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Irrigation Controller Stolen, Wirelessly Rescues Itself
wooferhound sends along an amusing piece about thieves who got run over by technology and never knew what hit them. "A Rain Master Eagle-i Irrigation Controller recently stolen out of a housing development just outside of Tucson traveled nearly 80 miles before rescuing itself. The smart controller is now back in place on the wall where it was originally pinched... In this day and age, something that may look passive like an irrigation controller may not be so passive. The thieves didn't realize they were removing equipment that features 2-way wireless communications via the Internet. Three weeks later, the unexpected happened. The Maintenance Supervisor noticed a signal coming in from the stolen controller. He thought it was kind of odd that it was up and running... Whoever had stolen it had plugged it back in."
Or what is so magical about it that someone would actually buy one, and secondly, steal one?
It's worth something and can be stolen with practically zero risk of being caught (or at least the crooks thought so).
Phoned home.
Belthize
The controller didn't "rescue itself", it did not provide its GPS coordinates, or address. They just found its wireless signal using the cell towers. Duh.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Can someone tell me why this is interent enabled?
From TFA: We're able to do the programming and communicate to the controllers through our laptops or Blackberries ...
Sounds pretty useful in a production environment..
In a large area (entire housing development) where you have multiple sprinkle and drip systems, it is much easier to remotely administer the irrigation system instead of having to show up on site. So for instance, now that it is summer time here in AZ, you have to water differently than you did during the year. So part of your job as the landscaping crew is to adjust all of the irrigation systems. Now, there could be multiple units in the area that need to be adjusted. Instead of having to drive around to each zone and change the settings, you could call all of them up remotely and make your adjustments.
From the article...
"The controller receives weather information on a daily basis and then sends commands to watering mechanisms to reflect the weather change. "
This is an interesting resource for arid areas that have shrinking water resources.
lol: You see no door there!
Irrigation may require placing a lot of these in the field, and sending someone around to check and see if they are functioning properly is pretty expensive. Plus, it makes reprogramming the water flow much easier when it can be centralized. Couple that with some moisture sensors and the resulting data can allow for the optimal planning of irrigation patterns to maximize yield and minimize wasted water.
Using the net makes sense too. It is a lot less costly than pulling wires to all of these devices or setting up a massive Frame Relay WAN.
Guess the thieves never realized that they should reprogram the thing before putting it back in use.
For those who are wondering WTF this thing is, here's the product page.
"The RME Eagle combines evapotranspiration (ET) technology with its already intelligent design providing a variety of ET-based scheduling features that will reduce water usage, save time and money, and optimize the efficiency of water resource allocation for any irrigation application. Additionally, an optional communication card provides central control capabilities via The Internet!
"The "RME Eagle" can measure flow and take corrective action for station breaks, main line failures, or unscheduled flow. It supports either normally open or normally closed master valve operation, pump operations independent of the master valve, cycle and soak or conventional programming, and a flow totalizer to monitor total water used. The "Eagle" watches your prestigious landscapes 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, providing insurance and protection from catastrophic field related failures."
All it doesn't do is yell at the kids to get off your lawn.
Any electronic device that cost several thousand dollars will be expected to be wireless and have GPS. You'll be able to login and check to see that your air conditioner, refrigerator and water heater are still at your house.
Instead of being caught with incriminating lock picks and bolt cutters, crooks will have their anti-GPS and anti-wireless equipment trip them up.
Bigtime Consulting - "We're the best because we cost the most"
Thieves will now have to block the antennae of their purloined plunder. But how's this for an idea: geo-locking hardware like this? "Here's your GPS coordinates. Stray outside of this area, you stop working." Thieves will soon learn that taking something like this will brick it.
I also like the idea of equipping cars with wireless stuff like this. The owner reports it missing, the car starts reporting its location to the cops and they can nab the perps.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It's not at all that simple. There are probably an array of moisture sensors in the field that provide data to the closed loop controller, which in turn controls an array of valves to various irrigation rigs. A PLC or PID controller like this probably costs on the order of $10K and may interface with a product like ExperionPKS or other supervisory DCS platform.
Hm, I thought Fallout was meant to be postnuke RPG, not postindustrial .
Not just for those areas. For anywhere. It's a shame that water shortages were needed to force people to design systems that are smart. Here they still have to put up signs to warn people not to water during winter storms! All that ice on the road is apparently dangerous.
There are lots of things that would benefit from some kind of additional smart control. Personally, I'd like a few more items in my house to be remotely operable, and thus also be able to alert me remotely of changing circumstances. I use Alarm.com and get an x-10 interface there, but I think there is much more that we can do. I'd like to know if the socket in the bathroom is still drawing electricity after I've left for work. That means my wife has left her hair appliance machinery plugged in etc.
Smart electrical outlets could tell us things like increased current use over time for appliances like your fridge or pc etc. It's amazing what a billion points of tiny data per month can tell you about life. I'd like to see that.
This topic needs as much thought and discussion as data center power conservation does.
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Better yet, stop trying to grow lawns in the desert.
If he could control the thing remotely, I would have sent a signal to flood the crops during the night, that way the next morning the theives would have had a nasty little suprise :) Then you go in and get it back.
It's only one click to RTFA :-(
QUOTE:
We're able to do the programming and communicate to the controllers through our laptops or Blackberries," said Glen Killmer, a branch manager for The Groundskeeper who is in charge of the Continental's acreage. 'This particular controller had stopped communicating."
A Groundskeeper irrigation technician sent to the site discovered that the piece of equipment, worth several thousand dollars, had disappeared.
Sig out of date
how they will visually identify the stolen property, call it in, and then leave and expect it to just stay there until they get back with more badges.
I've read about this scenario repeatedly, though this is the first time I've heard of it being voluntarily returned later. Being that stupid about it they didn't deserve to get it back.
Putting on the "wild speculation" hat, I'd say that since they were obviously tipped off, that it was likely whoever was sent out to identify the item was told to leave by his commanding officer, who then tipped them off "we're coming back in 30 minutes and it better not be there when we return". Gotta love how things like that work in rural towns. Any competent law enforcement would have left the stolen property under observation until the badges showed up.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What concerns me is that someone knew the police were coming for the unit. This was almost a petty theft case, sure significant to some but not really a major crime issue.
What if it were a more serious case? The police here should be really concerned about their information leaks and integrity of their investigation system.
does it run Linux?
SARAVA!
Because the owners want to maintain a log of how much water is consumed and when? Perhaps this would aid in managing the water budget for the maintenance of gardens? If the grass is turning yellow, increase the irrigation pattern. If the grass gets too long too quickly, reduce the irrigation pattern.
Adding a wireless communications would be extremely simple to such a system. Just have a dynamo driven by water pressure to charge a battery. And power a mobile phone chip using this battery. Instant internet connectivity.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
And things are going to go increasingly in this direction as microcontrollers capable of this sort of thing get cheaper and cheaper, and IPv6 could help too.
Microcontrollers are only starting to reach the sort of scale that this kind of functionality can be cheaply tacked onto anything, it's the start of true ubiquitous computing.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I was totally let-down by the end of the story. This was a perfect example of amateur sleuthing, which should have resulted in a thief being apprehended at the bottom of the hour, only to mutter "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you pesky kids and your ubiquitous ad-hoc wireless networking."
They can just remove the battery or hit the reset switch to remove the Wireless reporting.
Stolen equipment gets recovered via cell phone signals all them time. The whole thing sounds like a PR fluff piece.
The real tidbit of interest here is this:
Smart controller 'internet' technology, first patented in 2003 by Rain Master, automatically adjusts water usage via a 2-way wireless communication system.
The company has a patent on controlling the sprinkler system remotely. This kind of patent is stupid and evil.
But how's this for an idea: geo-locking hardware like this? "Here's your GPS coordinates. Stray outside of this area, you stop working." Thieves will soon learn that taking something like this will brick it.
GRM...Geographic Rights Management.
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Say for instance your grandfather has a pacemaker with wireless.
$>ping grandpa
No Host Found.
Oh no, GRANDPA!!!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Anyone else read the article and thought it smells a lot like it was written by the PR department of the company that manufactures those things? Lots and lots of talks about the great and unique features of the device, very little details on the alleged crime.
If this were ZiiTrend, I'd vote 70:30 that the story is fake and PR.
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I do agree with your assertion that the topic needs more discussion. I'd personally like to operate many functions of my house remotely, but the X10 interface doesn't thrill me. I've used them for years for lighting projects (holiday lights, etc) and have seen too many fail to be trusted with real responsibility. It would seem to be a simple technology to build, I just don't know why there isn't more competitors to X10.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
I think the real crime is that the fools in Arizona continue to waste perfectly good drinking water
on lawns, golf courses and man made lakes. These areas are meant to be desert.
I'm surprised I only saw about one other comment pointing out that this whole thing is most likely fake. At best, it was a real story that was published by marketing department for the parent company.
I hope it was at least something real that they chose to embellish and propagate. In either case, it all feels rather sleazy.
If you have doubts - read the story again and notice how many times the article has to mention the company that makes it by name, and how often they have to tout the various features of the device.
Actually there is a very good competition. X10 was just first out of the gate. Try http://www.zigbee.org/en/index.asp
Apparently, I have more time to type a response? No, they were not forced, and the processor probably is an ARM processor or similar. This particular manufacturer makes some cool toys, I have one of their systems installed. Zigbee is definitely better than X10, and you should see it in more appliances soon.
Imagine your next new house, where the light switches are electronic remotes for the actual switch in the light fixture. Now imagine you can move it anywhere, stick it to the wall where ever you want. Perhaps you want that single switch by the front door to ensure that ALL lights are turned off when you leave for the day? Zigbee or others will help make that a reality.
I can see a day not long from now when you can get online and see your home in 3D (not unlike secondlife et al) and see all the things that work remotely. Lights that are on etc.
A billion little data points a month is peanuts, but can give us so much data. Think of water flow sensors on each shower/toilet/sink etc. Once the sensor devices drop below 19.99/ea you can put them anywhere/everywhere. The electric company and water/gas companies are not the only people that want to know how much I use. I also want to know where/why.
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What might have been MORE useful is to have an automatic password lock enabled whenever the equipment is disconnected to be relocated.
The equipment would then be completely non-functional until unlocked.
Sure, it adds a little overhead when you move things around, but it would make the equipment useless to thieves.
Brings a new twist on the old "Is your refrigerator running?" prank call:
"Running? Let me check... why yes, about 30MPH it seems on 6th avenue. Thanks for the heads up!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why don't grow lawns in the desert? They provide a vital function of producing oxygen, cleaning the air, lowering the heat island effect and are often areas used to recharge underground aquifers. Having a lawn in the desert is good for everyone.
Sorry, I modded you redundant instead of insightful.
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Have you ever bought anything from ebay? Or another auction? Out of the paper? From a pawn shop?
There's plenty of ways for a thief to wash the goods, as long as they're reasonably generic.
Sure, the final recipient is on the hook for giving it back - and has a legitimate suit against whoever sold it to them(on up the line to the criminal).
But causing lots of damage isn't fair. Well, unless you have PROOF it's the criminal that actually stole it(or knows it was stolen), but at that point I'd rather the courts figure it out and use the resources that would have been ruined to pay restitution fees.
I don't read AC A human right
Obviously, the thief who didn't know about the hardware phoning home also wouldn't have known about the theft protection and taken it anyway.
Implanting the growing green stuff where it was not before could be beneficial for everyone indeed. The only problem is that the type of green that maybe beneficial in such places is not good on the golf field for instance.
While I am here - anybody else think TFA looks like commercial? I wonder also what internet has to do with the mobile network positioning systems that actually detected the 'stolen' item. Only I wonder how 'stolen' it really was as it moved back miraculously after a while.
TFA offers also insights into how police should not work I suppose - OTOH they achieved the goal of getting the stuff back without involving expensive judiciary etc so maybe it made sense to do it that way?
This is an interesting resource for arid areas that have shrinking water resources.
Ironic they should be using it in Arizona, isn't it?
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
It would be kinda cool to have amperage measurements from every single Circuit Breaker in the box, and logged over time too
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Is that you?
You'd better get back here or Uncle Owen is going to have a fit.
It's a shame that water shortages were needed to force people to design systems that are smart - why is it a shame? It would be a shame to waste resources for setting up smart systems where they don't need to be. Here a problem is identified and systems are upgraded. It would only be a shame if nobody cared after the problem was identified.
You can't handle the truth.
Sounds like these controllers are even smarter than that. Sounds like it can download weather reports, be hooked to remote sensors, etc, and run in open and closed control loops with this data.
Now, I'm not sure how smart all these adaptive features are, but ideally, this would mean the remote management would be more for monitoring, than managing . . . sounds pretty slick, especially for large installations (think city's with lots of parks).
Sounds pretty useful in a production environment..
Production? PRODUCTION???? Of what, grass?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
They are actually required for multi-unit housing developments and commercial properties in California. All such properties must have them by 2010.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
Of course of grass.
Have you seen lately how much people are paying for little plastic bags full of the stuff?
Not everything is made in a factory.
Frink: Why it's the AT-5000 Auto-Dialer. My very first patent.
Aw, would you listen to the gibberish they've got you
saying, it's sad and alarming. You were designed to alert
schoolchildren about snow days and such. Well, let's get
you home to Frinky. Hope your wheels still work, bw-hey.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I know the article makes this assumption, but I see no proof of it. "After sending a signal to the controller to go into rain shut-down mode" So he turned the thing off remotely, that kind of tips them off doesn't it? Or perhaps they just thought it was faulty and had removed it, then when the police showed up the light bulb went off and they brought it back.
Putting the value of the equipment aside, I would say that having an officer remain on site for a few hours in order to bring a thief (grand theft, remember, not just petty theft) to justice would be worth the use of his time (barring another priority or emergency situation that required the county's full resources).
That said, I suppose if you replace "irrigation controller" with "laptop", it does sound unlikely that police would try too hard to catch the culprits. Still, if it were my laptop, and I knew who had it, I'd be pretty upset with them if their clumsy investigative work tipped off the thief, and then they sat on their hands long enough for the thief to cover their tracks.
Look, if you live in an area where there is shrinking water resources and generally arid conditions there is one simple solution:
Move to Vancouver.
We have lots of water falling from the sky, all the time.
If you get nostalgic for the desert just drive 4 hours to Kamloops and you'll be back amongst the sagebrush.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Phony alarm signs are just stupid. A few years back, I was walking by a house near me and saw water coming out of the garage, down the driveway, and into the gutter. Nobody answered the door. They had a big sign for an alarm company, so I called the number on the sign. The alarm company told me they'd never had service there. One window had a sticker for a different alarm company. That, too, was phony. They even had a "Protected by ELECTRONIC alarm system" sticker, the one you can buy at Radio Shack.
I called the water utility emergency service number; they cut off all water to the house and left a note on the door.
"Smart electrical outlets could tell us things like increased current use over time for appliances like your fridge or pc etc."
My research lab has done some preliminary work in that area,
http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/research/groups/interact/kuckuck.htm
I don't think it's ongoing, though I'm sure we haven't heard the last of this idea.
Yep.
Some of the production is apparently quite high-tech. People build dedicated greenhouse installations under ground (to avoid detection via IR cameras). Water, hydroponics, etc is all automated.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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From My Fake Version Of The Article:
The Maintenance Supervisor of of the Moisture Farm noticed a signal coming in from the stolen controller. Interestingly it was coming from the Sandcrawler of the Jawas who had just sold him a bum R2 unit...
Huh?
Well, what they probably needed was a Threepio unit who understood the binary language of the controller.
Huh?
Uh huh. Let's have everything in your house connected to the internet and under your control.
Two words: SKYNET.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
...what is so magical about it that someone would actually buy one, and secondly, steal one?
If you'd read TFA, you'd know that it's a very sophisticated piece of equipment worth thousands of dollars. Agriculture is big business, especially in California. I mean, people are stealing beehives, fer chrissakes. The ability to communicate two-way with equipment that is controlling LOTS of precious irrigation water, without having to send a person into a remote area to change its settings, is a big savings in terms of travel (fuel and time) and man hours.
oO0Oo
It's a shame that water shortages were needed to force people to design systems that are smart. Here they still have to put up signs to warn people not to water during winter storms! All that ice on the road is apparently dangerous.
Most not-total-crap sprinkler timers have some kind of input for a "don't water" sensor. Usually you put in a rain/freeze sensor that won't water in either condition. I have a sixteen zone controller that has one (I use all of one zone so far, whee! but I got it free at a yard sale because the door clasp was missing.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I lived in Continental Ranch for 5 years in the late '90's. The developer previously used solar panels to power the irrigation controllers for the common areas, but most (panels and controllers) were stolen by the time I moved on. I moved to CR from Simi Valley. I had no idea Rain Bird had a plant there. Prolly after my time.
BTW, belated kudos to thousands of screwed senior citizens for the fine Continental Ranch flood control system Charles Keating built with your nest eggs, before his house of cards fell down.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Plus they would just go steal more until they get one that works.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Imagine your next new house, where the light switches are electronic remotes for the actual switch in the light fixture. Now imagine you can move it anywhere, stick it to the wall where ever you want.
So we can also lose the light switch in the couch along with the tv remote!
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
All this talk about preserving and protecting the Earth's environment and we still insist on encroaching on the desert. Won't this eventually have a biological and meteorological effect on the planet as well?
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Duud. You can start and stop your sprinklers remotely. Thanks a lot; now I'm gonna be modded -1 Stating teh Obvious:)
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
I used to work for another company that made similar products. There are all kinds of useful things you can do with these things.
Actually, I think the simplest use I saw was for simple metering. We sold a ton of them to the city of Abu Dhabi for that purpose. They didn't have to hire meter readers because the meters reported usage on their own. It would have been pretty simple for them to implement access control as well, but I don't know if they did.
The more interesting uses involved hooking up various sensors to the device. For example, you could use it to maintain a certain level of soil moisture, or automatically respond to frost conditions.
Anyway, I don't know about the company in TFA, but we used cellular sideband for wireless data. We had a variety of other comm options as well, like RS232/485 and IR, but probably none of those would would have been useful in this case.
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