READ ME - Shop Access Update - OpenPath [as of July 2021]

Seems again not working for your fob. I’ve heard other reports of having to use the front door today.

Not sure what else to check; administration will have to circle for a minute and decide what to do next.

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It’s OpenPath’s fault that they don’t tell you the failure modes. I happen to have lots of experience with Bluetooth, so I know a lot of the issues. We had a BLE system on our office front door–we eventually gave up on the contactless thing as too unreliable. We eventually settled on the “pull out your phone, open an app, and tap a button”. It’s annoying–but it is quite reliable.

The primary issue is that 2.4GHz gets absorbed by water, and humans are meatbags of water. So, a human being does a really good job of obstructing WiFi and Bluetooth. A secondary issue is that metal plates and girders are good reflectors of 2.4GHz so you sometimes get remarkably strong signals over larger distances. Combine the two, and BLE/WiFi does not have a reliable way to get a “range” measurement. RSSI is a decent approximation, but only to about 85-90%. That means that 1 in 10 times, it’s out to lunch.

This is especially an issue if the phone is in a back pocket or purse/backpack/duffle bag. Think how much human being it has to go through. People have patents on things like inductive and magnetic transmission because it’s difficult to even communicate between earbuds on either side of your head, for example.

Hello Jon
I am going to want access to the space this week, I still have not seen my open path invite. I signed to paperwork several days ago, my Neon should be operational.
I have been active with this org for several years, do I really have to take an orientation?
This process is so disjointed and convoluted. I have no clue where to find out my status.

Very frustrated, getting ready to drop this whole shit sandwich.

Wolf

Wolf,

Your OpenPath invite was sent around 10pm on August 5th and the audit log shows somebody activated the mobile app with that invitation about an hour later.

Could somebody else be receiving your email? What problems are you having?

Yeah we did try and found someone can open the door from the outside with no OP auth if someone is near the door on the inside, and it will log the wrong person. I didn’t test how far, but it definitely will if the person on the inside is immediately at the door. Some shielding on the door behind the “wave” sensor could reduce that if it’s an actual concern.

I think @Jon already mentioned this, but the wave function has a sensitivity adjustment. It’s set for the furthest distance right now, so we’ve got a lot of room to adjust and tweak. Shielding is a cool idea too.

Okay, got this sorted, must not have moved app to phone screen. I have no recollection of ever seeing the invite or the app. My apologies.
I think I will swing by in the next day or so to test OP before actually NEEDing to use it, just in case.
My A.D.D. is a real bear sometimes.

Peace, Wolf

Sensitivity won’t help. A phone in a backpack with a human in between is always going to be something like 30-40 dBm down from a phone in a nearby back pocket without a human in between. If you’re genuinely worried about misfires and misattribution, you’ll have to disable the “auth by hand wave.” which relies on BLE scanning and RSSI.

I did verify that the OpenPath software allows you to “push a button” on the app and open the door manually. That works and doesn’t seem to misfire.

I did try to measure the draw of leaving the “wave auth” running in the background.
Is it a lot? Well, that’s contextual.

On my Pixel 3a, I only lost like 3% left unplugged overnight totally unused, about 6 hrs. But with OpenPath Wave running, it was about 12% in like 6 hrs, so it can’t use its regular deep sleep mode the same way. So, if you normally run down the battery by actually using you phone a lot and charge regularly, this may not be much.

But if it’s asleep most of the day, OP Wave could eat up an additional 36% of the battery across the course of the day. I didn’t try to leave my phone unused over 24 hrs, that’s not gonna happen. My methods weren’t all that accurate, but it does clearly show reduces your days of standby life to a fraction of normal. So, you would disable OPW before going camping, but… well, then you’d do that because you’re not gonna us OPW while camping anyhow.

Disabling the background service doesn’t completely kill wave-auth. Last time I was in, I opened the front door manually by launching the app and clicking the button, then wave-auth worked while I was wandering around and in and out for the rest of the afternoon. I suspect it just keeps working until Android gets around to killing the app for resources.

The OpenPath app presumably always launches a background task to do BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) scanning as soon as you start the app.

Yes, it should be better behaved and shut down the task when it’s not the foreground task when not in “wave to open” mode, but … programmers.

You can launch OpenPath temporarily for access, but a key benefit here is being able to just wave through the door without taking your phone out of your pocket to foreground the app. Your hands can be full of other things, elbow the wave sensor, pull the door open with the foot thing, and walk through carrying a bulky item you didn’t ever have to drop to fiddle with the door.

For that, you need to be running OP in the background, at least while you’re coming in and out. If you charge regularly during the day this isn’t likely going to be a prob. On my Pixel 3a, when picked up it (prior to unlocking the phone) it lists that OpenPath is running on the Notifications list.

I did check, with my phone in the front pocket and backing up to the door, it WILL still see the phone through my thigh. FWIW

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The workshop door is on OpenPath now. The old keyfob system is fully shut down (not that it was working much toward the end there anyway)

Enjoy the quiet in the electronics lab :slight_smile:

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One thing I did seem to notice is that “pushing the button” on the app didn’t seem to be working anymore. It would complain about remotely opening the door.

Did some security setting change?

I noticed it Sunday when I was helping someone get their permissions straightened out.

which door?

Local-open (via the reader) and remote-open (via the internet) are two different permissions. When you try to open a door in the app, it first pings to see if it can see the reader locally before trying the cloud route if you have remote-open permission.

I think app-initiated local open has a longer range than wave-to-open detection (at least, it works from further away for me) but it doesn’t reach all the way across the building.

That’s cool is has local vs remote open. We definitely wouldn’t want remote option set!

It was the door by the ramp.

The problem with not allowing remote open is that if 2.4GHz is scrambled (microwave ovens, for example, are good at that), you can’t get in the door. Or, if there’s enough mist in the air, you can’t get in the door. Or, if your permissions get scrambled, you can’t open the door. Or, if your phone goes into power savings mode (often disables WiFi, BLE and GPS but leaves cellular data intact), you can’t open the door. Or, …

I can certainly picture situations where someone is standing outside and their phone isn’t opening the door but they could call someone who could open the door.

And, what’s the threat enabled by allowing remote open for registered members? Someone in China can hack a phone and open our door? Okaaay. Now what?

If someone wanted to clean out the place physically, they could tailgate or wait until someone is close enough and wave the opener. Or just smash a window.

The door entry system is just to stop your average miscreant from walking in off the street and nicking our stuff. It won’t stop anyone with even a basic level of competence.

And, unlike all the proximity stuff, remote open is always correctly identified and logged. Proximity is a mixed bag.

I don’t feel strongly enough about remote open (I am in the positive direction on it) to fight about it, but I also would like to put that it isn’t really a threat either due to the fact that someone needs to be physically present at the space to take advantage of it anyway.

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What happens to OpenPath when you pause/resume your membership? Does it automatically start working again once you resume/pay? Or is there some action that needs to be taken?

It runs on an automated script several times a day, and should just start working again

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This topic should be updated to reflect the timeline