[HN Gopher] Hacking the Silvercrest (Lidl) Smart Home Gateway
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       Hacking the Silvercrest (Lidl) Smart Home Gateway
        
       Author : homarp
       Score  : 64 points
       Date   : 2021-05-29 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (paulbanks.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (paulbanks.org)
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | > The server has some brute force protection whereby failed
       | logins will cause the device to stop this server for an
       | increasing amount of time. The device has to be left switched on
       | for the anti-brute force timer to expire because the failure
       | counter is stored persistently in the flash.
       | 
       | Excellent! This is the way security should be done if you have to
       | use a password like here.
       | 
       | Too many devices either don't have brute force detection, or
       | don't persist their intervals meaning a reboot gives you new
       | attempts.
        
       | mongol wrote:
       | I think the Lidl tools brands are the best value for money you
       | can buy, in a lower price segment. There are other brands that
       | are best vale for money in higher price segments, but for tools
       | you only use occasionally, I think Lidl is on top.
        
       | gorbypark wrote:
       | I have a few of their bulbs (decent) and motion sensors (junk)
       | running on Home Assistant on an RPi. Might have to pick one of
       | these up to play around with.
        
       | aritmo wrote:
       | In Spain it is 17.99EUR - https://www.lidl.es/es/central-
       | domotica-zigbee-smart-home/p1...
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | I'm surprised this device has so many electronics in it...
       | 
       | Considering it is basically an ethernet<=>Zigbee bridge, and
       | never needs to send more than a few bytes at a time, I would have
       | designed it with a Wifi ESP8266 connected to a zigbee module.
       | 
       | With that setup you could probably cut the retail price in half,
       | which has to be important for a device nobody really wants
       | (People get excited about their new smart bulbs... Nobody cares
       | about the pesky gateway device)
        
         | Denvercoder9 wrote:
         | Putting extra hardware in there to allow it to run Linux is
         | probably less expensive than the savings from being able to
         | target Linux for your software.
        
       | Moosdijk wrote:
       | https://www.lidl.de/de/silvercrest-gateway-drahtloses-verbin...
       | 
       | 25 euros at Lidl de
        
       | everyone wrote:
       | Is there any reason why one sees so many black PCBs nowadays,
       | instead of the 'normal' green? Is it simply fashion? Or is there
       | a new cheaper / better black material being used?
       | 
       | ..
       | 
       | I definitely dont like the look of it.. Black chips on a black
       | background.. makes the board harder to 'read' at a glance imo.
       | 
       | Edit: Answered my own question.. https://www.quick-pcba.com/pcb-
       | news/questions-about-black-pc...
       | 
       | It is simply fashion + this : Anti-plagiarism. Because the traces
       | of black PCB are difficult to distinguish with the naked eye.
       | 
       | Also seems there are some disadvantages of not using green.
        
       | clairity wrote:
       | with this, hopefully we are one step closer to a consumer retail
       | home assistant box that users can deploy locally without the
       | cloud integration that every company is in a frenzy to lock you
       | in to.
        
         | andylynch wrote:
         | Hass.io already sells their blue box (https://www.home-
         | assistant.io/blue) but an rpi works nicely too. The Lidl
         | gateways and similar zigbee hubs aren't really necessary in a
         | hass.io setup once you plug in a (pretty cheap) USB zigbee
         | stick.
        
           | clairity wrote:
           | that's also a good step forward, but with all due respect to
           | hass, it's not a consumer retail brand (yet?). ideally, we'd
           | get a little box like an apple tv/airport express where you
           | plug it in, it finds all the zigbee (and thread) devices in
           | range, and then let's you validate and configure those by
           | walking around and pointing your phone/tablet camera at each
           | one (hopefully validated via uwb/nfc rather than qr code).
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-29 23:00 UTC)