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Wanted to spy on my dog, ended up spying on TP-Link

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Re: Wanted to spy on my dog, ended up spying on TP-Link

#2

Post by gnabgib »

Somewhat related:

The Tapo C200 research project https://drmnsamoliu.github.io/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37813013)

PyTapo: Python library for communication with Tapo Cameras https://github.com/JurajNyiri/pytapo (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41267062)

Re: Wanted to spy on my dog, ended up spying on TP-Link

#7

Post by xp84 »

micah94 wrote: post #5

So we're at the point that finding hardcoded admin passwords is no big deal.

I mean, given that it's updated after setup with the normal flow, I'm okay with it.

The thing I've most been convinced of in the past 5 years of building as much 'iot/smart home' stuff out as possible in my house is that nearly every vendor is selling crap that has marginal usefulness outside of a 'party trick' in isolation. Building out a whole smart home setup is frustrating unless it's all from one vendor, but there isn't one vendor which does all of it well for every need.

On my phone I have apps for: Ecobee, Lutron, Hue, 4 separate camera vendors[1], Meross, and Smart Life. Probably a couple more that I'm forgetting.

Only Lutron and Hue are reasonable in that they allow pretty comprehensive control to be done by a hub or HomeKit so I never have to use those apps.

It's been years since Matter and Thread were supposedly settled upon as the new standards for control and networking, but the market is, instead of being full of compatible devices, instead absolutely packed with cheap wi-fi devices, each of which is cloud-dependent and demands to be administered and even used day-to-day only through a pile-of-garbage mobile app whose main purpose is to upsell you on some cloud services.

[1] I admit the fact I have 4 is my fault for opportunistically buying cameras that were cheap rather than at least sticking with one vendor. But many people have a good excuse, perhaps one vendor makes the best doorbell camera, while another might make a better PTZ indoor camera.

Re: Wanted to spy on my dog, ended up spying on TP-Link

#9

Post by hleszek »

xp84 wrote: post #7
micah94 wrote: post #5

So we're at the point that finding hardcoded admin passwords is no big deal.

I mean, given that it's updated after setup with the normal flow, I'm okay with it. The thing I've most been convinced of in the past 5 years of building as much 'iot/smart home' stuff out as possible in my house is that nearly every vendor is selling crap that has marginal usefulness outside of a 'party trick' in isolation. Building out a whole smart home setup is frustrating unless it's all from one vendor, but the…

Home Assistant is making more and more sense to make your own fully local and private home automation system.

Re: Wanted to spy on my dog, ended up spying on TP-Link

#10

Post by radlad »

hleszek wrote: post #9
xp84 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, given that it's updated after setup with the normal flow, I'm okay with it. The thing I've most been convinced of in the past 5 years of building as much 'iot/smart home' stuff out as possible in my house is that nearly every vendor is selling crap that has marginal usefulness outside of a 'party trick' in isolation. Building out a whole smart home setup is frustrating unless it's all from one vendor, but the…

Home Assistant is making more and more sense to make your own fully local and private home automation system.

Absolutely. I've been using Home Assistant for around 6 years now and it's absolutely amazing for tying hardware from varying ecosystems together.

Even if your hardware doesn't support local APIs, there's a good chance someone has made an HA integration to talk to their cloud API.

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