Actually, there have been several "news stories" (typ. "filler" pieces) here involving this product. Likely because it generates video (which is always a boon to TV broadcasters) and is usually sensational (folks stealing packages off front porches, attempted home invasions, etc.)
Of course, really only applies to a very small portion of the population (or residences). And, probably relatively easy to defeat when/if it becomes more widely used (e.g., wear a mask, whack it with a baseball bat, approach from "off screen", jam wireless, blind with overbright/laser light source, interfere with home's internet connection, etc.)
Then you'd expect the radio replacement/service procedure (including replacing a blown radio fuse) to indicate that the car won't start with a blown radio fuse, right? (as that would be comparable to removing the radio).
I see no google hits pertaining to radios, their fuses or "trouble starting".
And what on earth happens if you need to get to the hospital in a hurry or if there's an accident out in the middle of nowhere that leaves the vehicle (sort of) drivable but damages the radio ?
Perhaps everyone should switch to driving a Lada or in the US, whatever the el-cheapo car is/was (Yugo?). :-) On the plus side, you wouldn't have to worry about remote hacking of your vehicle. :-)
Simon.
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Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world
The video doorbell connects to home WiFi network. Of course you need to select the SSID and write a password to make a WiFi connection. The setup guide says this process is done using a smart device (smartphone), after pushing a button in the doorbell to put it in Setup mode.
How does it work? How the smartphone sends the WiFi configuration to the doorbell that isn't connected to Internet yet (because it isn't configured yet)? Does it use a local connection (Bluetooth, NFC, ...), even if it isn't explicit?
That's a failure on so many levels, starting with Tesla for designing such a fragile system without any obvious backups and ending with the driver who never thought of this.
In fairness to the driver however, depending on how it was explained to him, he may never have fully realised the implications of not having connectivity to the remote servers until he found out the hard way.
Simon.
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Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world
But this *was* the backup system. The primary system was the key fob. This let you drive you car in most cases even if you forgot to actually take you car keys with you.
It's not so easy a problem to fix either - they used network connectivity to check if your phone was still valid to unlock your car. If they didn't (say the phone would also authenticate to the car in pure Bluetooth mode), someone could just steal your phone, turn off WiFi and the 3G/4G connection, and go nick your Tesla (of course that's not any different than actually stealing your car keys, except that grabbing a cell phone is practically much easier, since they're so often out in the open, while keys tend to spend most of their time in pockets and such). Which is not to say there aren't ways to fix this, but none are completely straight-forward.
This is also a simple and straight-forward extension of a preceding technology, which just makes that problem worse (it's just like what we've already been doing, but with this little bit added). For example, OnStar's long standing ability to unlock your car for you (you've bean able to call them if you locked the keys in the car since
1996). Being able to do that from a phone app is a pretty trivial enhancement, and being able to also *start* the car remotely is another trivial enhancement (remote start by itself dates back decades). Nor are either of those are uncommon - my Nissan will do both - although I've never then tried to get into my car and drive away without my key fob. I'll have to try that sometime, although I suspect it would work - I *know* you can drive the car without the fob after getting it unlocked and started in the conventional manner (it does beep at you and display "no key" if you do). Which then lead to similar failure mode. For example, what if you left your keys on the sunroof (certainly close enough to make the door and starter sensors happy), unlocked the car, started it, and then drove off into Death Valley, stopping (and turning off the car) half way across to admire the scenery. Again, you'd be stuck (assuming the keys had actually blown off the roof).
Tesla's failure was in not realizing that a backup system might become the primary system, because users are creative like that. That error has bitten many designers - "we don't have to actually monitor X, because the emergency limit sensor will shut it down when it goes too far", "we don't have to handle the gun safely, the safety is on", "I don't have to check the coolant level every day, because the backup cooling system will kick in if the primary system runs low", "I can take safety #1 and #2 off, because safety #3 is still there".
Oh, I see, thanks. I wonder if the driver knew that a usable signal was required for his mobile phone and I wonder if Tesla made that explicit in their manuals and user training. (Not everyone would think to ask these types of questions unprompted.)
Perhaps it might be better if we all just went back to using physical keys instead. :-)
Thanks for taking the time to do the above writeup.
Simon.
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Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world
That's a good question, I have no idea how explicit Tesla's training was/is. I suspect they emphasize that point more now, though...
I also suspect it was not really a failure mode in the forefront of Tesla's engineer's minds. Sure, "it won't work if there's no phone service" is obvious, but getting from there to "what if a user starts the car with their phone and then drives someplace without phone service and shuts it down" goes a couple of steps past the problem they were trying to solve. Of course it *is* their responsibility to think about that sort of thing. So I'd assume it was mentioned, but not really emphasized. IOW "this won't work if you don't have phone service" was probably mentioned, or at least implied, but "don't use this to start your car and then drive off into the desert" was not, and the user didn't make that connection either.
As I mentioned, Nissan has most of the same features (although I'm not sure it has everything you need to create this particular problem), and they certainly didn't go out of their way to even emphasize that unlocking or starting my car from my phone wouldn't work if I didn't have phone service. It might well have been in the fine print in the click through license agreement, but how often do those actually get read.
I suspect it'll be less than effective in any event - when was the last time you could get a user to pay attention to a lecture on how the primary system works, much less the peculiarities of the backup system... I still can't convince my mom that she can actually unlock all the doors by double tapping the button on her key fob. She insists on just opening the driver's door, then hunting* for a while for the door unlock button on the driver's door armrest. Usually while I'm standing in the rain on the passenger side.
*I once got a call a couple of days after one of those events that none of the windows worked anymore (the driver's window might still have, I don't remember). She had hit the window lock in the process of hunting for the door unlock...
The traditional approach, where the key was physically locked into the ignition certainly had the advantage that you couldn't drive the car anywhere without taking the ignition key with you!
But that was only the ignition key. GM, for example, was (in)famous for decades for having different* door and ignition keys. So if you had some way to *lock* the door without the door key (and that was possible with at least some cars - sometimes via the hold-up-the-latch-while-closing-the-door trick), you could have lost the door key after unlocking the door, and then driven off with the ignition key, and then gotten yourself locked out of the car, despite having the ignition key. Of course most users just kept both keys on the same keychain, which usually prevented that problem.
Most people, myself included, would be loathe to give up keyless entry just because it introduces a few new (rare) failure modes. It is darn convenient.
*They built steering columns and doors in different plants, and it took them decades to figure out how to coordinate those assemblies so the same key was configured for both.
Most people, myself included, would be loathe to give up keyless entry just because it introduces a few new (rare) failure modes. It is darn convinient.
*They built steering columns and doors in different plants, and it took them decades to figure out how to coordinate those assemblies so the same key was configured for both.
Trust me, people don't have a clue about cell coverage not extending across every corner of the globe. I kayak and many people bring their cell phones to use the GPS. Trouble is they don't work out of range of a tower. My hand held GPS continues to work as long as I have a battery. They also don't understand a cell phone is a poor emergency distress signal for the same reason. If you need to use it you are likely too far from a cell tower.
Weird. Even Google Maps these days has an offline mode (and can navigate offline too.) Of course, they'd need to download offline maps for the area they want beforehand and at least in my experience Goog's maps aren't that useful anywhere outside a road... But other apps provide maps for that too.
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