11 ms·

I've learned my lesson and no longer buy WiFi connected "smart" devices, unless I can flash them with custom firmwares. ZigBee isn't without its flaws too but

by cjdell 6y ago

I've learned my lesson and no longer buy WiFi connected "smart" devices, unless I can flash them with custom firmwares. ZigBee isn't without its flaws too but at least I can guarantee that the device doesn't require someone's online service to function. I just wish more devices offered it. Pretty much anything with WiFi in it requires installing some dodgy looking app that requires you sign in with yet another account, and will probably stop working in a few years or when you eventually need to reconfigure your home's WiFi network.

karlkatzke 6y ago
To be fair, I personally no longer buy WiFi “smart” devices, but I don’t mind if my wife buys them. I get the dual benefit of having the “smart” when it works, and pointing and laughing at her when it doesn’t, because I told her so.
- _underfl0w_ 6y ago
  This actually sounds like the perfect middle ground.
  - mrpopo 6y ago
    Except it doesn't cut on the gigantic waste of electronic components that IoT is creating, and no one is talking about.
    - bamboozled 6y ago
      This is why I don't like "smart devices". They're the most likely thing to be obsolete in the shortest amount of time.
- DavidSJ 6y ago
  And on top of that, your TV manufacturer gets to spy on you. It’s win-win-win.
  - ornornor 6y ago
    Nextdns is the best solution I found to this problem (they have a smart TVs blocklist) along with a firewall rule that blocks all port 53 traffic except to approved dns.
    - mtsr 6y ago
      Shame this stops working with the next firmware update that switches your TV to DNS-over-HTTPS. Because then, just like google ads switching to the main google.com domain, you will have to choose to block either every service from your tv manufacturer (including firmware security updates) or allow it all through. My next TV is going to be a dumb one with a bespoke HTPC...
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    My old dumb tv is failing. After looking online, it seems the only dumb TVs left are in the US (Spectre and very little else) and not available in Germany. At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/ I have a smart TV not connected to the internet, just a HDMI connection to another box. Then I learned that IP-over-HDMI is a thing! In the very near future this will be even more futile - the TV will have it’s own built-in cellular connection just for telemetry. Anyone who objects will be shouted down as a 5G conspiracy nut, but this is exactly what 5G is designed for.
      - mtsr 6y ago
        That’s horrible, I hadn’t even looked at it like that. But it will actually work better with 3/4G because 5Gs range is so short and it would be easy to block with just a little tinfoil.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > I get the dual benefit of having the “smart” when it works, and pointing and laughing at her when it doesn’t, because I told her so. You must be a joy to have around the house.
- alilsumpinditto 6y ago
  to be fair, I'm actually too stupid to vacuum a carpet vs floor without it auto adjusting fo me, so just to play devil's advocate, my vacuum has worked wonders on sucking up the ight amount of floor baddies. I can also forgive the glass stuck on the floor on thanksgiving night because of all the help it's been 364 days of the year. edit: oh yeah my letterr "R" key is broken on my 2015 macbook po fom all my refreshing, so sorry fo the typos
  - takeda 6y ago
    Why does it need to be connected to the Internet to do it?
aidenn0 6y ago
ZigBee is wonderful. Everybody wants to either collect your data, money, or both though, so it stays niche
- war1025 6y ago
  For those of us not quite as in the know, what exactly is ZigBee?
  - xienze 6y ago
    It’s a home automation protocol, like X10. You buy devices that can talk ZigBee to a hub device (probably can use a computer on your local network for this). From the hub you can do all the usual automation tasks.
    - rodgerd 6y ago
      To extend that slightly: it's a low-throughput, low-power mesh network that doesn't need the smarts or power draw of Wifi. Because it needs an in-home hub anyway, it's unlikely to die without Internet access, and devices on the standard have at least some level of basic inter-operability.
      - war1025 6y ago
        So if I wanted to say put a bunch of sensors in my house to monitor temperature over time without necessarily tying that info to my thermostat or anything, is this ZigBee thing a promising thing to look into?
        aussiegeek 6y ago
        Yep, you can do one without the other. The bigger hassle seems to be different zigbee hubs that have varying levels of compatibility, so while you can pair the devices you can't get the data you want. I've just been down the research rabbit hole, and about to try using zigbee2mqtt to bypass this nonsense (this also then means the only internet connectivity will be through a device you control)
robryan 6y ago
Bought a WiFi light bulb for fun years back, it died and they replaced it then it recent died again and I just went back to a standard bulb. Even when it worked it would periodically lose connection the the WiFi and need a reset, assuming the app worked correctly and paired. Not worth the hassle.
- arp242 6y ago
  Some of the colour changing WiFi bulbs seem pretty neat though. I used to have a Philips Hue (standalone, two of them) and mucking about with those remotes wasn't always that great either.
  - donmcronald 6y ago
    I have 10 LIFX bulbs. Hardware wise they're really great. I don't mind having to connect them to WiFi. However, the app to control them is, bar none, the biggest piece of shit app I've ever used. I can barely control my lights. The scheduling is pretty handy though. I have half a dozen outside and they turn on / off with dusk / dawn. In addition to that I have them set to go to bright white and 30-50% at night (just enough to keep security cameras in color mode).
    - joombaga 6y ago
      Try https://remote.lighting https://remote.lighting if you haven't. It's a lot cleaner than the official app.
    - nixgeek 6y ago
      I’ve had an unacceptably high AFR with all LIFX bulbs, although I’ll concede their support is fantastic at shipping replacements to me. We’ve had about 20-22% failure rate of bulbs within 2 years of ownership, seen across ~60 of them. In addition to that about another 20% have needed factory resetting once or twice in the same period, because they stopped interacting with WiFi and the first-party application in ways that just turning off and on again at the light switch didn’t fix. In contrast to this we’ve had exactly one Philips Hue fail on us. Also cheerfully replaced for us. None of them have needed resetting and we have about the same # of light fixtures deployed. Probably the most annoying problem is Hue Play’s are prone to coil whine at 100% brightness on on certain scene colors, particularly those involving blue-white (6000K). Resolvable by going < 5000K or dropping to 90% brightness, I haven’t attempted to get warranty replacement for this issue but about 16/22 of my Hue Play’s are affected by the issue. Integrated with Google Home it’s also common that some % of LIFX bulbs won’t respond to a “turn off all the lights” command, whereas Philips is very good at on/off even when the command involves large numbers of bulbs...
NoPicklez 6y ago
Sonos has been a great example of this for me. For those that don't know Sonos products are WiFi speakers, sound bars and subwoofers. I've had them for around 4 years and whilst they're controlled through the Sonos app (and third parties) if our internet crashes there is no hiccup whatsoever.
- merlinscholz 6y ago
  The same holds true for Philips Hue products! My Hue bridge is on a VLAN that doesn't even have internet access.
  - MaximumYComb 6y ago
    Can the app talk to them while they're not internet connected?
    - sethhochberg 6y ago
      Yep. As long as your LAN is functional and the hub (which uses the ZigBee protocol often referenced in the comments here) is appropriately routeable, internet access is entirely optional - unless of course you want to control the lights from outside of your home.
      - isatty 6y ago
        If you want to control your lights from outside your home you can either setup a WireGuard LAN or just enable the integration with apple home if you are already in the ecosystem. Apple has less incentives to spy on you than whoever is running philips hue.
      - Brian_K_White 6y ago
        Then what prevents the app from being the path, in either/both directions? Reporting on the activities of the devices it can see, as well as sending firmware updates to them? Your printer gets firmware updates from HP, whenever HP wants, right past all your firewalls and vlans and non-routable subnets, in the form of print jobs from your pc.
nineteen999 6y ago
> I've learned my lesson and no longer buy WiFi connected "smart" devices Not to gloat or enjoy too much schadenfreude, but many of us learnt the lesson in advance because we saw it coming. It may just be because we are old and cynical though.
- stevekemp 6y ago
  I have fun building IoT devices, which run solely against remote APIs that I can control, or a local MQ instance for exchanging messages.
rodgerd 6y ago
HomeKit compatibility is also a reasonable proxy; that's because HomeKit requires that a device operate without a manufacturer's service, and expose local APIs that your iDev can use. The fact that so many manufacturers are happy to certify with Alexa and Google, but not HomeKit, tells me a bit about their business models.
wonnage 6y ago
I think homekit works over your local network, I could be wrong though. Latency for commands is much lower than Google/Alexa for me. I will never buy another TP-Link device. Life is too short to be creating accounts for your smart plugs...
- justinclift 6y ago
  Can't TP-Link plugs be flashed with firmware that allow for local-only control?
  - darkwater 6y ago
    Yes, Tasmota: https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785175
    - cjdell 6y ago
      Fortunately this is also true with many devices, but knowing which ones allow this before buying is the problem. Most shops won't advertise the chipset. This is also beyond the abilities of 99% of the population.
- noja 6y ago
  TP-Link devices do not require you to create an account. Please don't spread FUD.
  - wonnage 6y ago
    They do if you want to use most of the functionality (e.g routines, scenes, connecting to a smart assistant, etc.) Using them without an account basically just lets you use your phone to turn them on and off.
    - noja 6y ago
      I use mine with Home Assistant and don't have a TP-Link account.
_alex_ 6y ago
Looks like zigbee is moving closer to critical mass. Echo’s now ship with zigbee radios, and the zigbee alliance has been a lot more active. Hoping in the near future everything just works on zigbee

by cjdell 6y ago

karlkatzke 6y ago

To be fair, I personally no longer buy WiFi “smart” devices, but I don’t mind if my wife buys them. I get the dual benefit of having the “smart” when it works, and pointing and laughing at her when it doesn’t, because I told her so.

_underfl0w_ 6y ago
This actually sounds like the perfect middle ground.
- mrpopo 6y ago
  Except it doesn't cut on the gigantic waste of electronic components that IoT is creating, and no one is talking about.
  - bamboozled 6y ago
    This is why I don't like "smart devices". They're the most likely thing to be obsolete in the shortest amount of time.
DavidSJ 6y ago
And on top of that, your TV manufacturer gets to spy on you. It’s win-win-win.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Nextdns is the best solution I found to this problem (they have a smart TVs blocklist) along with a firewall rule that blocks all port 53 traffic except to approved dns.
  - mtsr 6y ago
    Shame this stops working with the next firmware update that switches your TV to DNS-over-HTTPS. Because then, just like google ads switching to the main google.com domain, you will have to choose to block either every service from your tv manufacturer (including firmware security updates) or allow it all through. My next TV is going to be a dumb one with a bespoke HTPC...
- Semaphor 6y ago
  My old dumb tv is failing. After looking online, it seems the only dumb TVs left are in the US (Spectre and very little else) and not available in Germany. At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    At least the spying is removed by not connecting it to the internet, though I still get the great full OS experience :/ I have a smart TV not connected to the internet, just a HDMI connection to another box. Then I learned that IP-over-HDMI is a thing! In the very near future this will be even more futile - the TV will have it’s own built-in cellular connection just for telemetry. Anyone who objects will be shouted down as a 5G conspiracy nut, but this is exactly what 5G is designed for.
    - mtsr 6y ago
      That’s horrible, I hadn’t even looked at it like that. But it will actually work better with 3/4G because 5Gs range is so short and it would be easy to block with just a little tinfoil.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> I get the dual benefit of having the “smart” when it works, and pointing and laughing at her when it doesn’t, because I told her so. You must be a joy to have around the house.
alilsumpinditto 6y ago
to be fair, I'm actually too stupid to vacuum a carpet vs floor without it auto adjusting fo me, so just to play devil's advocate, my vacuum has worked wonders on sucking up the ight amount of floor baddies. I can also forgive the glass stuck on the floor on thanksgiving night because of all the help it's been 364 days of the year. edit: oh yeah my letterr "R" key is broken on my 2015 macbook po fom all my refreshing, so sorry fo the typos
- takeda 6y ago
  Why does it need to be connected to the Internet to do it?

aidenn0 6y ago

ZigBee is wonderful. Everybody wants to either collect your data, money, or both though, so it stays niche

war1025 6y ago
For those of us not quite as in the know, what exactly is ZigBee?
- xienze 6y ago
  It’s a home automation protocol, like X10. You buy devices that can talk ZigBee to a hub device (probably can use a computer on your local network for this). From the hub you can do all the usual automation tasks.
  - rodgerd 6y ago
    To extend that slightly: it's a low-throughput, low-power mesh network that doesn't need the smarts or power draw of Wifi. Because it needs an in-home hub anyway, it's unlikely to die without Internet access, and devices on the standard have at least some level of basic inter-operability.
    - war1025 6y ago
      So if I wanted to say put a bunch of sensors in my house to monitor temperature over time without necessarily tying that info to my thermostat or anything, is this ZigBee thing a promising thing to look into?
      - aussiegeek 6y ago
        Yep, you can do one without the other. The bigger hassle seems to be different zigbee hubs that have varying levels of compatibility, so while you can pair the devices you can't get the data you want. I've just been down the research rabbit hole, and about to try using zigbee2mqtt to bypass this nonsense (this also then means the only internet connectivity will be through a device you control)

robryan 6y ago

Bought a WiFi light bulb for fun years back, it died and they replaced it then it recent died again and I just went back to a standard bulb. Even when it worked it would periodically lose connection the the WiFi and need a reset, assuming the app worked correctly and paired. Not worth the hassle.

arp242 6y ago
Some of the colour changing WiFi bulbs seem pretty neat though. I used to have a Philips Hue (standalone, two of them) and mucking about with those remotes wasn't always that great either.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  I have 10 LIFX bulbs. Hardware wise they're really great. I don't mind having to connect them to WiFi. However, the app to control them is, bar none, the biggest piece of shit app I've ever used. I can barely control my lights. The scheduling is pretty handy though. I have half a dozen outside and they turn on / off with dusk / dawn. In addition to that I have them set to go to bright white and 30-50% at night (just enough to keep security cameras in color mode).
  - joombaga 6y ago
    Try https://remote.lighting https://remote.lighting if you haven't. It's a lot cleaner than the official app.
  - nixgeek 6y ago
    I’ve had an unacceptably high AFR with all LIFX bulbs, although I’ll concede their support is fantastic at shipping replacements to me. We’ve had about 20-22% failure rate of bulbs within 2 years of ownership, seen across ~60 of them. In addition to that about another 20% have needed factory resetting once or twice in the same period, because they stopped interacting with WiFi and the first-party application in ways that just turning off and on again at the light switch didn’t fix. In contrast to this we’ve had exactly one Philips Hue fail on us. Also cheerfully replaced for us. None of them have needed resetting and we have about the same # of light fixtures deployed. Probably the most annoying problem is Hue Play’s are prone to coil whine at 100% brightness on on certain scene colors, particularly those involving blue-white (6000K). Resolvable by going < 5000K or dropping to 90% brightness, I haven’t attempted to get warranty replacement for this issue but about 16/22 of my Hue Play’s are affected by the issue. Integrated with Google Home it’s also common that some % of LIFX bulbs won’t respond to a “turn off all the lights” command, whereas Philips is very good at on/off even when the command involves large numbers of bulbs...

NoPicklez 6y ago

Sonos has been a great example of this for me. For those that don't know Sonos products are WiFi speakers, sound bars and subwoofers. I've had them for around 4 years and whilst they're controlled through the Sonos app (and third parties) if our internet crashes there is no hiccup whatsoever.

merlinscholz 6y ago
The same holds true for Philips Hue products! My Hue bridge is on a VLAN that doesn't even have internet access.
- MaximumYComb 6y ago
  Can the app talk to them while they're not internet connected?
  - sethhochberg 6y ago
    Yep. As long as your LAN is functional and the hub (which uses the ZigBee protocol often referenced in the comments here) is appropriately routeable, internet access is entirely optional - unless of course you want to control the lights from outside of your home.
    - isatty 6y ago
      If you want to control your lights from outside your home you can either setup a WireGuard LAN or just enable the integration with apple home if you are already in the ecosystem. Apple has less incentives to spy on you than whoever is running philips hue.
    - Brian_K_White 6y ago
      Then what prevents the app from being the path, in either/both directions? Reporting on the activities of the devices it can see, as well as sending firmware updates to them? Your printer gets firmware updates from HP, whenever HP wants, right past all your firewalls and vlans and non-routable subnets, in the form of print jobs from your pc.

nineteen999 6y ago

> I've learned my lesson and no longer buy WiFi connected "smart" devices Not to gloat or enjoy too much schadenfreude, but many of us learnt the lesson in advance because we saw it coming. It may just be because we are old and cynical though.

stevekemp 6y ago
I have fun building IoT devices, which run solely against remote APIs that I can control, or a local MQ instance for exchanging messages.

rodgerd 6y ago

HomeKit compatibility is also a reasonable proxy; that's because HomeKit requires that a device operate without a manufacturer's service, and expose local APIs that your iDev can use. The fact that so many manufacturers are happy to certify with Alexa and Google, but not HomeKit, tells me a bit about their business models.

wonnage 6y ago

I think homekit works over your local network, I could be wrong though. Latency for commands is much lower than Google/Alexa for me. I will never buy another TP-Link device. Life is too short to be creating accounts for your smart plugs...

justinclift 6y ago
Can't TP-Link plugs be flashed with firmware that allow for local-only control?
- darkwater 6y ago
  Yes, Tasmota: https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785175 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785175
  - cjdell 6y ago
    Fortunately this is also true with many devices, but knowing which ones allow this before buying is the problem. Most shops won't advertise the chipset. This is also beyond the abilities of 99% of the population.
noja 6y ago
TP-Link devices do not require you to create an account. Please don't spread FUD.
- wonnage 6y ago
  They do if you want to use most of the functionality (e.g routines, scenes, connecting to a smart assistant, etc.) Using them without an account basically just lets you use your phone to turn them on and off.
  - noja 6y ago
    I use mine with Home Assistant and don't have a TP-Link account.

_alex_ 6y ago

Looks like zigbee is moving closer to critical mass. Echo’s now ship with zigbee radios, and the zigbee alliance has been a lot more active. Hoping in the near future everything just works on zigbee