

Ways to Solve the Wi-Fi Authentication Issue for Devices - jheitzeb
http://www.hackthings.com/solving-the-wifi-authentication-issue-for-devices/

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zokier
How about the standard solution, WPS. Depending on the method used, it does
not require any UI-parts from the device (PIN or NFC methods) or just a simple
push-button.

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killerpopiller
I thought wps still is vulnerably <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-
Fi_Protected_Setup>

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rogerbinns
Electric Imp seems like a great solution (flash setup data from a smartphone
to a light receiver on the device) but I wonder how they handle imposters. For
example they brag about a connected door lock. If I was a bad guy I would go
to the nearest window, and shine a bright light with the setup pattern through
it hopefully reconfiguring the lock.

If they make it too hard to reconfigure the lock then it will increase the
support load.

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jared314
I've had a half baked idea about this for a few years. The thermostat has a
terrible screen and is immobile, while my phone is the exact opposite. With
Bluetooth LE, and perhaps NFC, you could make a configuration/maintenance
interface that allowed for better setting management, using the phone as an
interface.

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polshaw
Very interested in this space; for a screenless device it seems to me that
'act as hotspot' and 'usb to pc' are the only real sensible options, although
they are not exactly ideal.

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arthulia
A hot-spot is a bad idea because most computers can't connect to two wifi
networks at once. That means any time you wanted to configure your thermostat,
you'd have to disconnect from the internet.

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georgemcbay
The article was a bit simplistic here, but I think the more fully fleshed out
idea is act-as-hotspot initially. When the device is first powered on or a
reset button is pressed, it acts as a hotspot to which you can connect a
webbrowser but on first connect to its configuration interface you are
prompted to configure the device to switch to connecting to your normal wifi
router so you can continue to hit it with a web browser, but over your normal
local network.

IMO, this is actually the best way (in terms of overall simplicity, no need
for extra hardware, etc) to handle the situation in practice.

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arthulia
Oh, duh. I thought about that a little while after I made the comment.

It still seems like it would be a bit fidgety to set up unless the device
itself had two wireless cards. If you give it the credentials to your home
network but give it the wrong passphrase, it will still have to disconnect
from your laptop, attempt to connect to the network, fail, and then start its
own wifi network back up to tell you that it failed.

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tyilo
The link is 404 for me.

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alexlitov
works fine

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tyilo
Nope: <http://i.imgur.com/Heg3g8e.png>

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jheitzeb
Can you try again and tell me what you see as the copyright statement in the
footer? i.e. this: <http://cl.ly/image/2I0a16260X0v> what do YOU see? (it will
tell me which server your hitting) - thanks!

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jheitzeb
Nevermind -- figured it out. We changed servers yesterday and the DNS hasn't
propagated over for everyone yet.

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oliao
what about speech recognition?

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jheitzeb
yeah, as the cost of hardware components continues to fall this will be an
option (just add a mic, speaker and use the CPU already in there = pretty
cheap)

