone.com/pdf_files/manuals/IL826_PK543A_insta...
| massimoto wrote:
| Legally and ethically extremely dubious, hooked up to the box in
| your apartment, I can understand it. Hooked to the shared door
| controller, handing out access "keys" to all your friends, not
| great. You seem to know this based on all your attempts to avoid
| discovery.
| netsharc wrote:
| This place is "Hacker" in name, but not in spirit...
| natpalmer1776 wrote:
| A lot of us grew up and realized that while we avoided many
| of the consequences of our actions, some of our peers did
| not. Thus the caution (and concern for other uninvolved
| parties)
|
| Personally, I'm of the opinion that this kind of thing should
| be done by those who understand the risks and accept them
| regardless. It's fun and interesting, and in the real world
| it will _almost_ certainly never be an issue.
| pesus wrote:
| There has always been ethical and unethical hacking (and
| shades of gray in between).
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It's unethical to increase the risk profile of unaware third
| parties because you're a hacker.
|
| I'd be fine installing this in my own house, but it shouldn't
| go in a shared space.
|
| in fact, I've done something similar, wiring my unifi door
| bell to be able to unlock my matter-enabled deadbolt via an
| esp32 in the wall.
| neilv wrote:
| That and more, IIUC. They've:
|
| * Given access to more people or other ways.
|
| * Bypassed any logging that might be used during crime
| investigation.
|
| * May have increased the likelihood of the system failing.
|
| * (more theoretical) Increased the attack surface, and invited
| more crimes of digital opportunity.
|
| So they may be partly or wholly responsible for some bad things
| that happen.
|
| And also may be held responsible by others, with criminal and
| civil liability.
|
| > _[...] so if you're in the same position as Frank, give it a
| try!_
|
| Don't, if you're in the same position (i.e., sneakily doing it
| to landlord's access control box, which is relied upon by
| multiple other neighbors).
|
| But if you're in some _different_ position -- such as it 's
| your own property, and there's some kind of informed consent of
| all legitimate parties affected -- then kludging the system, by
| splicing a solenoid wire, _might_ be good and appropriate.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| I totally agree provided Frank lives in some maximum-security
| apartment complex with armed guards. Otherwise I think you'd
| making a big deal out of nothing.
|
| Anyone can get into a complex by following someone else in.
|
| Or, in this case, just power the solenoid wire that is _already
| outside_ as the OP did.
| 4fterd4rk wrote:
| Meanwhile out here in the real world no one gives two shits and
| if it was ever discovered a simple "what? I have no idea what
| you're talking about." would provide all the cover needed.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| My mom's condo building hasn't had a working buzzer in forever,
| so she has to go downstairs every time there's a delivery. I've
| been tempted to do this, but am highly discouraged by the
| presence of video cameras. I don't particularly want to catch a
| charge to save my mom a trip in the elevator.
| netsharc wrote:
| Wear a high-vis vest or one with the company branding? By the
| time they figure something out it's probably beyond the 24-hour
| recording retention period...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I appreciate you helping me commit a crime, but I'm going to
| go on record saying that I'm not going to risk it :)
| Egonex wrote:
| This is a very interesting project. Protocol choice on
| constrained hardware like this is always underestimated, most
| people default to JSON over HTTP, but on devices with limited MTU
| or battery constraints the overhead adds up really fast.
|
| We have seen similar trade-offs working on binary encoding for
| our alerting systems; even a few hundred bytes difference per
| message changes what's feasible over BLE or LoRa. What protocol
| the intercom uses natively and how much of the HomeKit overhead
| is format vs transport?
| thedanbob wrote:
| > While it is theoretically possible that the relays could fail
| on through some sort of physical failure, this is so unlikely
| that we did not design for it.
|
| Anecdotally, I've had a relay fail on when I inadvertently pulled
| more amps through it than it was rated for, so it's definitely
| possible.
| Animats wrote:
| The relay they're using is quite likely to fail. It's a no-
| brand imitation of a relay where the real one is only rated for
| 10^5 cycles driving an inductive load.[1] Also, they needed a
| DPDT relay, which they are emulating using two SPDT relays
| operated together. If the software ever operates only one of
| them, the door will remain locked regardless of what the
| entryphone box does. Also, no fuse or snubbing. There's a whole
| industry of really crappy control relays from China, especially
| on the solid state relay side.
|
| A useful device to know about is the Relay In A Box line.[2]
| This is exactly what it says - a relay in a box, for when you
| need to switch power with a low-voltage control signal. UL and
| CE approvals, fits standard electrical conduit fittings, and
| will pass code inspection. Rated for 10 million cycles. Boring,
| but useful.
|
| [1] https://www.alldatasheet.com/html-
| pdf/1132639/SONGLERELAY/SR...
|
| [2] https://www.functionaldevices.com/category/building-
| automati...
| alfanick wrote:
| This looks like a very guest-hostile intercom, I would just stare
| at it and read instructions, then read them again, then think why
| is it A and Z and not up and down... And also why I cannot just
| enter the number. At some point I would give up and just take out
| my phone and call the friend "hey, can you buzz me in? I'm in
| front of the door".
| spankalee wrote:
| I did something a lot simpler than this to have some more
| control: I gave a Twilio number to the building manager for the
| door box, then had an app where I could give out codes to people.
| Valid codes responded with a "9" DTMF signal which opened the
| door, a "1" forwarded the call to my phone.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This is quite illegal. (More in some states than others) Just
| working on an access control system without a license is a crime
| in most states. It's actually a felony in North Carolina.
| kelnos wrote:
| Years ago I was renting a condo in a building with a bit of an
| older system; on the outside there were a series of buttons, each
| hard-wired to each of the condo units, where the units had a
| phone handset on the wall, with a button on the base to open the
| front door. Just three wires, IIRC.
|
| I only had one key to the main door, which was annoying when I
| had guests who were staying a few days. It finally got annoying
| enough once I had a steady girlfriend who was more or less
| unofficially living with me. So I opened up the handset base,
| figured out the voltage on the wire for opening the door, and got
| a Raspberry Pi and a relay rated for the voltage I needed. I
| connected the relay's control pin to a GPIO on the Pi, and wrote
| a little python HTTP server that would enable the GPIO pin, and
| fire off a thread to turn it back off after a few seconds.
|
| I was working at Twilio at the time, so I figured the easiest
| trigger would be SMS. I set up a phone number, and the backend
| logic for it had a list of sender phone numbers and 6-digit
| codes. That way I could only allow certain people's phones to
| trigger, and on top of that, it required a code, unique to each
| visitor I was allowing. It would also send a text to me every
| time someone used it, so I could monitor things to ensure nothing
| odd was happening.
|
| I already had a small home automation system running using
| openHAB, with remote access set up on a VPS I rented, so it
| wasn't hard to hook all that together, in a way that the callback
| handler from Twilio could reach back into the home.
|
| I didn't have a great way to mount it, and didn't want to mess up
| the wall. The Pi and relay were light enough that I ended up just
| hanging it from the wires connecting to from the relay to the
| handset base. Fortunately there was an electrical socket almost
| directly below the handset so I could plug in the Pi. (I forgot
| about it when my landlady had to come over due to a water leak;
| surprisingly she didn't even comment on it.)
|
| My one worry was that the little python HTTP server would crash
| between closing the relay and then opening it up again after a
| few seconds, leaving the door persistently unlocked. But I used a
| default-open port on the relay, so if power went out, the relay
| would stay open, keeping the door locked. I also made sure that
| the little HTTP server would reset the GPIO to keep the relay
| open on startup, so if it crashed and restarted, it would ensure
| the door was locked. IIRC there was also something you could put
| in the Pi's /boot/config.txt to set GPIOs to a certain value on
| boot(?). And on top of that, I wrote another little python script
| that just sat there checking the GPIO every second, and if it
| remained on for more than a few seconds, it would close it. This
| was probably overkill, but I wanted to be as sure as possible I
| wouldn't be putting my neighbors into any kind of danger by
| perma-unlocking the front door.
|
| Something like an ESP32 would certainly have been smaller and
| lower-power (maybe could have even run it off battery), but at
| the time I hadn't even heard of ESP32 yet (that would come a few
| years later, when I was bored during the pandemic and needed a
| project).
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