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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."
Phoned home.
Belthize
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!
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.
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.
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!
Yes, the wireless telco in this case is the one who did the rescue'ng. This was a very misleading headline, summary AND article. The perfect /. trifecta.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
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.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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
Sort of. If it wasn't for the controller automatically initiating a call, the cell tower or whoever wouldn't have been able to do anything.
You might chalk this up in the same sense that a passing motorist who witnesses an accident and phones for help saving the occupants of the car because of the efficient arrival of rescuers. Sure the person who phones in didn't do anything to stop the bleeding or keep the drivers heart beating but getting people who could do that there fast enough could have played a significant role in their survival. In this sense, there would be no cell tower, IP address or even communications to the former owner/monitor to suggest that it could be found.
I agree that the summery and article is a little misleading and over blown but it isn't flat out misleading or outragous.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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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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.
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?
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).
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'
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.
Evidently you guys didn't read the entire article, because the thieves returned the unit after three weeks due to the police attention. So the ISP triangulated the unit, the police scouted the location, the farm owner got wind of the heat and hid the evidence, the the farmer got rid of the hot equipment by returning it to the location they stole it from.
The most interesting thing is that it sounds like the farmer hooked it back up to the water and electrical systems when they put it back. Talk about a conscientous thief.
So yes, the device in essence rescued itself becase it screamed for help and brought so much attention to its location that the thief returned the device.
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