I've learned my lesson and no longer buy WiFi connected "smart" devices, unless I can flash them with custom firmwares.
ZigBee isn't without its flaws too but at least I can guarantee that the device doesn't require someone's online service to function. I just wish more devices offered it.
Pretty much anything with WiFi in it requires installing some dodgy looking app that requires you sign in with yet another account, and will probably stop working in a few years or when you eventually need to reconfigure your home's WiFi network.
My old dumb tv is failing. After looking online, it seems the only dumb TVs left are in the US (Spectre and very little else) and not available in Germany. At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/
At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/
I have a smart TV not connected to the internet, just a HDMI connection to another box. Then I learned that IP-over-HDMI is a thing!
In the very near future this will be even more futile - the TV will have it’s own built-in cellular connection just for telemetry. Anyone who objects will be shouted down as a 5G conspiracy nut, but this is exactly what 5G is designed for.
Anecdotally, the first Sony smart tv my grandma got (after her old tube TV died) managed to receive a firmware upgrade over the antenna cable (don't remember if it was cable TV or satellite). She certainly didn't have any internet in her home.
Of course that led to a fun episode of "My TV is broken" (actually just showing a prompt to start the firmware upgrade), in general she got very confused by the smart TVs UI often...
We bought a larger monitor for the computer and have it placed where we can watch movies from the sofa. It's not as nice as a real dedicated TV, but saves space and avoids the headache of modern TVs.
depending on your budget, you could look for "digital information displays" which are displays that are meant for advertising in shops/malls/storefronts, and most of them are literally 'giant monitors" with no smart features. Expect it to be pricier though.
Don't know about you, but when my 2017 Sony (not so smart, but starts fast and doesn't call home) will die, I'm not going to buy a regular TV set anymore but just a monitor, like I used to with my old PS3 and PlayTV. What's left of free-to-air TV (state broadcasters on DVB, if the signal is even strong enough) frankly feels like religious programs played in prisons. It's caustic and depressive social-pedagogical palliative crap, during coronavirus more than ever. Someone from Hollywood should come over and teach about the concept called "entertainment".
Nextdns is the best solution I found to this problem (they have a smart TVs blocklist) along with a firewall rule that blocks all port 53 traffic except to approved dns.
Shame this stops working with the next firmware update that switches your TV to DNS-over-HTTPS. Because then, just like google ads switching to the main google.com domain, you will have to choose to block either every service from your tv manufacturer (including firmware security updates) or allow it all through.
My next TV is going to be a dumb one with a bespoke HTPC...
to be fair, I'm actually too stupid to vacuum a carpet vs floor without it auto adjusting fo me, so just to play devil's advocate, my vacuum has worked wonders on sucking up the ight amount of floor baddies. I can also forgive the glass stuck on the floor on thanksgiving night because of all the help it's been 364 days of the year.
edit: oh yeah my letterr "R" key is broken on my 2015 macbook po fom all my refreshing, so sorry fo the typos
> I've learned my lesson and no longer buy WiFi connected "smart" devices
Not to gloat or enjoy too much schadenfreude, but many of us learnt the lesson in advance because we saw it coming. It may just be because we are old and cynical though.
HomeKit compatibility is also a reasonable proxy; that's because HomeKit requires that a device operate without a manufacturer's service, and expose local APIs that your iDev can use.
The fact that so many manufacturers are happy to certify with Alexa and Google, but not HomeKit, tells me a bit about their business models.
Yes it‘s 100% local, but i cant remember whether its using bluetooth or wifi. And if you want to control it from remote a homekit controller will male a secure connection from your apple device to your home network by proxying encrypted data through apple servers.
From a Reddit comment: "The home assistant tp-link integration already makes use of the local api connecting to the devices. I'd definitely recommend using a reserved dhcp address and specifying the devices in your ha config (not using auto discovery)."
They do if you want to use most of the functionality (e.g routines, scenes, connecting to a smart assistant, etc.) Using them without an account basically just lets you use your phone to turn them on and off.
Fortunately this is also true with many devices, but knowing which ones allow this before buying is the problem. Most shops won't advertise the chipset. This is also beyond the abilities of 99% of the population.
Yes (the Tradfri line). I just bought some to set up with home assistant and they all have the ZigBee logo.
I was a little surprised, but pleased, to see that Lidl are launching a smart home line this week, which is all ZigBee too - that is definitely not niche either. They even mention the interoperability and privacy as selling points!
It’s a home automation protocol, like X10. You buy devices that can talk ZigBee to a hub device (probably can use a computer on your local network for this). From the hub you can do all the usual automation tasks.
To extend that slightly: it's a low-throughput, low-power mesh network that doesn't need the smarts or power draw of Wifi. Because it needs an in-home hub anyway, it's unlikely to die without Internet access, and devices on the standard have at least some level of basic inter-operability.
So if I wanted to say put a bunch of sensors in my house to monitor temperature over time without necessarily tying that info to my thermostat or anything, is this ZigBee thing a promising thing to look into?
Yes, and there is even a great FLOSS hub software Home Assistant [0] (though to be fair, it requires some tinkering compared to the proprietary systems) and if you run it on a PI or small server, you might as well get a conbee II which is a USB stick that adds Zigbee support directly :)
The bigger hassle seems to be different zigbee hubs that have varying levels of compatibility, so while you can pair the devices you can't get the data you want.
I've just been down the research rabbit hole, and about to try using zigbee2mqtt to bypass this nonsense (this also then means the only internet connectivity will be through a device you control)
Also systems like Philips Hue use ZigBee protocol. We have Hue lights at home and I'm planning to plug a ConBee II to my router for the Home Assistant to see how well I can run the lights with another hub.
Philips Hue hub talks to diagnostics.meethue.com all the time, and it gets kind of annoying already in the pihole stats.
there's also a difference between IoT and "look ma I wired an ESP32 to a DHT22 and sent data to timstream on my NAS". The latter is entirely you. WiFI isn't the issue, it's running cloud based hardware that can't work without someone's servers.
Bought a WiFi light bulb for fun years back, it died and they replaced it then it recent died again and I just went back to a standard bulb. Even when it worked it would periodically lose connection the the WiFi and need a reset, assuming the app worked correctly and paired. Not worth the hassle.
Some of the colour changing WiFi bulbs seem pretty neat though. I used to have a Philips Hue (standalone, two of them) and mucking about with those remotes wasn't always that great either.
We are talking about a full computer that is small and cheap enough to control a single light bulb. We got here through unbelievable technological development.
Why would you want it to stop now, when the tech is both amazing _and_ rough around the edges? Better hope development continues and the end-user experience stabilizes to something much better.
I share your enthusiasm for how amazing our technology has gotten, but I'm also experienced enough to know that the technology will always be "rough around the edges" as you put it, because maximising profit doesn't require stable end-user experiences that are as good as they can be - they'll constantly be just barely good enough to make it into the shops, and then let the marketing take care of getting enough wallets to open up to make a profit on them.
Capitalism continuously fails to deliver on its promise of "may the best win, and may all be incentivised to be the best" because companies have found several loopholes in its assumptions - constantly introducing flashy new features so the basic faults don't get the airtime they should, advertising with the best psychological manipulation money can buy, and flooding the market with enough barely distinguishable models
that simple decision fatigue gets enough people giving up on research and buying the crappy models unwittingly.
I have 10 LIFX bulbs. Hardware wise they're really great. I don't mind having to connect them to WiFi. However, the app to control them is, bar none, the biggest piece of shit app I've ever used. I can barely control my lights.
The scheduling is pretty handy though. I have half a dozen outside and they turn on / off with dusk / dawn. In addition to that I have them set to go to bright white and 30-50% at night (just enough to keep security cameras in color mode).
I’ve had an unacceptably high AFR with all LIFX bulbs, although I’ll concede their support is fantastic at shipping replacements to me. We’ve had about 20-22% failure rate of bulbs within 2 years of ownership, seen across ~60 of them. In addition to that about another 20% have needed factory resetting once or twice in the same period, because they stopped interacting with WiFi and the first-party application in ways that just turning off and on again at the light switch didn’t fix.
In contrast to this we’ve had exactly one Philips Hue fail on us. Also cheerfully replaced for us. None of them have needed resetting and we have about the same # of light fixtures deployed. Probably the most annoying problem is Hue Play’s are prone to coil whine at 100% brightness on on certain scene colors, particularly those involving blue-white (6000K). Resolvable by going < 5000K or dropping to 90% brightness, I haven’t attempted to get warranty replacement for this issue but about 16/22 of my Hue Play’s are affected by the issue.
Integrated with Google Home it’s also common that some % of LIFX bulbs won’t respond to a “turn off all the lights” command, whereas Philips is very good at on/off even when the command involves large numbers of bulbs...
All the lights in my house are the philips hue that I bought back in 2013. So far I have replaced 2 only. The last one was coming back on by itself... wierd to replace a lightbulb because it doesn’t want to be turn off...
I don’t know if I will ever understand how someone can write out a comment clearly indicating a massive pain in the ass (20 lightbulbs failing and requiring calls to tech support, RMA, etc), and not be using it to talk about how this whole industry is a nightmare.
If you buy a car that keeps on breaking down, will you talk about how the auto industry is a nightmare or will you just pick a different manufacturer next time?
I am clearly bringing bias to this conversation, but I have dabbled with some smart items (hub, locks), and have a friend who is into them. It’s non stop fiddling and fixing from all my actual experiences.
You also have to remember the negative externalities of extra e-trash affect everyone, so to read about yet another iot failure, it’s easy for me to continue to trash the whole industry.
I’ll concede the point on a technicality, but will still stand by my motivation behind that comment - increasing the maintenance requirements for normal life sounds like a terrible way to spend money, environmental impact, and time...
"It works well" doesn't sound like "a technicality", but okay.
Humans remember negative experiences much stronger than positive ones, and "it just works" isn't really something you tend to notice in the first place. There's a lot of bias here.
Looks like zigbee is moving closer to critical mass. Echo’s now ship with zigbee radios, and the zigbee alliance has been a lot more active. Hoping in the near future everything just works on zigbee
Sonos has been a great example of this for me. For those that don't know Sonos products are WiFi speakers, sound bars and subwoofers. I've had them for around 4 years and whilst they're controlled through the Sonos app (and third parties) if our internet crashes there is no hiccup whatsoever.
I was a bit upset when I discovered that I needed to connect my new Bose speaker to internet just to configure it, but at least it is usable without internet, so I blacklisted it in my router.
Spotify sends home what I am listening to, why would I care if my speakers do as well. I can also control Sonos through the Sonos app or directly through Spotify.
Also these speakers have only improved over the years through software improvements which would have only been made possible having a connection to the internet.
A speaker's output transfer function is determined by the drivers, the chassis, bass reflex or not, frequency splitter, etc. Software has nothing to do with it. And even if you're only listening to Spotify or using fully-integrated equipment from Sonos or others, you will care if your speaker decides to play ads, in addition to Spotify ads.
Yep. As long as your LAN is functional and the hub (which uses the ZigBee protocol often referenced in the comments here) is appropriately routeable, internet access is entirely optional - unless of course you want to control the lights from outside of your home.
Then what prevents the app from being the path, in either/both directions? Reporting on the activities of the devices it can see, as well as sending firmware updates to them?
Your printer gets firmware updates from HP, whenever HP wants, right past all your firewalls and vlans and non-routable subnets, in the form of print jobs from your pc.
If you want to control your lights from outside your home you can either setup a WireGuard LAN or just enable the integration with apple home if you are already in the ecosystem.
Apple has less incentives to spy on you than whoever is running philips hue.
ZigBee isn't without its flaws too but at least I can guarantee that the device doesn't require someone's online service to function. I just wish more devices offered it.
Pretty much anything with WiFi in it requires installing some dodgy looking app that requires you sign in with yet another account, and will probably stop working in a few years or when you eventually need to reconfigure your home's WiFi network.