Introduction

I would like to thank the organizers and sponsors of this challenge and for giving me the chance to take part and learn.

This is my first challenge and will be my first major programming project in at least 10 years and my first electronic design in more than 20 years. So please be patient with me, I might have a rather slow start.

So why is such a total noob as I am entering such a challenge?

In the detailed description for the challenge Pat Kelly writes:

„element14 believes that the Internet of Things may hit a roadblock: namely, the lack of secure communications between objects and individuals could lead to a situation in which data is being shared without explicit consent and exploited for malicious purposes.“

I totally second that. And I am amazed that anybody thinks „security first“ because the world already is full of devices and gadgets which are shipped with the functionality barely in place and no security at all. And this is even the best case – many corporations try to gather as much data about us as possible. New products and services seem to be launched only for that purpose.

Therefore I will use my 15+ year experience in security to see what I can do about this problem.

Project Idea

Our Key Hooks looks like this:

As you can see it is not only used to store the keys, but it also serves as a message board. Since every household member has an own keyring and would not leave home without it one can determine who's at home by looking at board. Hanging the key would be one of the first thing one does when back home. If you look closer you can see a few key rings with only one or two keys. That belong to special security profiles like "guest". Er, sorry for the security language - I am to used to it. What I meant to say was there are keys which we hand to our guest to allow them to leave and come back on their own. An other example is the key to the shed or the garage.

Enchantment

How could this ordinary object be improved with more functions?

First Idea is to make the offline functions available online. Second is to add functionality we are used to in the connected world to this object.

Planed features

• Sharing status and state changes (“at home”, “out” , “leaving”, “arrived”) online
• Displaying additional online status information through LEDs
• Detect additional changes on the board (add / remove paper note)
• Leaving speech messages

Challenges

• Detection and identification of the key rings
• User interface (I don't want to add buttons etc.)
• and of course security

Security

Security is important, not only in this callenge. Therefore the security related problems deserve their own chapter:

• Fair Rolles / rights concept
• End to end encryption for all data shared over the internet
• Leave as much data within the object as possible
• "Harden" the object against attacks from the internet

Use of the Project's Results

For me this project will definitely be definitely a big learning experience - hopefully for others, too. Furthermore it will be the first and useful piece of my "Smart Home". If others can use parts or ideas, especially security, for other projects my goals would be over achieved. For all thos who made it this far: hope you'll join my in my next blog post, also!