Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
How do users connect IOT device to WiFi?
Jeroen3:
--- Quote from: soldar on August 11, 2019, 06:44:02 pm ---It seems inevitable that ease of use and security are inversely proportional. If you want ease of use then security will be bad and if you want security then it will be a PITA.
--- End quote ---
There is no motivation to make it secure, average users won't pay for that. Because they have no clue. They'll happily forward port 80 in their home router to their IP cam running embedded linux from 10 years ago.
Unless you want in on the Homekit MFi, then you have a few requirements.
soldar:
--- Quote from: Kasper on August 11, 2019, 11:29:38 pm --- Will putting "secure and easy to use" in the marketting attract customers?
--- End quote ---
Before that you need to ask if "secure and easy to use" is even possible because so far in this thread we have not seen it.
We have seen secure but PITA and we have seen easier but insecure. So far we have not seen both. Before you discuss whether the cost is justified you need to know whether it is possible. So far we have not seen it is possible.
WPS was supposed to make WPA login easy and secure. It turned out security was non-existent to the point I do not understand how it was even ever released.
Siwastaja:
WPS is of course one of those utter failures which try to make a 3-step, 1-minute manual process "easier" and results in a multi-page flow diagram instead. For WPS, four totally different "operating modes" are specified and they all suck.
Sometimes it is just easier to accept some manual work in exchange for predictability and simplicity. The "temporarily join the AP -> enter config page -> enter your network credentials" is the only way which seems to actually work without major pain, or pages long specifications. It took the device manufacturers years to realize such a simplistic and hacky scheme is the way to go: now the sticker is in the device you just bought, and you are not relying on finding a sticker, or a push-button on your 5-year-old home hotspot which may be installed in a hard-to-reach place.
soldar:
Not too long ago I was having lunch at a cousin's place and I asked for the WIFI password. She was reading it off the bottom side of the router and it was 20 characters in tiny print which she was having trouble reading. I was trying to type it into a tiny screen of an iphone and with my fat fingers half the time I was getting the wrong character. Each try took quite a while and after three or four unsuccesful tries we just gave up.
I guess that is what WPS was trying to address except it was a shoddy attempt which just created a big hole.
But, getting back to how to connect IOT devices which have no keyboard or other input device, you can say that starting up in AP mode is "easy" and it is, for certain values of "easy". The system that I mentioned my device does where the APP transmits the credentials encoded in packet length is, much easier and much more insecure.
People will generally choose convenience over security and will later bitch and complain when security is compromised.
Kasper:
--- Quote from: soldar on August 12, 2019, 02:34:51 pm ---Not too long ago I was having lunch at a cousin's place and I asked for the WIFI password. She was reading it off the bottom side of the router and it was 20 characters in tiny print which she was having trouble reading.
[...]
People will generally choose convenience over security and will later bitch and complain when security is compromised.
--- End quote ---
I take a picture of it then read from the picture.
I am aiming for as few tech support calls and negative comments online as possible.
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