Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: Passive Sensor Net
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
The Jopp
So, how do we make a cheap and reliable shadowrunner detection system?

RFID tags

RFID tags have a signal of 0 which gives a range of 3 meters and a sensor package of 1. Let us assume that with the advances of superconducting materials and battery life these things can function for at least a few years before degrading. We also put all of them in hidden mode.

1 RFID tag cost 1Y which mean that a corporation can shell out say…100K on RFID tags, get a 30% cost reduction for bulk purchase.

Now we come to the sensors.
Barometric Sensor [Measures Pressure Changes]
Motion Sensor
Thermometric [Measure Heat]
Microphone

Insert RFID tags all over the mesh in buildings just below the:
- Floor
- Walls
- Ceiling
- Doors/Windows

Let’s assume 30% cost reduction for bulk purchased and skip VAT cost and suchlike.
70K one hundred thousand RFID tags
350K for twenty-five thousand Thermometric Sensors
0,468750K for twenty-five thousand R1 Barometric Sensors
0,875K for twenty-five thousand R1 Microphones
0,875K for twenty-five thousand R1 Motion Sensors

Total: 2.638.750,00Y

Two and a half million Yen isn’t expensive for a company who are concerned about security adding 100.000 sensors in a building.

Each floor have barometric RFID tags inserted just below the linoleum floor detecting pressure changes.
Microphones are hidden in ceiling and walls.
Motion sensors are scattered close to windows and doors
Thermometric sensors are built into doors and each and every handle of the building.

These might be low grade rating 1 sensors, but there are 25.000 of each type.

All of them report individually through a network that can ONLY receive RFID tag sensor data information, you need to break into the hardware to reprogram it.

The information center link all the reports together to form an “image” of movement through the building and report any changes within.

The more sensor hits the center receives the higher priority the alarm gets.

Information centers might hidden within the walls as well and function as a hidden network connected through the building with fibreoptic cables – thus almost impossible to find.

Add two security guards with a yearly income of 30K a year (slightly above low lifestyle) who have a hand-held receiver that can receive the same information as the center gains from the sensors – adding a human security decision (albeit cheap).
D2F
Interesting concept but it hinges on two premises:

1. You assume the runners enter the taret area in off-hours.
2. You assume they don't just spoof information to the receiver.

That aside, there is a terribly devastating counter to your security system: Area Jammers.
It all really depends on what triggers an alert. If the loss of a signal triggers an alarm, you will have a lot of false alarms in your system. If only actual reports trigger an alert, the entire System can be defeated by a 500¥ piece of hardware.

Additional tech solutions to consider:
- Radio Signal Scanner
- HERF Gun
- EMP Grenade
Blade
The problem with rating 1 sensor is that they critically glitch too frequently.
Jaid
there is no such thing as a network that can only interface with RFIDs. now, you could have it offline, and located in the center of the area protected by the RFIDs. but by 2070, they can crack codes that are today assumed to be essentially unbreakable, and they can do it in under a minute. you're not going to be able to design a system that won't interface with anything else, particularly if it's using a common, widely-used format (like RFIDs). this is going to be a standardised interface of some kind, and all it will take is some software to interpret it (probably the software isn't even hard to get). all they have to do is get into your sensor net of RFIDs (which are not very hard to hack, being all low device rating) and they can take it over; either it is wireless and is extremely easy to crack, or it is wired and is easy to crack once a fairly basic hardware test has been performed.

that said, 2 million nuyen.gif isn't that much at first glance, but you have to design a system that can subscribe to 100,000 devices (good luck with that). furthermore, while this sort of system *might* be used in high security locations, it won't be used in the vast majority, even of the sorts of places that shadowrunners get hired to break into. furthermore, you're going to be dealing with a lot of information, and probably a lot of false alarms; if you have rats in your place of business, you're going to be hearing from them almost constantly, for example. i suppose you could cluster them all, but that's going to mean that the central system has a monstrously huge processor limit, and is almost assuredly rating 1. which means your security is practically a sieve. unless of course you upgrade each and every one of those RFIDs, which won't be cheap.
Ghremdal
I see a big weakness this security setup has against a infiltration specialist that uses the walls to get around the place (with gecko tape gloves or something similar). Move slowly and quietly enough you wont trigger the microphone and motion sensors, climbing the walls avoids the floor sensors and using a thermal dampening enhancement on armor gets you past the heat sensors.
Karoline
See, the real problem is that there are tons of ways to make something secure beyond anything that the runners could ever have a hope of bypassing.

I mean you want really simple? Put a door (Any kind of door, doesn't matter, doesn't even have to be locked) and on the other side of it put a camera. This camera is in offline mode. It is hooked up to a commlink which is also offline (fiberoptic connection to each other). The commlink has signal 6 and the program that helps against jammers, making it impossible(?) to jam (And is perhaps hooked up via fiberoptic to a second commlink elsewhere in the building, making it even harder to jam both, figuring you even know it exists in the first place). The camera is motion sensitive, and also compares the position of the door to the position it is supposed to be in (Thus preventing moving slowly to bypass the motion sensor). When anything abnormal is detected, it activates the commlink's wireless and puts out an alarm or call or whatever.

Basically impossible to get past the door. Breaking the door would trip the alarm. Opening the door slowly would trigger the alarm. You can't hack it beforehand because it is on the other side of the door and doesn't have wireless. You can't jam it because you don't know about it in the first place, and even if you did, it would require a rating 12 jammer. About the only way to bypass this is to break through the wall somewhere (outside the camera's range), but that is fairly likely to be detected as well by other means.

Sure, it's a bit expensive for the commlink, but it is basically impossible to get past the door. Obviously not for your everyday door, but good for high security areas.
Ghremdal
The best security systems are not the most expensive or outrageous, but those that are the least known. Every security measure can be bypassed if it is known, and the runners have enough time and nuyen. Its the security measure that the runners don't know about that gets them.

For me the most secure system is a air pressure detector. Keep a room pressurized and any change in pressure triggers the alarm. It is bypassable, it just takes a lot of time.
Kumo
That reminds me about one of my weird ideas...
Let's say some squatter in Redmond catches some big cockroaches. He glues sensor RFIDs with cameras to them and lets cockroaches loose in his squat. With some cheap transmitters and monitors from junkyard (and food for cockroaches in strategic places) he has a kind of monitoring system - ineffective, but also unexpected.
Night Jackal
Solution to the Door problem:

Ultrawide Radar to get a picture of next room get an idea of security. Drill or slip drone under door (Air ducts...or other methods of going though to another room) a small hole thru door and place a Tapper drone to walk into room through hole. Non-linear detector on the drone too to find the camera if needed.

Hack commlink with drone plug in.
ravensoracle
I think we can take the OP original intent and scale it back to more street levels. Take a set of 20 Stealth RFID Sensors add cameras and such. This loadout is one example.

...RFID Stealth Sensor Package...
Total Cost 4255Y
20X Stealth RFID Sensor -5Y for 20 Tags (Avail-6)
*5 Sensors w/
-Camera (Micro) R1 -100Y
w/Thermographic Vision -100Y (Avail +6)
*5 Sensors w/
-Microphone (Micro) R1 -50Y
w/Select Sound Filter R3 -300Y (Avail +2)
*5 Sensors w/
-Camera (Micro) R1 -100Y
w/Low-Light -100Y (Avail +4)
*5 Sensors w/
-Radio Signal Scanner R6 -150Y (Avail 4R)

Take this setup and place scatter them through a room of interest. Set them to record deleting older files when memory becomes an issue. Then just leave them there. Don't have them transmit until a crime has been committed and you have to go back and review the evidence. Now you have the runners on 20 seperate sensors in the room that were hard to notice in the first place, was not attached to the security network the hacker took out ,and didn't matter if they were jammed at the time since they weren't transmitting.

I ran with this simple setup during a game I GM'd when I wanted to convey how runner's have to take active measures in concealing their identity during a run. Only to make it not such a mood killer for the players, I had it as one of the PC's Contact's security on the garage where the PC was stealing a van for use. All the Fallout they got was a low level contact getting pissed off.

This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012