
Invisible ripples in wireless spectrum tell Aura if someone’s in your house - rhschan
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/aura-cognitive-systems-home-security-wireless-spectrum-1.4086660
======
nkozyra
For something like this, the margins for acceptable false positives and true
negatives are basically nil. There aren't too many things in this field that
have 100% accuracy, and it would have to be very close to be a reliable
product.

I couldn't find any details on the tested rates or other technical details on
the Aura site, which is expectedly very markety:
[https://www.aurahome.com/](https://www.aurahome.com/)

If this thing wakes me up one time to tell me an unexpected person is in the
house and it's a false positive, it's now essentially no better than a $30
motion detector I can get at Home Depot.

~~~
craftkiller
I'd also be concerned about people jamming this from their car, a
vulnerability that a $30 motion detector from home depot wouldn't have. Either
jamming sets off the alarm which opens it up for nightly abuse until you throw
it out, or it doesn't set off the alarm and then your house is vulnerable.

~~~
smt88
Home breakins are crimes of convenience. You're either very rich or very
powerful for someone to go to even those lengths to burgle you.

~~~
Anderkent
Are you sure? I think it was a common theme in Poland that the burglars would
stake out an area in summer, looking for people leaving for holidays, and
break in when they know it's likely to be empty for a couple days.

So they're not targeting anyone in particular at first, but it's still not
really a crime of convenience the way a mugging or bike theft might be.

~~~
huehehue
This is also basically the plot to Home Alone

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kinkrtyavimoodh
My nightmare scenario, as mentioned by another commenter, is of being present
in the house when the burglar comes. I don't know what I would do or want in
that case. Sometimes, when I am awakened at night by some sound, I have often
wondered what I'd do if I do in fact find an intruder in the house.

As someone who does not own a gun and would probably not last long in hand to
hand combat with an unarmed person, let alone someone with a knife or gun, I
almost wish that I am NOT awakened from my sleep so that the situation ideally
does not escalate into anything that can put me in physical danger. At worst,
I lose some valuables.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Edit: Lots of helpful replies here. Thanks everyone!]

~~~
smt88
If you value your safety, don't buy a gun.

Owning a gun makes the people in your household statistically more likely to
be killed both inside and outside the household[1].

It also makes you more likely to murder an innocent person or have the gun
used against a family member[2].

1\. [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-guns-in-home-increase-
suic...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-guns-in-home-increase-suicide-
homicide-risk/)

2\. [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-
gun...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-
ownership-myth-114262)

~~~
posixplz
Why make such blanket statements and logically loose arguments? You might as
well advise the commenter to refrain from buying knives and baseball bats,
too. Because, statistically, you're _much_ more likely to be killed with a
knife or a baseball bat in the commission of a crime.

A gun is a tool with a high(er) degree of lethality. Just like any other tool
in the house, if one is not trained and practiced in its use, one is far more
likely to make an error when using it in an emergency situation.

If you want to make blanket advice statements, at least qualify them. The
responsible thing to say, in this situation, is, "Please don't buy a gun
_without undergoing proper training_." Guns are a force multiplier/equalizer
and we live in a society where guns are easily obtained by criminals. Telling
law abiding citizens to strictly avoid force-multipliers like firearms, in our
society, benefits the criminals and anti-gun lobby -- but it doesn't benefit
the person to whom you've replied.

In fact, you've only perpetuated the cycle of fear by trying to instill more
fear in your argument to avoid guns (lest they kill a family member, murder an
innocent person or be shot with the firearm).

~~~
smt88
I gave sources. You're making an argument that isn't supported by data.
There's an excellent overview of the data on the Science Vs. podcast[1], which
you'd probably find interesting. It explains why arguments like yours may
apply to a few people, but not to the vast majority.

While it's true that training makes you less likely to be killed by a firearm,
it has no effect on suicides of family members, someone stealing the gun and
using it, someone in the family using it improperly, etc.

> _you 've only perpetuated the cycle of fear by trying to instill more fear_

That was exactly my intention. Guns are dangerous. People should be afraid of
them.

1\.
[https://gimletmedia.com/episode/guns/](https://gimletmedia.com/episode/guns/)

~~~
hueving
>Guns are dangerous. People should be afraid of them.

What a stupid conclusion. Jet engines are dangerous as well, but we don't
perpetuate fear of them. We just train people to be safe around them.

~~~
abandonliberty
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g.
"That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
hueving
Thank you, I'm quite new to this site and have not yet learned the appropriate
way to respond to political shit.

------
ChuckMcM
Its too bad they can't simply re-use your existing Wifi access point to
provide the source energy. That would at least keep from raising the noise
floor on the energy level.

When the MIT report came out about using WiFi to "see through walls"[1] in
2013 it seemed like you could use this for motion detection.

[1]
[http://www.mit.edu/~fadel/papers/Fadel_MS.pdf](http://www.mit.edu/~fadel/papers/Fadel_MS.pdf)

------
heywire
This reminds me of another home security product called Cocoon, which uses
sound instead of RF.

Side note: if you have a smart home security system that you're actually happy
with, I'd like to hear about it. I've been doing research, and it seems almost
nobody is happy with the current offerings. It is either equipment problems,
or long, expensive contracts.

~~~
jtraffic
I sold security systems in 2008, door to door. (Icky, I know.) I had a long
time to think about it, every day, and during pitches.

I soon stopped, because I think they aren't worth it (which made me the
world's worst salesperson. I remember near the end talking one old woman out
of it.) The first important thing is that they won't prevent the nightmare
encounter where a thief enters the house when you're there. Second, police are
too swamped to have ever reacted in time to catch the thief. To my knowledge,
it has never, ever happened.

There _is_ a possible benefit that it may truncate the time in the house. To
me this is not a big issue, I suspect most competent thieves are efficient
with time.

Finally, there is an unobservable deterrence effect, but that is easily
obtained by faking the appearance of a system without needing to enter a
contract and pay monitoring fees. The most useless thing about security
systems, the monitoring, is the only thing that costs serious money.

The final benefit is life-alert style stuff, but there are better solutions
for that.

On the other hand, there is a massive placebo effect, a sense of safety that
the monitoring provides. I suppose that is what people pay for.

~~~
EGreg
I have a question.

I would LOVE to have a security system that automatically locks doors inside
the house and fills the room with a thick fog. There are fog machines that
work faster than the ones in the club. Hard to find a way out of the room in
that case. And hard to find and assault anyone, or steal things, with a thick
fog.

Humane - can't get sued for leaving lasting damage - and also

As a fallback, I'd remoty enable use of really unpleasant sound or pepper
spray on the perp.

If I lived in a rural area, I would also want a drone to take off half a mile
away and film people coming to my house. That way I'd know who's coming and
have a record of it even if they thought they destroyed all the surveillance
video.

Thoughts? I believe these kinds of things would be far better for security
than what's currently on the market.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> If I lived in a rural area, I would also want a drone to take off half a
> mile away and film people coming to my house. That way I'd know who's coming
> and have a record of it even if they thought they destroyed all the
> surveillance video.

I use security cameras strapped to the top of very high trees on my property,
triggered by motion detection. Keep it simple. (Suburbs of a major city in
Central Florida)

~~~
loco5niner
As a bonus you get a cool perspective-shift in the images as the trees slowly
grow ;-)

------
tossaway12411
FCC filings show this devices is 2.4Ghz so I would assume that anything from
cheap nordic 2.4Ghz chipsets to microwave to a HackRF/BladeRF/LimeSDR/USRP
will be able to bother all signals coming out of these devices.

It looks like they are flooding the area and measuring off a reflection.
Nothing ground breaking.

EDIT: Forgot FCC info: [https://fccid.io/2AJF7](https://fccid.io/2AJF7)

~~~
r1ch
Wouldn't this effectively act as a signal jammer for all 2.4 GHz devices if
it's constantly transmitting? I'm sure your neighbors will love it when their
WiFi goes down every time you leave the house!

~~~
planteen
I doubt is is going to act like a jammer. It is probably narrow in bandwidth.
Your microwave also leaks a healthy amount of 2.4 GHz. That's why most
wireless specs that use 2.4 GHz (e.g., Bluetooth) have the concept of channels
and hop to avoid interference.

------
Animats
The basic idea of having an RF emitter at one end of the house and a receiver
of the other as a whole-house motion detector is interesting. But the sales
pitch just screams "fake". "Invisible ripples in wireless spectrum"? As
opposed to visible ripples? Please.

------
maerF0x0
Didnt someone show something like this to read touchscreen passwords?[1]

They better secure this much better than IoT or it will be a remote keylogger
for criminals.

[1][http://thehackernews.com/2016/11/hack-wifi-
password.html](http://thehackernews.com/2016/11/hack-wifi-password.html)

~~~
yazan94
That is super interesting. If I understood it correctly, its like using a Wi-
Fi channel as a radar system that both your device as well as an attacker are
connected to. And then based off of the interference of your hand when typing,
it knows what buttons you pressed. I don't think it would be a practical
attack vector because the attacker would probably need to know the physical
size dimensions of your phone. And also in an age of phablets not everyone can
type with one hand, which may throw off the results.

------
t3f
Seems a lot like Xandem [0] that has been up here before [1], [2].

[0] - [http://xandem.com/](http://xandem.com/)

[1] - [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/xandem-monitor-an-
entire-...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/xandem-monitor-an-entire-house-
without-cameras-security-technology#/)

[2] -
[http://www.securityelectronicsandnetworks.com/articles/2014/...](http://www.securityelectronicsandnetworks.com/articles/2014/06/24/xandem-
tmd-tomographic-motion-detection-review)

------
ghaff
Interesting tech but it's not clear to me what problem this solves. As is
touched on at the end of the article, it's not like there is a lack of sensors
that could be used to detect intruders. The main issue for a lot of people is
that, in order to take useful action when you're not at home, you need some
sort of security service which is a monthly fee and can get expensive.

~~~
Klathmon
Depending on the accuracy of it, it could be a fantastic solution to do room-
by-room presentence detection in a much more consistent way than other
solutions (like infrared motion detection), and with much less of an impact on
privacy in the worst case (a video-stream person-detection algorithm will
"leak" full video of your house if hacked, this will "leak" your approximate
location), and it can do all of this with a single unit compared to a unit for
each room with other solutions.

One thing i've wanted since I started doing home-automation stuff is a system
that can turn off lights after someone has been out of the room for like 10-15
minutes. IR sensors have false readings a lot (if you are sitting still
reading a book, suddenly the lights go out...), not to mention the need for a
sensor in each room with good visual coverage of the whole room.

Something like this would be fantastic for that use case, and knowing if
someone was home when they aren't supposed to be is just an added bonus.

And you don't need a security service to take action, a neighbor can check if
needed, or if you are certain that something is wrong, a call to the police.

~~~
tonyarkles
As a side mini-rant, the Starbucks I used to go to had energy-saving motion
sensitive light switches in the bathrooms. Walk in, lights turn on, after some
idle period they shut back off.

Except the timer interval was _way_ too short. If I'm taking a long shit,
sure, I can deal with a slight inconvenience of having to wave my arm to get
more light... But if I'm standing there and peeing, and the lights turn off,
that's a pretty serious bug!

~~~
cat199
This is why for the toilet case they are coupled with auto flushers that fire
too easily when you lean forward or backwards slightly - it keeps the user
standing up suddenly to avoid the splash at intervals small enough to keep the
lights on.

Apparently they couldn't figure out an equivalent invention for the standing-
urination case, especially since hand sink sensors don't even trigger when you
wave your hands entirely over them several times and so most certainly
couldn't be used here in the case of the less endowed gentleman...

------
aaron695
Hmm could you hack it to see if the house is empty...

------
dmritard96
seems like spoofing will be trivial though? When someone walks by my front
door on the sidewalk, will it go off? Can my raspi emulate a human to create
so many false positives that this is rendered useless? My 2 cents, this sounds
great but a device / technology that likely won't overcome all of the 'what
abouts' to ultimately get it shipped.

------
Animats
Whatever happened to Google's Project Soli, which was trying to read hand
gestures with microwaves and signal processing? [1] That was roughly the right
hardware for this sort of thing.

[1] [https://atap.google.com/soli/](https://atap.google.com/soli/)

------
accountyaccount
Couldn't I also rig up a device like this to determine if someone was in their
house from the outside? or if I'm in an apartment building... all of my
neighbors?

~~~
willvarfar
your local swat team is probably equipped with "wall penetrating radar" which
they use to assess the situation before entering a building.

There are acoustic versions and they also thread fiber optic cameras under
your door, so passive systems that image a building from the emissions in the
building are probably something they'd buy too.

------
coin
What about movement outside of the house causing reflections, wonder if those
are picked up as false positives.

------
msimpson
> Invisible ripples in wireless spectrum...

The wireless spectrum is invisible... But, cool idea nonetheless.

~~~
justusthane
So? The ripples are also invisible. There's nothing wrong with saying it this
way.

~~~
msimpson
Except that it's redundant and generally misleading to those who do not
understand the electromagnetic spectrum.

------
amelius
Why not use a regular webcam with some diffusing glass in front to protect
privacy?

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JackFr
Seems like an invasion of privacy in an apartment building.

~~~
Klathmon
And a camera would be an invasion of privacy in a bathroom, but that doesn't
mean cameras aren't still useful in other areas.

------
hindsightbias
Someone call Hollywood - this could be a ghost detector.

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jahnu
I can imagine the DOS attacks on these things.

~~~
pcl
For intrusion detection, a DoS attack probably isn't that big of a deal. The
system can simply alert if the sensor goes offline.

This will turn into alerts in network or power outages, but that might be
desirable for he same reasons.

~~~
ynniv
That's only a useful signal if someone takes it offline right before breaking
in. If you're planning an event you can take it offline a week or more
beforehand.

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jpm_sd
So it's... radar?

