Wild new Wi-Fi routers turn your home network into a security radar

https://newatlas.com/around-the-home/gamgee-wifi-home-security-system/

by Brajeshwar • 2 years ago

74 42 2 years ago

kyriakos• 2 years ago

i don't think this technology new. beeen using wifi access points that have this feature for the past 2 years (by a company called plume). it doesn't differentiate between individuals but its smart enough to ignore pets and to know when your smartphone is out of wifi range that you are not home and send you notifications for movements inside your home.

sulandor• 2 years ago

its smart enough to ignore pets and to know when your smartphone is out of wifi range

this does indeed no seem to be new technology

avree• 2 years ago

The technology isn't new, at all. In fact, I wrote the announcement blog post https://www.plume.com/homepass/blog/give-your-home-a-sixth-s... on Plume's website almost 4 years ago.

https://www.cognitivesystems.com/, https://aerial.ai/ both have pretty significant penetration in ISPs.

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiFi_Sensing

eadmund• 2 years ago

I wonder how good the resolution is on this. Can our neighbours use it to watch my family in our home?

Can a Faraday cage be tuned to certain wavelengths, e.g. to allow AM/FM/cell service but block WiFi?

alanbernstein• 2 years ago

I believe a passive faraday cage has a high pass characteristic. You might need external antennas or repeaters for the bands you want.

fragmede3• 2 years ago

How well insulated is your home? They can already do that with an FLIR camera.

lostlogin2• 2 years ago

Can a Faraday cage be tuned to certain wavelengths

Yes. I work at an MR scanner and some things work fine through the cage. Wireless patient monitoring for example, and it may just be bog standard bluetooth.

I’d test but I need to find something Bluetooth that I don’t particularly like in case the scanner eats it.

nerdjon4• 2 years ago

It will be interesting to see how well it actually works. I would like the idea of being able to track where my cats are and what they are doing. And more importantly, find them when the fire alarm starts going off...

I could also see some interesting use cases of this with home automation, particularly with lights and being able to say that someone is actually in a room instead of just sensing motion (see: cats).

That being said, I do not like the severe potential for abuse and privacy issues here. Given that it can identify specific people, I have to imagine this is a bit more detailed than just a human sized blob? Could it theoretically identify what you are doing, could it theoretically give you a real time view of someone (or multiple people). Even if not super detailed it could still give you an idea of what is going on.

I could see this particularly problematic in apartment buildings.

krageon2• 2 years ago

This technology is incredibly old, and definitely has already been abused. This just puts it into your hands. There's no sense complaining - anyone motivated or evil enough was already in possession of this.

CoastalCoder• 2 years ago

How old are we talking?

nerdjon4• 2 years ago

That is a weird way to see it, just because a technology already exists (from the best I can tell the ability to identify specific people is a unique part of this) doesn't mean that we could be looking at an improvement to the technology or worry about it being put in more consumer technology making it easier for average people to use it.

zikduruqe• 2 years ago

being able to say that someone is actually in a room instead of just sensing motion

I often thought that Apple's UWB chip is going to be used for this sometime in the future. Just think; we know Timmy is upstairs watching TV, two people are in the living room, someone just opened the garage door and all the sudden joined WiFi.

Apple: we have real estate data inference. Time to monetize it.

nerdjon4• 2 years ago

Honestly I have wondered about this for a long time, I already have homepods all around the house I would imagine given that chip it likely would not be too difficult to say that someone is in a given room.

I imagine that hardest part is setup, like would the UI just have you walk around with phone to define walls. What if the homepod moves?

Maybe I am over estimating the technology, but if I could ask "where are my keys" and it says "it is in the bedroom" it would be fantastic.

KennyBlanken2• 2 years ago

I will never understand why people claim Apple is aggressively trying to monetize user data when their whole business model is not monetizing user data and they have moved towards device-side features and greater user privacy from Apple or anyone else.

For example, iPhones around the 11 or 12, and Apple Silicon Macs, gained the ability to do voice recognition for siri, and dictation, on-device. Apple servers are only used when Siri is asked to do something that would require it, like asking for a web search, the weather, etc.) OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive all do not support E2EE. iCloud does.

Meanwhile Google is not only monetizing your data but also using you, your device, and your data plan as a free data collection platform for their services.

Notice that Apple rather famously told the FBI to go pound sand when they were asked for help decrypting a mass-shooter's cell phone?

Notice that you can shut off all of the user-sourced data (like traffic congestion and wifi/cellular network location data collection) on iOS, and there are no such controls on Android?

Did you notice that one company's devices are much cheaper than the other's, just like those "smart TVs" are much cheaper than "dumb" TVs were?

That's because to Google, you and your data is the product...

barkerja• 2 years ago

I've wanted an applicable use of something like this from UWB (UltraWide Band). Apple is really well-positioned for this, but nothing has yet come to fruition.

If devices like HomePods — or ideally, something much more affordable — placed around your home can begin to triangulate you based on a wearable (phone, watch, tag on a collar, etc.), then some really cool possibilities become imaginable.

soared• 2 years ago

IMO this product makes a lot more sense without the router/wifi portion. Consumers don’t care how the thing works, it’s beneficial enough for many to have a security system like this.

cantSpellSober2• 2 years ago

It sounds like the wifi part is essential to body detection, no?

denimnerd42• 2 years ago

it could still use wifi underlying

Aachen• 2 years ago

Furthermore, being able to firewall it off and not letting it talk to the internet is probably a sensible precaution for IoT like this. Since that's hard to do for your router (defeats the purpose), it shouldn't be your router doing the location tracking

HumblyTossed• 2 years ago

You can already get products that don't have the router part:

https://www.amazon.com/Aqara-Positioning-Multi-Person-Detect...

KennyBlanken2• 2 years ago

It still requires being actively connected to the internet and using their cloud services to process the data.

Reviews on the Home Assistant forums are less than glowing. They apparently work well if you can mount them on a wall chest-high, which could present some significant issues aesthetics-wise - and spend some time "tuning" them.

cyanbane• 2 years ago

Hypothetically, I am not sure I want this company to know when it is sexy time.

cantSpellSober2• 2 years ago

Taken at their word they wouldn't

Gamgee insists that all motion data is processed and stored on the routers themselves, and never in the cloud

The article mentions a feature that could be creepy though:

you could review “motion history,” including which family members went into which rooms when and for how long

lotsofpulp• 2 years ago

Judging by the zeitgeist, I would have thought the bigger concern would be the company knowing the lack of sexy time.

unstatusthequo• 2 years ago

I see they decided to pick a name that sounds like a million trashy items on Amazon. Gamgee? Should at least be in all caps. I can see it on Amazon now: "GAMGEE Ultra WiFi Security Detection Intruder 5ghz Alarm Mesh Net Plug-and-Play EZ-Config Router with Antenna"

sib• 2 years ago

Or maybe they're just big fans of Lord of the Rings?

AnarchismIsCool• 2 years ago

Can we stop naming evil tech companies with stuff from LOTR

asudosandwich• 2 years ago

Lots of already established names sound kind of goofy absent their familiarity.

Panaphonics? Unilever.. Toyota.. Sorny Trinitron..

throwway120385• 2 years ago

Sounds like I'm done upgrading my WAPs for the foreseeable future.

peddling-brink• 2 years ago

Passive surveillance using existing WiFi has been talked about for probably a decade or more.

debbiedowner• 2 years ago

The link to the wivi research is to a 2013 article, so that took a while!

I had a HW assignment in 2017 to do this, specifically we were given raw wifi signals and told to determine how many people were in the room. We did it by detecting breath rate of each person with the MUSIC spectral algorithm. For that challenge there ended up being 6 people in the room, all with slightly different breath rate (attenuating the signal as their chest expanded).

Algemarin• 2 years ago

It might sound a little bit creepy from a privacy perspective, but Gamgee insists that all motion data is processed and stored on the routers themselves, and never in the cloud.

This seems deceptive. Sure, the data may be processed and stored locally, but if the routers themselves may be accessed remotely (e.g., by Gamgee, if the routers are compliant with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069), then the fact that the data isn't stored in the cloud is a moot point.

xaellison• 2 years ago

Pros: this is just like the Dark Knight! Cons: privacy nightmare

ikekkdcjkfke• 2 years ago

So now soldiers need to have a router mounted on their helmet in close quarters?

utensil4778• 2 years ago

For anyone actually interested in this technology, it's something you can do on your own with nothing more than an ESP32.

I've seen research papers on using this method to do gesture detection as well.

Dunati• 2 years ago

When is this coming to businesses so that employers can track employees time? "Over the last month you've spent a combined 4 hours on returning from breaks and lunches, and will be debited one half a vacation day"

Wild new Wi-Fi routers turn your home network into a security radar

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