this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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I know we already got another thread about this topic, but I wanted to highlight the stance of home assistant for this topic.

I really don't see how you can argue with this post. Well, I can, but I really don't want to think about it.

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[–] [email protected] 102 points 1 year ago (4 children)

This always annoys me. How can a device you have purchased outright with certain functionality, have the terms of service changed after the point of purchase which then changes that usage of the device.

This seems like you could return for refund as the device is NOW not what you originally purchased.

Where does this end? We buy a car then 5yrs later they change the terms of service and if you don't agree you don't get the right to have tires on your car.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why does your lightbulb need to connect to the internet at all? Automation does not require the cloud.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

How else would you send spam or stage a DDOS attack? /s

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Until something is legislated, this will continue to the end-user's detriment.

I bought some Philips Hue bulbs In something like 2015 which have worked mostly fine ever since, but the control surface has become more and more intrusive over the years. I'm now relegating the bulbs to dumb use until they finally die.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have completely swapped to just normal LED dimmer switches.

I live far enough out in the country that we get brown outs for less than an eye blink. Every fucking light bulb will shine bright like a diamond and there is no way to turn it off.

I've tried setting the 'Power On' Behavior but it just ignores it for these scenarios. It's so maddening to wake up at 3 AM with every light on having paid hundreds for light bulbs I 'own' but can't command.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

It's a good feeling knowing that my basic non-internet connected car can't receive an OTA update to make me start paying a subscription to use something I already have just because the company decided they want more money.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I feel that at the very least, the customer in that case should be entitled to a complete refund of the product, regardless of whether they bought it 5 days or 5 years ago and regardless of the condition their device is in.

This should at least give some incentive to companies to not perform such sweeping changes to their terms of service and if they do, the customer can more easily remove themselves from the lock-in without taking a financial hit.

[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Just get a zigbee usb stick and ditch the hue bridge.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep! With zigbee2mqtt you even get bulb firmware updates too 😎

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could you tell me more, because I don’t know anything about this and would like to?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I've got a Hubitat and it works amazing. Local maker REST API and Google integration. Best of both worlds and no subscription.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Capitalism is so exhausting. Can't they just make a lighbulb that changes colour and leave it at that?

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

«Did you forgot to pay current month Light Subscription? We value your privacy. Please click here to renew your Light Subscription»

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Connect your lamps to the cloud now. Because we value your privacy. Your lamps will not work without the cloud. But because we value your privacy, we collect neccessary diagnostic data such as

  1. Lamp on and off times
  2. Lamp color
  3. When the sexy-times preset is used
  4. How often you use your bathroom light

We will use this data to sell you Philips Avent baby bottles 9 months after sexy time, when the bathroom light started to be used in shorter intervals but more often as if by a pregnant woman who needed to pee more often but shorter, Philips oral shower when your bathroom light wasn't on long enough to floss in the morning at least 3 times last week and a Philips vacuum cleaner if the lights never got bright enough so you'd see the dust buildup, thus you probably didn't vacuum, disgusting little customer-person. All of that because we value your privacy.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

Philips be like

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Philips joining the companies of 2023 screwing over their customers. I don't see this slowing down as they all get away with it

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I guess I could keep buying them and sticking them on my zigbee network, but I should probably get off the Hue train before things get worse. The issue is that they're just amazing bulbs and I can't find a competitor with similar light and color tuning. Are there any comparable options yet?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nanoleaf bulbs are great and their Essentials line work offline without an account.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't say they're great; they're adequate. There's a lot of issues with the bulb firmware that still needs ironing out both with stability and feature set.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What features are you missing?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Basic features like turning a bulb on with a set brightness or color (if you're lucky, you can turn on with a set brightness). No support for scenes (due to matter spec) which can lead to issues sending commands to light groups. And if you want to actually update bulbs good luck because it's buggy as hell.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I have a nice mix of Hue and IKEA bulbs in my house, running on zigbee2mqtt. The IKEA bulbs are solid and I've had no major issues, but I did notice their smaller E14 bulbs had an annoying faint buzz sound when they were off, so they got swapped out for hue bulbs.

But as long as you're running zigbee2mqtt or some other hub I would still consider hue bulbs as an option.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't use Home Assistant but this is still saddening to see. Hue was always my favorite to recommend to tech folks because of the local API being pretty easy. I'm sure that will go too. Lifx was another favorite of mine but don't work in my new house with multiple wifi APs with the same name. (I got a shitty little extender with a different name and use them in my basement.) Wiz is cheap but to my knowledge there's no public API so I have no idea if it works with Home Assistant.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

@JackbyDev @hillbicks Philips Hue works with the zingbee protocol. You can integrate every single IOT in #homeassistant or you integrate the hub. I use the internal #zigbee protocol with the #conbee usb stick and it work flawlessly. With zingbee you can use also other IOTs from different manufacturers like IKEA or osram or some Asian brands. Just have a look at the Homeassistant homepage for all existing integrations.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

::no one liked that::

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Would it not be possible to block this using firewall rules?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm blocking my bridge's access to the internet right now, just in case they push an update for this. I never use the Hue app anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I guess "share a lot of information" means name+password of your wifi...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

And as they'll use mobile app, potentially a metric shit ton of more. Location, contacts, usage patterns, make/model of phone, other connected devices on your wifi and the list goes on and on. I'm not sure if they actually get everything they can like tiktok, but atleat theoretical possibility exists.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I liked having the full Hue ecosystem because it meant that I could tinker with HomeAssistant and the lights wouldn’t stop responding during restarts. I also already have a cloud account from the pre-HA days so that’s no big change for me but…

This is still a scumbag move.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My Hue lights continue to work when homeassistant is off, isn't that a normal ZigBee feature? The switches are still connected to the lights.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I just got a Filohome (tuya) dual switch and used tuya-cloud cutter put ESPHome on it. When setup with ESPhome it will still work even if HA is unreachable ok WiFi is down. I never even downloaded their app, made an account, or signed in.

Note for anyone trying to do the same, the Filohome triple switch device in tuya-cloudcutter will work to load the initial boot firmware but you need to change the yaml config when you install ESPHome. If anyone wants the yaml file let me know.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

IKEA Tradfri'd be better, considering these changes. I have some for my bedroom and it's working well with HASS.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Your data, your choice. It's Hue vs them.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Philips took a risk with their brand letting Signify use it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Pulling an Apple without the infra

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