Where a Hispanic Catholic, and a Computer Geek write about Gun Rights, Self Defense and whatever else we can think about.
Divemedic has a great post about this that should be read as continuation of what J.Kb wrote a couple of days ago.
But I also want to point this out: If at home and your WiFi goes down and your cell reception is gone, this is what the experts call a possible clue shit is starting to impact the air-pushing device.
And as in the movie, it may not be the real thing, but I rather be wrong than dead.
Semi-retired like Vito Corleone before the heart attack. Consiglieri to J.Kb and AWA. I lived in a Gun Control Paradise: It sucked and got people killed. I do believe that Freedom scares the political elites.
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Hmmm. Things to ponder.
I’m preparing to expand the sensor network with some homebrew motion sensors scattered far and wide along the fencelines and elsewhere.
Now I have the notion that there should be some sentinel units, with enough battery capacity to allow them to check in frequently. On further thought: hub/concentrator/range-extender stations need that capability anyway, so having those drop out of communication could be grounds for a jamming alarm on a short time scale.
… Then there’s the problem of motion sensors being triggered by possums, coyotes, bears and whatnot, but we’ll worry about that later.
We live in a mixed area, with everything from run-down singlewides to shiny new mansions, and there’s nothing specifically prosperous-looking about our place, so we’re not an obvious target. (Doesn’t hurt that every little old lady and her dog around here is armed.) Still, prepping for the Madness seems prudent.
FYI I know the DIY stuff like Qolsys and 2GIG have jam detection. Not sure how well it works though.
Wireless sensors should send a regular heartbeat message to confirm they’re still active.
Well, yes… but checking in with alive status and battery state could reasonably happen hourly, which isn’t a good basis for a jamming alarm. I’m thinking stations that can spare the energy for it should check in on a single-digit-seconds time scale.
Yep.
If the ‘base’ has the smarts built in to recognize the RF noise floor coming up, or detect the presence of strong signals that could not be decoded, the programming could greatly speed up the ‘hey, are you still there’ scans to the remotes.
Or taking it an additional step, if the base could decode the spoof, then check and see if it is an unknown device trying to mimc a normal remote by querying for a key from a unique preshared key list, (like a corporate login dongle does,) and raise Cain if the device can’t supply that key…
That’s getting somewhat afield from a ‘normal’ consumer grade system, though…
Re wifi and cell service going down … In our area that’s known as being Comcasted.
Yup, why I switched to a local provider… cheaper and better bandwith
Our home internet is via fiber, and phone is a basic POTS service, (copper in the house,) provided via SIP/VoIP from the ONT (Optical Networking Terminal,) but it could be cut, if they knew what to look for….
I’ve considered a secondary, minimalist backup wired security system* that communicates over POTS; having lived in hurricane country, I’ve had times when absolutely nothing worked – electric, cell service, county water – but POTS was up and running, thanks to miles and miles of buried cables. When I moved I stayed with a basic POTS but dumped it after a few years and went cell-only when AT&T raised prices into the stratosphere AND there was no way to stop robocallers and telemarketers. But, POTS as a data-only service, no voice, and no 10-digit number associated with it, the bit pipe live 24X7 with bits, might do it. I will have to research it.
*Very basic, just perimeter intrusion protection at the weakest points (doors), one or two interior motion sensors in case entry is gained not via doors, some sort of panic alarm, and jamming detection alert.
Elrod, looking forward to the results of your research.
Yeah, it works for us because it’s a CLEC that provides dialtone, and they have a whitelist service built into the phone service. It’s around $15 a month including the filter, (internet/tv/phone bundle,) and they have a web page to examine the calling numbers. The whitelist blocks 99.99 % of all the robocalls, and the response filter gets about 90% of the cold calls. I’ve pretty much given up on even bothering to check the filter anymore.. We can get 1 Gb x 1 Gb, but it’s quite a bit more $, so we’ve stuck with 100 Mb x 100 Mb..
Options, in the boonies, can be problematic. We have cell service, of sorts. Even at the top of the hill I only get one bar. We have wired telephone, but the wires are about 50 years old best case, and fail every few months. Fortunately, on the entire fat cable (48 pairs, maybe more) serving our street, I think we’re the only customer left so there continue to be spare pairs. Fiber was promised as “coming” but we’re probably at the far end of the list, and the town two over where the fiber has been run on the poles doesn’t seem to have gone any further yet (Amherst, NH). And then there is Comcast, which is actually the most reliable of all the services we get.
For SHTF communication options I like ham radio.
“For SHTF communication options I like ham radio.”
DM mentioned ham at his original post on all this, but I’m not sure ham comms offer the required time value to deal with a home invasion: go to your “ham shack” turn the radio on, CQ in voice, get a response – which may be from 1,000 miles away – give them the necessary info – who I am, where I am, why I need your help, who to call in my AO, deal with the other ham’s questions, the time lag for them to call YOUR 911 – which will by necessity come in via your local PD’s non-emergency line (because there’s no mechanism to area code YOUR local 911), convince the PD’s Comm Center clerk a call from a stranger in Peoria is not a hoax, relay your info, and only then get Deputy Dog to put his donut down and drive, etc. etc.
Long before then I will be policing my brass, dragging bodies to the curb for trash pickup and hosing off the blood on the porch. Deputy Dog better bring large trash bags and a mop.
But it did get me to thinking about RF spread spectrum comms and frequency hopping (which is a common tech in high security comm apps). I would not expect a commercial alarm company to pursue it because there’s no “already installed infrastructure” that someone else paid for; alarm companies can use the cell network that cell phone companies, via their customers, paid for, and the only thing the alarm company customer has to buy is the alarm system that comms via cell and a wifi router.
But a freq hop neighborhood system…that might be feasible. The hardware exists, although it’s a little pricey, but electronics are still cheaper than lawyers. I don’t know what the range might be on the bad Guys’ jammers, but I doubt it’s much more than 100 meters because of the power required to go farther and going too much farther would draw too much attention. Which the BGs might not care about because once they’ve gained entry and established control jamming is no longer needed, and 40-60 seconds of wifi and cell disruption would probably be blown off by users as “brief random network problems.”
More research…sigh.
I checked the FCC site for the 430 MHz Simplisafe, but a 5 min look didn’t reveal the emission type. From the spectrum analysis displays in the test results, it kind of looks spread spectrum, but I’m not sure. It does look
somewhat FM-ish as one display showed a range of frequencies occupied with slight spikes on each end of the range… FCC id starts with U9K with several different models listed. The older ones were down in the 300 MHz range, with the newer ones up in the 430 range..
About the only relatively surefire way to have comms would be to have a satellite system HIDDEN on the roof. Something like the geosync phone stuff we had in our dispatch centers as a last ditch backup. (But come to think of it, I think that service was replaced with fixed point Iridium system that was tied into our phone switch.) The geosync would have been VERY hard to jam, being up on the roof with a tightly focused ‘beam’ looking to orbit, but I suppose it would be possible, IF they knew it was there…
We used to run a 10 MB/s point to point laser system to provide network to a building in the city that would have been very difficult to cable to. (That was WAAAY before the neat little point to point 5.8 Gig stuff came out..)
Again, if it was hidden well on the roof or in the structure, it would require foreknowledge of it to interrupt.
A few Starlink terminals would also be difficult to jam if on the roof, as well. Someone generating enough RF energy at 28 gig would be pretty much a sore thumb sticking out as well..
Same principle, high gain, high power pointed at an orbiting object..
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Yeah, trying to get a ‘foreign’ 911 center to do something can be dicey. About 30 years ago, we got a call from a relative and they were in a very bad mental state, (and we had no other phones,) so I told the wife to keep him talking while I took the radio I had from the local fire department and went outside. I called our dispatch center and had to relay what was going on so they could call a 911 center across the state. It took probably ten, fifteen minutes before they finally called me back and said they were successful in getting the info across, and that the cops were there. Yeah, and that was back in the day that the cops in that fairly large town could make it to the scene in maybe five minutes…