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Philips Hue will force users to upload their data to Hue cloud (www.home-assistant.io)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 84 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It’s perfectly possible to have a smart home that does not call home. Home Assistant is an amazing piece of software that can allow smart devices from different manufacturers talk to each other without connecting to a cloud service — all done locally.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    This is the only way I would go about it. Maybe in the future if I really want it but really, the more tech, the more vulnerabilities. I'm fine with manually turning things on and off even if it's self hosted.

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  • [+] -5 points 2 years ago (3 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Unfortunately, no. Ultimately it’s a tiny computer that happens to produce light when a certain gpio pin is enabled. The light bulb is the portion you see, but inside, it’s an internet-connected microcontroller. I’ve even seen smart devices that internally run a full Linux distro complete with a shell session you can access if you know what you’re doing.

    The problem is that some of these firmwares and/or exploits for these firmwares actively scan your local network and report things. Further, they can be used as a jumping off point for attacks deeper in your network.

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  • [+] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    And what about the zigbee hub, assuming you didn’t know enough to use homeassistant or some such?

    Or a wifi bulb?

    Point is, consumer smart electronics don’t have the same attention to security paid to them.

    Fwiw, I’m not anti-smart device. I run HA and have all kinds of smart crap, so clearly I accept at least part of the risk.

    But saying “it’s just a light bulb” is disingenuous as best.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    How

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Put home assistant on a raspberry pi, plug a Zigbee dongle to it, and start connecting smart gadgets to it. Or better yet buy a home assistant Green. You can check the home assistant docs to see if a smart device requires cloud connectivity to work — in general if it connects through Zigbee (or ZWave or Matter) then you’re good, but if it connects through WiFi then it probably is cloud based.

    https://www.home-assistant.io/

    https://www.seeedstudio.com/Home-Assistant-Green-p-5792.html

    https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Can confirm. I run Home Assistant and Rhasspy with Sengled bulbs and none of transmits info. The devices themselves aren't generally the issue, it's the hub that operates them that would be collecting and sending the info. Remove that, and you don't have to worry.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    wow so Rhasspy is local voice assistant! do you have microphones places throughout your pad or do you go to a website first to speak or what?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago*

    You can use microphones wherever with HA and Rhasspy. Rhasspy is just the local voice and intent recognition portion, and HA executes the commands. This means you can have one Rpi in your place managing devices, and then have many different microphone-attached Rpi all over your house forwarding voice recognition intents to do whatever you want it to do. Whatever the mic is attached to will send to the HA instance and tell it what to do. No cloud.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Why do I need a RaspberryPi? I can't use my regular Linux PC? What is a Zigbee dongle and why is it mandatory? What do I do if he device is cloud based?

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago*

    You can use your regular PC if you want, but having an always-on server (the pi) makes it more convenient to use from, say, your phone.

    Zigbee is a popular wireless communication protocol used by iot devices. Without the dongle you won't have any way to talk to them.

    If it's cloud based, buy something else that isn't.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Your Zigbee light switches won’t do anything unless the machine running Home Assistant is on. Being able to control your lights while the computer isn’t running is really convenient.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Perfectly valid to ask how to protect your data using the tools the other user mentioned. Not sure why you were downvoted for asking simply how.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    @tjhart85 care to explain?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Sure! Click the link at the very top of the page! You know, what this entire conversation is theoretically talking about? It takes you to a Home Assistant page and even has some details on their philosophy and links to even more details about their privacy focused philosophy! I thought saying essentially "read the fucking article" would be pretty asshole-ish and wouldn't contribute anything to the conversation, but I also thought that your question contributed nothing, so I downvoted.

    Did that answer your question sufficiently?

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