- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Ah yes to make your lights work, we need all your data. Stuff like this is why I don’t have “smart” anything.
It’s perfectly possible to have a smart home that does not call home. Home Assistant is an amazing piece of software that can allow smart devices from different manufacturers talk to each other without connecting to a cloud service — all done locally.
This is the only way I would go about it. Maybe in the future if I really want it but really, the more tech, the more vulnerabilities. I’m fine with manually turning things on and off even if it’s self hosted.
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How
Put home assistant on a raspberry pi, plug a Zigbee dongle to it, and start connecting smart gadgets to it. Or better yet buy a home assistant Green. You can check the home assistant docs to see if a smart device requires cloud connectivity to work — in general if it connects through Zigbee (or ZWave or Matter) then you’re good, but if it connects through WiFi then it probably is cloud based.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
https://www.seeedstudio.com/Home-Assistant-Green-p-5792.html
Why do I need a RaspberryPi? I can’t use my regular Linux PC? What is a Zigbee dongle and why is it mandatory? What do I do if he device is cloud based?
Awesome timing, was about to add a whole lot of them to my new house, guess that ain’t happening
I bough a TP-Link smart bulb once. It was very nice - I could just download a “tp link bulb client” written for everyone by some third-party dude. If I wanted to, I could add a desktop shortcut to turn on/off the bulb.
Then TP-Link decided to automatically update the firmware of the bulb without my knowledge. The update turned off the REST API that made the third-party client to work. I could only use the shitty MOBILE app from then on.
The update was impossible to revert (though TP-Link said “Ok write to our support and we’ll give you the downgrade file” no fuck you).
Ever since I’ve vowed to heavily think whether I want to buy a non-open-source firmware smart device ever again. Recently I bought a smart bulb and two smart sockets that come pre-flashed with “Tasmota” and “WLED” firmware out of the factory and they work great.
And I OWN them too
Many years ago i bought an RGB LED and naively thought the remote signal must have some standard protocol, because it is so simple commands that would allow for some cool shit if automated. Oh boy was i wrong. Proprietary smart home software is the most insane. How on earth should your home become “smart” when it is locked into some ideology (manufacturer) or worse yet you have multiple “parties” fighting over the government causing a shutdown.
Tasmota is great but I’ve found the number of available devices is limited. For instance Tasmota smart dimmer plugs do not exist, nor could I find a stand alone controller.
Z-wave or Zigbee integration dramatically expand the number of available options and work with local controllers.
I too get the feeling that the selection of devices with Tasmota pre-flashed is rather limited. Due to the nature of Tasmota, those devices will only be Wi-Fi devices, which further causes problems with battery usage (contrary to Zigbee/Z-wave etc.) 15 minutes ago I was looking at smart buttons that can run Tasmota, and I’ve only found the Shelly Button 1. And funnily enough, it’s possible to connect it with microUSB (!) so it stays charged.
All zigbee devices’ firmware is proprietary though, no? This is why I’m willing to suffer for Tasmota
The device list seems larger if you’re willing to flash Tasmota yourself: https://templates.blakadder.com/
Zigbee does work with a generic controller on Home Assistant and other platforms, and there are >3100 devices that are compatible with zigbee2mqtt, a Zigbee to MQTT bridge that exists to bypass the need for proprietary Zigbee bridges. No proprietary app or Internet access required either, but it was not easy to set up. Here’s a list of supported devices: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/