181–190 of 338 posts
Happened to me with some Kasa Smart devices I had owned for years. One day to be able to use the app I needed to create an account. A couple of months later the same thing happend with a Mi Band smart watch. The app required to create an account. Personally I won't be buying any smart devices ever again.
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It is absolutely their fault and not that of the public at large. Companies are not sentient “profit-maximizing machines, they’re a collection of people. And it’s people making the decisions.
But that's not how it effectively works at scale. It only takes a single person not bound by morals to mess it up for everyone. Those people naturally float to the top and are loved by shareholders (hence who's in charge at most places). Individually the organisation is made up of people, but at large it's a big anonymous machine because those people are rewarded super-duper one-dimensionally: Help profits and you're…
The onus might be on us as the public to change the laws to outlaw bad behaviour, but this does not absolve the companies, and especially the people within them who conduct, condone, or reward deceptive and unfair business practices.
I'm surprised they didn't already require this, but I think it's probably safe to say it was a likely and foreseeable outcome in any case. That, combined with a dearth of use cases that made sense (for my life) is what's kept me from using these products. About the only reason I could think of to buy smart lightbulbs would be to suddenly turn all the lights in the house red, and yell "torpedoes in the water, brace fo…
Smart lights are incredibly useful with infants/pre-verbal toddlers in the house. E.g. a quick "hey Google, set kids room lights to 20%" whilst trying to convince an energetic 2 year old to get ready for bedtime. They become rapidly less useful when the toddler learns to say "hey Google" and decides to make all lights green all the time.
That's what I've done in our house. Lots of dimmers. Some are "rocker switches with a slide along the side," other are more digital "push button to turn lights on to the last setting, small rocker to adjust light level, you can always come up from 0 by using the rocker" types.
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Shelly seems very good so far. No need to connect it to the cloud at all, or use their app, since you can configure the via an onboard web UI (well, they'll still check for firmware updates when you connect them to Wi-Fi, but that's it). They can be controlled from Home Assistant completely without internet. Of course, there's no guarantee for future products, but once they're set up they're not gonna change unless y…
From what I can see most of their products (all?) are z-wave, so even if they try to change as long as they don't break the z-wave support, you can buy a z-wave USB dongle and drop whatever wants to be directly connected to your network anyway.
I think if these had Z-Wave they would have cost a few dollars more each, due to licensing. It would be nice because I do have a Z-Wave mesh up and running alongside a zigbee mesh and a few oddball Wi-Fi only devices like these shellies, but they work well enough with home assistant that I don't consider to be a drawback yet.
The only thing I wish they could do better is expose more of their configurable options via whatever API they present to home assistant. A couple of these devices speak mqtt which opens up a few more capabilities, but there are still many fine-tuning aspects like controlling the way a switch attached to the device functions, i.e. whether it behaves as if it is detached or functional - useful with toddlers around) are invisible unless you are using the built-in web configuration page.
The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." In his desk d…
In the Polish comedy film "Miś" ("Teddy Bear"), released in 1981, there is a famous line: "We don't have your coat, what are you going to do about it?" This line is uttered in a cloakroom scene. In the scene, the protagonist Ryszard Ochódzki goes to a cloakroom to retrieve his coat. He hands over his ticket to the attendants. They search but claim they can't find his coat. Ochódzki becomes agitated but the attendants…
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can you still set up direct connection between a switch and a light which would work even if the hub is down?
All zigbee devices require a coordinator. It can be a raspberry pi or any other hardware/software with the radio, but it does have to be powered up.
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Fortunately all of their lights work over a standard Zigbee connection. No need for a Hue Hub or App at all. I was already transitioning my lights from using the Hue Hub/App to directly connecting via Zigbee/HomeAssistant before this was announced.
All except their new wifi connected ones... called Wiz.. watch out for those, much more affordable but really crappy app/setup situation.
The fact that they use ESP-NOW means they can be controlled (theoretically) by any ESP* that has ESP-NOW support. So far, folks have only managed to go the other way—to intercept remote key presses [0]—but I imagine it won’t be long before they suss out control of the bulbs.
"What's the worst that could happen, if we let MBA-types take over engineering?" "Even your home's light bulbs will require an Internet-connected computer account that spies on you."
Don't forget highly locked down garage doors that are readily accessible by major merchants. And also pair easily with similarly locked down in garage cameras.
We need a no-tether law. If you buy a product you should be able to use it even if you completely break all ties with the original vendor. Otherwise it's a service and not a product.