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Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can access the device when you're away from home if it's internet connected. Of course, the server doesn't need to be doing much besides proxying connections.
And of course, you can easily run a VPN/Tailscale/ZeroTier/whatever to achieve the same without the downsides.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some government agency could be doing the escrow, at no charge to the company.
There is still a process cost to participate in any escrow process, both on an initial and on-going basis. (That's before the blindingly obvious observation that even something provided by the government at no cost at point of use has a cost which is ultimately borne by the people.)
Why not "This device does not support local cloudless control" and "This device does not allow 3rd party software access" labels too
Garage opener is a 10+ year device, expecting the company/cloud service to survive for that long and still be supported is too optimistic, but local control will still be usable, even if some 'adjustments' are needed.
One extra step I’ve learned to follow is to verify if needed, could the hardware be permanently redirected to a local server, and worst case reflagged with a different firmware or it can be redirected to remain local. The latter is sometimes easier if it’s a Tuya based device, which a lot of these unknown devices are. https://github.com/make-all/tuya-local One of the main things these “smart” devices do is use your i…
> https://github.com/make-all/tuya-local Just a small warning: make sure to check whether your device needs to be added to the Tuya cloud to get a local API key. I was only able to get "my" lamp working locally after registering it via the app and creating a developer account. Another option can be flashing it with Tasmota: https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Tuya-Convert/
From company statement: > Our customers rely on us to make access simple without sacrificing quality and reliability. Unauthorized app integrations, stemming from only 0.2% of myQ users, previously accounted for more than half of the traffic to and from the myQ system, and at times constituted a substantial DDOS event that consumed high quantities of resources. Yeah, that sounds plausible, because: - Home Assistant u…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can access the device when you're away from home if it's internet connected. Of course, the server doesn't need to be doing much besides proxying connections.
And of course, you can easily run a VPN/Tailscale/ZeroTier/whatever to achieve the same without the downsides.
Not for the average consumer.
I actually have gotten to know a lot of folks who are massive into home automation, who also know precisely fuck all about computers or whatnot.
List it cheep along with a warts and all discussion of it's problems. Means less waste as there's always someone who'll want it, people who are looking for the product hear about the limits upfront, and the company actually gets a real loss from you leaving (assuming it sells to someone who might have bought a new one).
Plus it's fun to try to convince enquirers why they shouldn't buy your item
FYI if you want smart things that are not yet limited by this bs decisions, afaik IKEA products are pretty neat
Yepp, I have some IKEA buttons and they are just Zigbee devices. They also sell lamps etc., mostly Zigbee based from what I remember. For the Germans (maybe other countries as well): The Lidl smart home things are nearly all Zigbee based. So far no problems with them and they are, IMO, reasonably priced. I somehow trust Lidl more to not burn my house down than random Amazon sellers. They also sell a Zigbee gateway th…
And now that Matter support is slowly trickling in, they should all be fully interoperable. Currently it's touch and go if a Ikea bulb works well with the Hue hub for example.
Based on my local big box store and garage installer availability, Chamberlain has a de facto monopoly. They also pulled the rug out from under customers: that behavior had been in Home Assistant since 2017, and it's their own recent changes that caused the alleged "DDoS". They say it's to promote official products, but the company previously had a local hub that didn't require their cloud service and discontinued it…
That project looks great! Now the issue is finding a Chamberlain or Liftmaster opener without myQ built-in. Or maybe I just don’t have to activate it.
The ratgdo is more trustworthy, and it just connects (really easily, too, especially with the new v2.5 board) to the opener via the same contacts that the dry contact button does.
I sort of have to assume in the case of large appliances that the manufacturer will drop support for it well before I want to replace it, and that if there is any sort of functionality fully gated behind an app, that it will become unusable to me at some point when I reset my phone and discover they’ve unpublished the app from the store.
I’d much rather buy a dumb garage door opener and bolt on that ratgd device mentioned in this post, than be beholden to the manufacturer’s whims and invariably godawful garbage horrible no-good app.