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by penagwin 2559 days ago
Why would you be cautious? Not saying there's no downsides, but if anything I consider it to be an "upside" that the device is simpler. Now I don't need to worry about linux, or making sure it's a read only filesystem with an image all setup, etc.

I look at it this way: If you want a remote device that measures or controls just one or two things, but does very little if any calculations - use a esp8366/32 (or anything with low power requirements). If you need to process data (video stream), or do other calculations, potentially while controlling many different sensors/things - you'll likely want a raspberrpi/similar
1 comments
bigiain 2559 days ago
I want locks on my doors.

If you can come up with a reasonably secure way to get an ESP8862 to unlock your door that I can't sniff from across the street with a pringles can hooked up to a wifi dongle running in promiscuous mode (perhaps with a pile of off board AWS to crack your WPA key), I'd be interested in checking it out.

I'm not saying it can't be done. But for _me_, I'd prefer to piggy back on all the battle tested tools available in linux like OpenSSL rather that pretend I can write bulletproof crypto code for the constrained resources available on the esp. And I'd prefer to run my unlock signals over wires rather than over a radio. I'm cautious like that.

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c22 2558 days ago
Preshared one time pad would be pretty simple. But just because it has wifi, doesn't mean you have to use it. The chip is bristling with io so running real wires is always an option (and hey, you probably have to power it by wires anyway).

There's definitely something to be said for not having the surface area of some hobbiest-grade linux distro on your door locks also. I'd like to perform a "security update" on my door locks just about never.

Anyway, the esp32 has a tls stack which is adequate if you want to go that way. Lately there are a handful of boards on the market that pair the esp32 with a PoE chip that are becoming my goto for little "iot" projects.

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aargh_aargh 2558 days ago
There are probably much easier ways to break into your apartment than cracking a custom wifi widget.

Obligatory xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/538/

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