Staying Cool at Black Hat and DEFCON and BSides

Not every hotel in Vegas is guaranteed to have this style of thermostat, but if your room is equipped with this unit and it the A/C just isn't quite doing its job for you... give VIP mode (a.k.a. "Limited Environmental" mode) a try.

1. Press and Hold "Display"
2. Press "Off/Auto"
3. Press "Up"
4. Release "Display"
5. Be Cool ❄️🧊

- -- ----- ----------
Sign up for give-away drawings here...

I'm on Twitter. I mostly use it for swearing...

I'm also on Instagram. I mostly use it for liking my friends' photos...

This is my GitHub. I post my design files there...

This is my personal web site. Most things i create wind up online...

This is my company. We're good at stuff...

This is where i train. Come and learn badass skills...
- -- ----- ----------

[austinschuster]

Not all Heroes wear capes. But then again I can’t see you. Maybe you do wear a cape. Either way... cheers 🍻

[ProfessorJayTee]

Back in high school, I lived in a northern state during the "energy crisis." To save electricity, the electric room heaters were set to a minimum and we couldn't get any heat. Damned schools were trying to freeze students to death, I think... The windows in many rooms actually had built-up ice over them. Just to make sure we students couldn't do anything about that, the thermostats were then completely contained within vented boxes that required a key (that I didn't know how to pick at the time). Even the vents were built 'dog-legged' so we couldn't use a paperclip or something to reach through. So, we just dropped a wet paper or paper towel over the containment boxes to drive their internal temp down through evaporation and kick the damned heaters on. Teacher coming? Just yank the paper off.

[Fragger-]

I can never tell with Dev, if it's a trick that he's known for a really long time, or if it's something that took him like 2 minutes to figure out while he's there. Although frankly it's probably in an electronic manual online

[jtoomey]

I'm on the road 200+ days a year. Finding this "hack" several years ago changed my life! There are a ton of other T-Stat varieties out there that have similar modes. I have a playlist saved for when I get to a room at 2am and just can't remember which key sequence is required to get the room down to a reasonable temp.

[Veilure]

THIS IS SO COOL!!!
Not at DEFCON but I love to see tricks like this from you Dev :P

[blue]

Legit about to buy roller skates to let me get around the strip and around the inside of paris easier, and hacks like this make life so much easier for surviving in Vegas. Thank you!

[MBVid]

I know this one! They use the same thermostats at Disney's pop Century resort and this tip gets passed around those circles as a way to stop the room from getting hot in florida overnight because the sensor can't see movement when people are sleeping. These Honeywell models can also be labeled as Incomm.

[DeAtHKrUsHeR]

Did this in a hotel in Liverpool. Middle of a heatwave, 12th floor so no openable windows, room facing south. Daikin thermostat was set to work only while the room was occupied. Fortunately the service/admin password was the default one. Managed to turn off the occupancy mode and come back later to a room that wasn't 35 degrees. 😊

[user.A]

Those hotels where you fall asleep with the ac on and then wake up sweating in the middle of the night because of the motion sensor.

[Subgunman]

And how does one return it to locked mode? We don’t want to give ourselves away……
BTW, thanks for the info!

[maxmyzer]

my college turns on VIP mode for the dorms but turns it off after move-in, it sucks, I used to be able to override and but it doesn't let me now

[punkdigerati]

Just know that they are often networked and these changes can be logged. Unlikely to be a problem unless a whole bunch of people all do it at the same time in the same hotel.

[nounorightnow]

And it looks like, if you want to return it to the previous state (so nobody questions anything), it looks like the same key combo, except with the down arrow, shows "nor" for "normal".

[dgwdgw]

Needed this tip a month ago for an unplanned trip that had us staying in a… very uncomfortable suburban Philly hotel.
I also always think "VIP mode, that's super cool!" when watching videos like this, but then forget it exists when I'm actually in a room.

[hato_popo]

I use a soda bottle, duct tape, and a pair of chopsticks to hold the "lower" button for my school's dumb AC settings.
It's set at 25 C (77F) which didn't do much when there were servers in the room.
Low-No-tech but it just works lol

[EyeMWing]

And don't forget to make sure the effing windows are shut all the way (that's unlikely to be a problem in Vegas, but most other places...)

Was in a hotel a few yards from the 405 in LA last week and no matter what I did to the thermostat the room wouldn't get cold and there was *so much noise*

... Until the second day, when I noticed the window was ajar.

[emilysmith]

Now I just need a way for my apartment thermostat to go below 62F. My current annoying solution is to put the "follow me" remote on my computer to keep it warm. I have 2 ACs, and the problem is one AC is far enough away that the IR signal sometimes has trouble getting to it, especially if my mouse is in the wrong position, and for the other AC I can't get the IR to hit it while I'm using my computer which means I have to do a super annoying dance of warming it up, moving it to the side where it can signal to the AC, and moving it back and forth every few minutes.

[bryanlowy]

Been there one that! ~You can typically google the control type and find those modes.

[MikeHarris]

I hate those new thermostat that are motion triggered. Middle of the night the ac turns off. You leave and come back to a hot room. Ugh

Thank you for this!!!!

[shoot]

If you press the down arrow instead it puts it back in normal mode when you leave