15 ms·

Mozilla debuts implementation of WebThings Gateway open-source router firmware

549 points by cpeterso 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Proven 7y ago
They’re constantly coming up with new ways to make money with aggregated data mining. Mostly it’s about crating services by copying established OSS functionality but still - good job!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zaarn 7y ago
  Okay, so what part of this open source and locally hosted application will do the datamining?
  - Proven 7y ago
    1) OTA still can be disabled only by hacking the source code https://github.com/mozilla-iot/gateway/issues/565#issuecomment-367019060 https://github.com/mozilla-iot/gateway/issues/565#issuecomme... 2) Mozilla VPN is recommended for tunneling, this is where most of data harvesting will occur. The same idea that Opera and others came with (many years ago)
- dastx 7y ago
  This a fully self-hosted OSS projected. You can run this on a Raspberry Pi.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
sirtoffski 7y ago
It's kind of sketchy to upload your floor plan...or is it just me?? https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/gateway-user-guide.html https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/gateway-user-guide.html
- xiaomai 7y ago
  It's uploaded to your device (router / raspberry pi / etc.), it doesn't go to mozilla or other 3rd parties.
  - sirtoffski 7y ago
    Thanks! Totally did not pay enough attention.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    At present. Maybe all the routers get auto-enrolled in a 'voluntary' program in the future?? Mozilla have shown they're not trustworthy in such situations; I think it will take a couple more years to see if they've learnt from their indiscretions.
  - msla 7y ago
    > it doesn't go to mozilla or other 3rd parties. Until Mozilla decides to promote Mr. Robot again. Or just stick ads someplace... again. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326184/firefox-ads-sponsored-content-pocket-suggestions https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326184/firefox-ads-spons...
- fyfy18 7y ago
  You are uploading it to a device that runs locally on your network. The domain the docs mention are just for tunnelling - nothing is hosted in the cloud.
  - sirtoffski 7y ago
    Oh I missed that part, thanks!
- 7y ago
sjwright 7y ago
The article seems to lack a TLDR so here's one. It is a "software distribution for smart home gateways which allows users to directly monitor and control their smart home over the web, without a middleman." Devices supported: - Raspberry Pi - Turris Omnia Protocols supported: - HomeKit - ZigBee - Thread - MQTT - Weave - AMQP Framework languages supported: - JS (Node.js) - Python - Rust - Java - C++ (for Arduino) Home page: https://iot.mozilla.org/gateway/ https://iot.mozilla.org/gateway/
- enobrev 7y ago
  Also z-wave
- rohan1024 7y ago
  > without a middleman Are you saying that I should be able to connect to my home directly over the Internet? How does it bypass NAT.
  - r3bl 7y ago
    The goal of this is to be hosted on a router. I'm assuming it wouldn't go around NAT as much as replace NAT by replacing router's firmware. You've guessed correctly that this is one of the most painful parts of the setup. I use a different open source product for the same purpose (Home Assistant), and it allows me to go around NAT manually (use dynamic DNS service, open up the port on a router, route it to a local device, issue a Let's Encrypt certificate) or pay them a few bucks per month to ease the pain.
  - joekrill 7y ago
    "without a middleman" means it won't rely on some 3rd party to work. As a contrast, for example, a SmartThings hub requires an internet connection to work because (almost) everything is sent to Samsung first. Whether you want to connect to your home directly over the internet is up to you, in this case.
  - derefr 7y ago
    You configure your router to not use NAT for IPv6, and get your ISP to provide you more than a /128, is how. This is why industry is adopting it and consumer devices aren’t. (IPv6 space is big enough that there’s no reason that residential ISPs shouldn’t be assigning everyone larger prefix ranges by default, but that doesn’t mean they will. They probably think they can up-sell it. Thread is a great, simple protocol for the hypothetical world where the residential ISPs give up on this practice. It’s not so great for the world we’re in, unless you’re already using some separate VPN overlay network.)
irq 7y ago
I'm a happy HomeKit user with Apple's native solutions. WebThings Gateway claims HomeKit support. What does that mean? Does it replace my native Homekit gateway? Or can it do other stuff? I read the site and couldn't tell.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Seems like it does replace your native gateway; you have to unpair the devices from iOS and pair them directly to the WebThings. https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/a-homekit-gee-i-wish/37065/6 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/a-homekit-gee-i-wish/37065/6
- madspindel 7y ago
  I need to know this as well. Can I use HomeKit automation with it and Siri commands from iPhone?
Jonnax 7y ago
My wish is to have the equivalent of Google home hub running locally. Really my only use cases are: * glancing at the screen to see the weather * Asking it to turn on or off or change colour of Hue lights * Timers for cooking I've since unplugged my google box because I felt the sacrifice of privacy with an always listening box wasn't worth it. At the end of the day the functionality I use isn't that complex and even basic voice recognition I'm sure doesn't require the internet. So I hope that there will be or there is a platform I'm not aware of that runs it locally. Certainly Webthings is answering a good chunk of the question.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  Mycroft [1] looks promising for that use-case. [1]: https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/
- dastx 7y ago
  There are a fair few people trying to create this. The one I've come across that looks the most promising is https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/ https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/ . I've not tested it but have had it in my starred projects for a while now.
- andrenatalbr 7y ago
  The Web of Things gateway contains an addon for offline voice control. Search for it in the addons page. You just need to plug an usb microphone to it.
  - dmix 7y ago
    This sounds interesting but I’m curious if needs to be marketed differently or use some better analogies, since it wasn’t super obvious what it did from the homeless. I presume it’s hard to explain how it fits into the stack when it does a lot of generic IoT sounding stuff.
    - dmix 7y ago
      s/homeless/homepage
m12k 7y ago
What's HN's thoughts on IoT? To me it looks like yet another buzzword from the "wouldn't it be neat?" crowd (the same people who previously gave us a lot of hype about Semantic Web and P2P social networks) but as before none of the applications are actually worth the hassle, this prevents critical mass from ever being reached, and in reality it's mostly just a way for appliance companies who are already overcharging me for non-repairable planned-obsolescence-ridden products, to overcharge me a bit more. I'm glad someone without a profit motive is taking a stab at it, but I still fail to see the actual uses of it being worth the hassle.
- doctorpangloss 7y ago
  > who are already overcharging me for non-repairable planned-obsolescence-ridden products, to overcharge me a bit more... NAS devices and networked home speakers are incredibly competitive categories in the IoT space, and as anyone who has actually owned e.g. a Sonos knows, you listen to a lot more music and they've supported the same 12 year old hardware throughout its lifespan.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Why are Sonos speakers instead of simply receivers that your speakers plug in to?
    - detaro 7y ago
      They aren't. Both types of devices exist. (But apparently many people like all-in-one speakers instead of buying multiple separate bits and connecting them)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- hamilyon2 7y ago
  Iot is already in consumer electronics space. It is firmly in the present, and it is worth the hassle for a lot of people.
Chris2048 7y ago
I'm trying to kit my own apartment out with IoT stuff, my biggest concern isn't voice functionality, or compatibility with social media. It's security. A NodeMCU device can connect to WiFi via build-in password, but I'd prefer per-device certificate credentials in order to control what a device can do. This would mean enterprise WiFi and radius, Maybe VLANs. Making this easier is the main thing for me.
- zaarn 7y ago
  I would recommend to setup a separate Wifi for IoT devices. This has an additional advantage; you can put it on a different spectrum, meaning your normal Wifi will be more free to handle other traffic and keeps the spectrum cleaner.
tialaramex 7y ago
This the closest we have so far to an answer to the point raised in the IETF 105 Technical Plenary a few days ago. Encrypting everything means that IoT devices represent an unknown threat - your "smart" TV connects to Sourceforge and downloads... something every week. What for? Your "smart" thermostat calls the IP of the vendor, maybe to get firmware updates, but it also calls the Disney corporation - what for? You can't snoop any of this because it's using encryption with pinned keys, so MITM doesn't work. Obviously hardcore reverse engineering is possible, but it's extremely expensive. So in practice it won't get done. But, if we can popularize a safe option, we can just flag all the unsafe approaches that are popular today. We can teach vendors that this is a bad idea and they shouldn't do it, and (cross fingers) it might go away, like X-ray shoe sizing.
- eb0la 7y ago
  > if we can popularize a safe option, we can just flag all the unsafe approaches I am not a lawyer, but I think under european privacy laws those approaches are probably ilegal, too. If some manufacturer (probably chinese) wants to grab data from people in Europe, they must comply with EU laws even if they don't have an office in the EU. Not beign able to sell to a huge market is probably a better tactique, but not the only one to use.
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    One of the things mentioned in that Plenary is that partial technical solutions embolden regulators and legislators. We don't have to make everything bad impossible. We can make it a bit harder to do the wrong thing, and then the regulator says "Hey, do the easy thing these nerds recommend or else if we find you did the wrong thing you're in bad trouble".
  - sp332 7y ago
    If you can't tell what data is being sent or retrieved, how will you prosecute them?
    - tialaramex 7y ago
polskibus 7y ago
Is that compatible with smart home platforms like hass.io?
- jore 7y ago
  from what I understood, it is either home assistant, or this WebThings Gateway, it is not possible to use both at the same time
  - knd775 7y ago
    It's definitely possible to use both at the same time. But, there's no reason to.
hokkos 7y ago
It seems to handle a use case I was looking for. I have a cheap xiaomi aqara hub that is homekit compatible, and I want to exports its data. Sadly usually the use case is to connect a non homekit iot to a homekit server from an apple device with homebridge. Here their HomeKit adapter use a lib called hap-controller-node that seems to be a homekit server. I will have to try this. https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter/blob/master/package.json https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter/blob/master/p... https://github.com/mrstegeman/hap-controller-node https://github.com/mrstegeman/hap-controller-node
- knd775 7y ago
  What do you mean by export its data?
  - hokkos 7y ago
    Get the temperature, humidity, pressure, open/close state of the sensors, live.
    - knd775 7y ago
      Ah, here you go then. https://www.home-assistant.io/components/xiaomi_aqara/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/xiaomi_aqara/ https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/tree/dev/homeassistant/components/xiaomi_aqara https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/tree/dev/ho...
gioscarab 7y ago
I suggest you to take a look at PJON: https://github.com/gioblu/PJON https://github.com/gioblu/PJON
dredmorbius 7y ago
What does this offer over stock Turris or OpenWRT builds?
- syn0byte 7y ago
  Absolutely nothing, It's worse with fewer features. Mozilla itself says as much. This is for playing around with stuff, not general usage.
sudoaza 7y ago
HTTP for IOT is super heavy, on one side it may be simpler for developer to hop in, but performance wise this shouldn't be used for anything large scale or where power/bandwidth constrains are an issue. Something like ble/lora/zigbee for device-gateway comunication and mqtt or similar for gateway-collector is the best for me.
- hardwaresofton 7y ago
  The great thing about HTTP outside of just being well known and available everywhere for developers is that you can use it to negotiate switches to other completely different protocols, or change content types, as necessary. This doesn't do much to help truly resource constrained environments but honestly as power and performance get cheaper, I think most consumer usecases can spare the cycles. The machine the gateway is running on can also be extended to use your solution of choice, for example ZWave with an ESP8266[0][1]. You can also bring your ble/lora/zigbee device-gateway solution with you and have that thing talk to the WebThings Gateway as well, acting as a proxy if necessary. IMO it doesn't get much better than this -- the ship to have one true communication standard (tm) has already sailed if it was ever even possible, so we're going to have to paper over them if we want devices to interoperate -- whatever does the papering is probably going to be more powerful than the devices themselves, and HTTP has proven to be a pretty easy to grasp and flexible enough interface over them. All that said, in the lighter-than-http pile of technologies there's also CoAP[2] which I learned about recently that is pretty cool. [0]: https://github.com/mozilla-iot/zwave-adapter https://github.com/mozilla-iot/zwave-adapter [1]: https://www.instructables.com/id/Mozilla-IoT-Gateway-With-ESP8266-and-Z-Wave https://www.instructables.com/id/Mozilla-IoT-Gateway-With-ES... [2]: http://coap.technology http://coap.technology
  - baybal2 7y ago
    I am much more concerned about "Web contagion" and the dysfunction of the "web ecosystem" prematurely turning people off IOT before it can take off. I don't want webdevs coming and breaking the embedded ecosystem. I don't want my fridge crashing because of somebody's webpack setup going haywire.
  - 7y ago
rb666 7y ago
I wonder why this project exists when Home Assistant is already near perfect, let's put the effort in there!
samirm 7y ago
We at Droplit are building something similar for any of you interested in this area. https://docs.droplit.io/ https://docs.droplit.io/ https://www.npmjs.com/package/@droplit/sdk https://www.npmjs.com/package/@droplit/sdk
sandGorgon 7y ago
Any reason Mozilla is not picking up and supporting one of the DD-WRT/OpenWRT projects ? They are hugely popular, have a huge userbase and are well supported by a lot of hardware (most TP-Link, Linksys, etc).
- rebolek 7y ago
  TurrisOS is based on OpenWRT with some additional stuff like auto-updates.
- _underfl0w_ 7y ago
  This was my question as well. Why fork? Why reinvent those parts of the wheel? Good luck reaching device compatibility parity...
- westbywest 7y ago
  Probably the flexibility of that router having 3 MiniPCIe slots for the wireless card(s), from the standpoint of ease in firmware development. The cheaper routers with embedded radio chipsets range from very good to crappy support for open source firmware. But, few people are going to be interested in a 350$US product, when equivalent is available for a fraction of that.
- kgiori 7y ago
  The WebThings Gateway does support OpenWrt if the router is beefy enough (decent app processor, RAM, and flash). Most cheap routers wouldn't work. If you are a savvy OpenWrt user see: https://github.com/openwrt/packages/tree/master/lang/node-mozilla-iot-gateway https://github.com/openwrt/packages/tree/master/lang/node-mo... The Turris OS that runs on Omnia is a customized OpenWrt build that lets a user plug a USB memory stick (with the Mozilla WebThings Gateway image, and only that image on it) into the Omnia, hold down the reset button until the 4th front panel LED lights, let go, and wait until it installs and the "WebThings Gateway XXYY" SSID appears. Then connect to it and proceed with the setup process. Suggest other hardware to potentially support on Mozilla's Discourse "iot" channel. Or the mozilla-iot/gateway repo on github.
dang 7y ago
Related, from April: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19695595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19695595
Havoc 7y ago
Been looking into IOT/home auto lately so this is of interest to me. I hope they hurry up though. Consumer router gear is god damn awful. e.g. the 2.4ghz on my Asus router is dead (common) so I'm using a raspberry to create a hotspot.

549 points by cpeterso 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

They’re constantly coming up with new ways to make money with aggregated data mining. Mostly it’s about crating services by copying established OSS functionality but still - good job!

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zaarn 7y ago
Okay, so what part of this open source and locally hosted application will do the datamining?
- Proven 7y ago
  1) OTA still can be disabled only by hacking the source code https://github.com/mozilla-iot/gateway/issues/565#issuecomment-367019060 https://github.com/mozilla-iot/gateway/issues/565#issuecomme... 2) Mozilla VPN is recommended for tunneling, this is where most of data harvesting will occur. The same idea that Opera and others came with (many years ago)
dastx 7y ago
This a fully self-hosted OSS projected. You can run this on a Raspberry Pi.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

sirtoffski 7y ago

It's kind of sketchy to upload your floor plan...or is it just me?? https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/gateway-user-guide.html https://iot.mozilla.org/docs/gateway-user-guide.html

xiaomai 7y ago
It's uploaded to your device (router / raspberry pi / etc.), it doesn't go to mozilla or other 3rd parties.
- sirtoffski 7y ago
  Thanks! Totally did not pay enough attention.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  At present. Maybe all the routers get auto-enrolled in a 'voluntary' program in the future?? Mozilla have shown they're not trustworthy in such situations; I think it will take a couple more years to see if they've learnt from their indiscretions.
- msla 7y ago
  > it doesn't go to mozilla or other 3rd parties. Until Mozilla decides to promote Mr. Robot again. Or just stick ads someplace... again. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326184/firefox-ads-sponsored-content-pocket-suggestions https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17326184/firefox-ads-spons...
fyfy18 7y ago
You are uploading it to a device that runs locally on your network. The domain the docs mention are just for tunnelling - nothing is hosted in the cloud.
- sirtoffski 7y ago
  Oh I missed that part, thanks!
7y ago

sjwright 7y ago

The article seems to lack a TLDR so here's one. It is a "software distribution for smart home gateways which allows users to directly monitor and control their smart home over the web, without a middleman." Devices supported: - Raspberry Pi - Turris Omnia Protocols supported: - HomeKit - ZigBee - Thread - MQTT - Weave - AMQP Framework languages supported: - JS (Node.js) - Python - Rust - Java - C++ (for Arduino) Home page: https://iot.mozilla.org/gateway/ https://iot.mozilla.org/gateway/

enobrev 7y ago
Also z-wave
rohan1024 7y ago
> without a middleman Are you saying that I should be able to connect to my home directly over the Internet? How does it bypass NAT.
- r3bl 7y ago
  The goal of this is to be hosted on a router. I'm assuming it wouldn't go around NAT as much as replace NAT by replacing router's firmware. You've guessed correctly that this is one of the most painful parts of the setup. I use a different open source product for the same purpose (Home Assistant), and it allows me to go around NAT manually (use dynamic DNS service, open up the port on a router, route it to a local device, issue a Let's Encrypt certificate) or pay them a few bucks per month to ease the pain.
- joekrill 7y ago
  "without a middleman" means it won't rely on some 3rd party to work. As a contrast, for example, a SmartThings hub requires an internet connection to work because (almost) everything is sent to Samsung first. Whether you want to connect to your home directly over the internet is up to you, in this case.
- derefr 7y ago
  You configure your router to not use NAT for IPv6, and get your ISP to provide you more than a /128, is how. This is why industry is adopting it and consumer devices aren’t. (IPv6 space is big enough that there’s no reason that residential ISPs shouldn’t be assigning everyone larger prefix ranges by default, but that doesn’t mean they will. They probably think they can up-sell it. Thread is a great, simple protocol for the hypothetical world where the residential ISPs give up on this practice. It’s not so great for the world we’re in, unless you’re already using some separate VPN overlay network.)

irq 7y ago

I'm a happy HomeKit user with Apple's native solutions. WebThings Gateway claims HomeKit support. What does that mean? Does it replace my native Homekit gateway? Or can it do other stuff? I read the site and couldn't tell.

icebraining 7y ago
Seems like it does replace your native gateway; you have to unpair the devices from iOS and pair them directly to the WebThings. https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/a-homekit-gee-i-wish/37065/6 https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/a-homekit-gee-i-wish/37065/6
madspindel 7y ago
I need to know this as well. Can I use HomeKit automation with it and Siri commands from iPhone?

Jonnax 7y ago

My wish is to have the equivalent of Google home hub running locally. Really my only use cases are: * glancing at the screen to see the weather * Asking it to turn on or off or change colour of Hue lights * Timers for cooking I've since unplugged my google box because I felt the sacrifice of privacy with an always listening box wasn't worth it. At the end of the day the functionality I use isn't that complex and even basic voice recognition I'm sure doesn't require the internet. So I hope that there will be or there is a platform I'm not aware of that runs it locally. Certainly Webthings is answering a good chunk of the question.

MayeulC 7y ago
Mycroft [1] looks promising for that use-case. [1]: https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/
dastx 7y ago
There are a fair few people trying to create this. The one I've come across that looks the most promising is https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/ https://github.com/kalliope-project/kalliope/ . I've not tested it but have had it in my starred projects for a while now.
andrenatalbr 7y ago
The Web of Things gateway contains an addon for offline voice control. Search for it in the addons page. You just need to plug an usb microphone to it.
- dmix 7y ago
  This sounds interesting but I’m curious if needs to be marketed differently or use some better analogies, since it wasn’t super obvious what it did from the homeless. I presume it’s hard to explain how it fits into the stack when it does a lot of generic IoT sounding stuff.
  - dmix 7y ago
    s/homeless/homepage

m12k 7y ago

What's HN's thoughts on IoT? To me it looks like yet another buzzword from the "wouldn't it be neat?" crowd (the same people who previously gave us a lot of hype about Semantic Web and P2P social networks) but as before none of the applications are actually worth the hassle, this prevents critical mass from ever being reached, and in reality it's mostly just a way for appliance companies who are already overcharging me for non-repairable planned-obsolescence-ridden products, to overcharge me a bit more. I'm glad someone without a profit motive is taking a stab at it, but I still fail to see the actual uses of it being worth the hassle.

doctorpangloss 7y ago
> who are already overcharging me for non-repairable planned-obsolescence-ridden products, to overcharge me a bit more... NAS devices and networked home speakers are incredibly competitive categories in the IoT space, and as anyone who has actually owned e.g. a Sonos knows, you listen to a lot more music and they've supported the same 12 year old hardware throughout its lifespan.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Why are Sonos speakers instead of simply receivers that your speakers plug in to?
  - detaro 7y ago
    They aren't. Both types of devices exist. (But apparently many people like all-in-one speakers instead of buying multiple separate bits and connecting them)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hamilyon2 7y ago
Iot is already in consumer electronics space. It is firmly in the present, and it is worth the hassle for a lot of people.

Chris2048 7y ago

I'm trying to kit my own apartment out with IoT stuff, my biggest concern isn't voice functionality, or compatibility with social media. It's security. A NodeMCU device can connect to WiFi via build-in password, but I'd prefer per-device certificate credentials in order to control what a device can do. This would mean enterprise WiFi and radius, Maybe VLANs. Making this easier is the main thing for me.

zaarn 7y ago
I would recommend to setup a separate Wifi for IoT devices. This has an additional advantage; you can put it on a different spectrum, meaning your normal Wifi will be more free to handle other traffic and keeps the spectrum cleaner.

tialaramex 7y ago

This the closest we have so far to an answer to the point raised in the IETF 105 Technical Plenary a few days ago. Encrypting everything means that IoT devices represent an unknown threat - your "smart" TV connects to Sourceforge and downloads... something every week. What for? Your "smart" thermostat calls the IP of the vendor, maybe to get firmware updates, but it also calls the Disney corporation - what for? You can't snoop any of this because it's using encryption with pinned keys, so MITM doesn't work. Obviously hardcore reverse engineering is possible, but it's extremely expensive. So in practice it won't get done. But, if we can popularize a safe option, we can just flag all the unsafe approaches that are popular today. We can teach vendors that this is a bad idea and they shouldn't do it, and (cross fingers) it might go away, like X-ray shoe sizing.

eb0la 7y ago
> if we can popularize a safe option, we can just flag all the unsafe approaches I am not a lawyer, but I think under european privacy laws those approaches are probably ilegal, too. If some manufacturer (probably chinese) wants to grab data from people in Europe, they must comply with EU laws even if they don't have an office in the EU. Not beign able to sell to a huge market is probably a better tactique, but not the only one to use.
- tialaramex 7y ago
  One of the things mentioned in that Plenary is that partial technical solutions embolden regulators and legislators. We don't have to make everything bad impossible. We can make it a bit harder to do the wrong thing, and then the regulator says "Hey, do the easy thing these nerds recommend or else if we find you did the wrong thing you're in bad trouble".
- sp332 7y ago
  If you can't tell what data is being sent or retrieved, how will you prosecute them?
  - tialaramex 7y ago

polskibus 7y ago

Is that compatible with smart home platforms like hass.io?

jore 7y ago
from what I understood, it is either home assistant, or this WebThings Gateway, it is not possible to use both at the same time
- knd775 7y ago
  It's definitely possible to use both at the same time. But, there's no reason to.

hokkos 7y ago

It seems to handle a use case I was looking for. I have a cheap xiaomi aqara hub that is homekit compatible, and I want to exports its data. Sadly usually the use case is to connect a non homekit iot to a homekit server from an apple device with homebridge. Here their HomeKit adapter use a lib called hap-controller-node that seems to be a homekit server. I will have to try this. https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter/blob/master/package.json https://github.com/mozilla-iot/homekit-adapter/blob/master/p... https://github.com/mrstegeman/hap-controller-node https://github.com/mrstegeman/hap-controller-node

knd775 7y ago
What do you mean by export its data?
- hokkos 7y ago
  Get the temperature, humidity, pressure, open/close state of the sensors, live.
  - knd775 7y ago
    Ah, here you go then. https://www.home-assistant.io/components/xiaomi_aqara/ https://www.home-assistant.io/components/xiaomi_aqara/ https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/tree/dev/homeassistant/components/xiaomi_aqara https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/tree/dev/ho...

gioscarab 7y ago

I suggest you to take a look at PJON: https://github.com/gioblu/PJON https://github.com/gioblu/PJON

dredmorbius 7y ago

What does this offer over stock Turris or OpenWRT builds?

syn0byte 7y ago
Absolutely nothing, It's worse with fewer features. Mozilla itself says as much. This is for playing around with stuff, not general usage.

sudoaza 7y ago

HTTP for IOT is super heavy, on one side it may be simpler for developer to hop in, but performance wise this shouldn't be used for anything large scale or where power/bandwidth constrains are an issue. Something like ble/lora/zigbee for device-gateway comunication and mqtt or similar for gateway-collector is the best for me.

hardwaresofton 7y ago
The great thing about HTTP outside of just being well known and available everywhere for developers is that you can use it to negotiate switches to other completely different protocols, or change content types, as necessary. This doesn't do much to help truly resource constrained environments but honestly as power and performance get cheaper, I think most consumer usecases can spare the cycles. The machine the gateway is running on can also be extended to use your solution of choice, for example ZWave with an ESP8266[0][1]. You can also bring your ble/lora/zigbee device-gateway solution with you and have that thing talk to the WebThings Gateway as well, acting as a proxy if necessary. IMO it doesn't get much better than this -- the ship to have one true communication standard (tm) has already sailed if it was ever even possible, so we're going to have to paper over them if we want devices to interoperate -- whatever does the papering is probably going to be more powerful than the devices themselves, and HTTP has proven to be a pretty easy to grasp and flexible enough interface over them. All that said, in the lighter-than-http pile of technologies there's also CoAP[2] which I learned about recently that is pretty cool. [0]: https://github.com/mozilla-iot/zwave-adapter https://github.com/mozilla-iot/zwave-adapter [1]: https://www.instructables.com/id/Mozilla-IoT-Gateway-With-ESP8266-and-Z-Wave https://www.instructables.com/id/Mozilla-IoT-Gateway-With-ES... [2]: http://coap.technology http://coap.technology
- baybal2 7y ago
  I am much more concerned about "Web contagion" and the dysfunction of the "web ecosystem" prematurely turning people off IOT before it can take off. I don't want webdevs coming and breaking the embedded ecosystem. I don't want my fridge crashing because of somebody's webpack setup going haywire.
- 7y ago

rb666 7y ago

I wonder why this project exists when Home Assistant is already near perfect, let's put the effort in there!

samirm 7y ago

We at Droplit are building something similar for any of you interested in this area. https://docs.droplit.io/ https://docs.droplit.io/ https://www.npmjs.com/package/@droplit/sdk https://www.npmjs.com/package/@droplit/sdk

sandGorgon 7y ago

Any reason Mozilla is not picking up and supporting one of the DD-WRT/OpenWRT projects ? They are hugely popular, have a huge userbase and are well supported by a lot of hardware (most TP-Link, Linksys, etc).

rebolek 7y ago
TurrisOS is based on OpenWRT with some additional stuff like auto-updates.
_underfl0w_ 7y ago
This was my question as well. Why fork? Why reinvent those parts of the wheel? Good luck reaching device compatibility parity...
westbywest 7y ago
Probably the flexibility of that router having 3 MiniPCIe slots for the wireless card(s), from the standpoint of ease in firmware development. The cheaper routers with embedded radio chipsets range from very good to crappy support for open source firmware. But, few people are going to be interested in a 350$US product, when equivalent is available for a fraction of that.
kgiori 7y ago
The WebThings Gateway does support OpenWrt if the router is beefy enough (decent app processor, RAM, and flash). Most cheap routers wouldn't work. If you are a savvy OpenWrt user see: https://github.com/openwrt/packages/tree/master/lang/node-mozilla-iot-gateway https://github.com/openwrt/packages/tree/master/lang/node-mo... The Turris OS that runs on Omnia is a customized OpenWrt build that lets a user plug a USB memory stick (with the Mozilla WebThings Gateway image, and only that image on it) into the Omnia, hold down the reset button until the 4th front panel LED lights, let go, and wait until it installs and the "WebThings Gateway XXYY" SSID appears. Then connect to it and proceed with the setup process. Suggest other hardware to potentially support on Mozilla's Discourse "iot" channel. Or the mozilla-iot/gateway repo on github.

dang 7y ago

Related, from April: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19695595 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19695595

Havoc 7y ago

Been looking into IOT/home auto lately so this is of interest to me. I hope they hurry up though. Consumer router gear is god damn awful. e.g. the 2.4ghz on my Asus router is dead (common) so I'm using a raspberry to create a hotspot.