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This is the big problem with most (all?) commercial "Internet of Things" devices. It's a real mess, and that is because this idea is unworkable from the start.

This is the big problem with most (all?) commercial "Internet of Things" devices. It's a real mess, and that is because this idea is unworkable from the start. What we should have instead are many, isolated "Intranets of Things".

jannes 6y ago
Luckily, not everything uses WiFi. There are tons of Zigbee and Z-Wave devices which physically don't have a WiFi chip. Of course, you should build your own bridge to connect them to (rather than using the bridge of a big tech company). For Zigbee you can use the Conbee [0] and for Z-Wave you can use the Z-Stick [1] to build your own bridge. Furthermore, some of the cheaper WiFi devices that are based on the ESP8266 chip can be flashed with a custom firmware called Tasmota [2] to make them cloud-free. [0]: https://www.phoscon.de/en/conbee2 https://www.phoscon.de/en/conbee2 [1]: https://aeotec.com/z-wave-usb-stick/ https://aeotec.com/z-wave-usb-stick/ [2]: https://github.com/arendst/tasmota/#readme https://github.com/arendst/tasmota/#readme
- kaszanka 6y ago
  A ZigBee or Z-Wave stick + Home Assistant (or openHAB, Domoticz, others) gets you more reliable operation and no notifying $MEGACORP every time you flick a light switch (or something equally dumb). Devices based on the popular ESP8266 can also frequently be freed from their cloud overlords with community-made firmware [0], [1] and used as proper Intra-o-T devices. I decided a while back that I would have no part in this Inter-o-T madness and I think it was a good choice. [0]: https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota [1]: https://esphome.io/ https://esphome.io/ Heh, just noticed you linked Tasmota as well while I was writing this. Good project, I use it too!
  - thrashh 6y ago
    Trading cloud provided services with your own home grown systems just trades unreliability in one way with its own sets of maintenance and reliability problems, plus a lot of complexity that is out of reach for most people. Smart home technology is a mess and someone that cares enough needs to design an open, reliable, future secure, and user friendly system that can work wired and wireless.
  - cookiecaper 6y ago
    Do note that you can unintentionally expose data to the BigCo too -- Home-Assistant and I'm sure the other platforms can export all local devices to Google/Amazon to allow control via Assistant/Echo and will send entity state updates to facilitate that.
    - paledot 6y ago
      Everyone has their own threat model, but I'm more comfortable with Google knowing when my light switch is on than I am with their outage or service deprecation preventing me from turning it off.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  Just because you have WiFi doesn't mean all communication must happen over the Internet. If both the phone and the device are in the same network, they can communicate just fine.
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
For the technically-literate home automator, I think the sweet spot is something like Hubitat. It's not home-brew, has decent commercial support, integrated Z-Wave and ZigBee etc. and is designed to be completely self-contained on your LAN. I dumped my Wink Hub for one after they did their bait-and-switch for subscription fees. Never been happier with home automation.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> What we should have instead are many, isolated "Intranets of Things". Nah, Internet is great for updates. The problem, while it doesn't fit a description as slogan-friendly as yours, is the reliance on centralized servers as essential for routine operations rather than just for optional (though potentially important) updates, and this isn’t an engineering problem but a deliberate business decision to enable X-as-a-Service business models (whether paid for via recurring subscription, ongoing user data, or both.)

jannes 6y ago

Luckily, not everything uses WiFi. There are tons of Zigbee and Z-Wave devices which physically don't have a WiFi chip. Of course, you should build your own bridge to connect them to (rather than using the bridge of a big tech company). For Zigbee you can use the Conbee [0] and for Z-Wave you can use the Z-Stick [1] to build your own bridge. Furthermore, some of the cheaper WiFi devices that are based on the ESP8266 chip can be flashed with a custom firmware called Tasmota [2] to make them cloud-free. [0]: https://www.phoscon.de/en/conbee2 https://www.phoscon.de/en/conbee2 [1]: https://aeotec.com/z-wave-usb-stick/ https://aeotec.com/z-wave-usb-stick/ [2]: https://github.com/arendst/tasmota/#readme https://github.com/arendst/tasmota/#readme

kaszanka 6y ago
A ZigBee or Z-Wave stick + Home Assistant (or openHAB, Domoticz, others) gets you more reliable operation and no notifying $MEGACORP every time you flick a light switch (or something equally dumb). Devices based on the popular ESP8266 can also frequently be freed from their cloud overlords with community-made firmware [0], [1] and used as proper Intra-o-T devices. I decided a while back that I would have no part in this Inter-o-T madness and I think it was a good choice. [0]: https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota [1]: https://esphome.io/ https://esphome.io/ Heh, just noticed you linked Tasmota as well while I was writing this. Good project, I use it too!
- thrashh 6y ago
  Trading cloud provided services with your own home grown systems just trades unreliability in one way with its own sets of maintenance and reliability problems, plus a lot of complexity that is out of reach for most people. Smart home technology is a mess and someone that cares enough needs to design an open, reliable, future secure, and user friendly system that can work wired and wireless.
- cookiecaper 6y ago
  Do note that you can unintentionally expose data to the BigCo too -- Home-Assistant and I'm sure the other platforms can export all local devices to Google/Amazon to allow control via Assistant/Echo and will send entity state updates to facilitate that.
  - paledot 6y ago
    Everyone has their own threat model, but I'm more comfortable with Google knowing when my light switch is on than I am with their outage or service deprecation preventing me from turning it off.
pantalaimon 6y ago
Just because you have WiFi doesn't mean all communication must happen over the Internet. If both the phone and the device are in the same network, they can communicate just fine.

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago

For the technically-literate home automator, I think the sweet spot is something like Hubitat. It's not home-brew, has decent commercial support, integrated Z-Wave and ZigBee etc. and is designed to be completely self-contained on your LAN. I dumped my Wink Hub for one after they did their bait-and-switch for subscription fees. Never been happier with home automation.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> What we should have instead are many, isolated "Intranets of Things". Nah, Internet is great for updates. The problem, while it doesn't fit a description as slogan-friendly as yours, is the reliance on centralized servers as essential for routine operations rather than just for optional (though potentially important) updates, and this isn’t an engineering problem but a deliberate business decision to enable X-as-a-Service business models (whether paid for via recurring subscription, ongoing user data, or both.)