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Smart appliances are so pointless. Does my toaster make toast? Yes? Then why the hell does it need WiFi access!?
how else are you supposed to reprogram the resistive display to burn smiles into the toast?
P2P + IoT could be great for safety and privacy. We should just remove the middle men (datacentres, servers) so that data travels between the devices you own, and not via some data vampire trying to get in the way.
I will never allow IoT devices into this house unless they can be used offline.
I know everyone points out the problems with Nest, Ring, and various talking/listening/spying agents. For me, one of the worst offenders was a garage door motor that came with WiFi capability. Damn thing has the ability to just open up a door on my house on command. There's no way am I putting that online.
A door to what is arguably the most valuable item you own.
CNC milling machine?
Well...I mean....if that's where you keep your CNC milling machine (I would hope), yeah.
I bought a kettle with some WiFi features, but never planned to put it on my network as it works without it. Or was supposed to, at least. The thermostat was erratic and it needed a firmware update to fix it, only installable via this WiFi-connection. I set up a temporary VLAN just for the update, and disabled the VLAN right after. Then I took a shower.
I find it odd that one of its core features worked so poorly out of the box. And it's not like it was a way to trick me into connecting it either, as I first got a replacement part because they didn't know what the issue was.
Oh fuck all this…
Someone please make a Bluetooth equivalent for smart devices. My thermostat doesn't need internet access but standardized wireless control is still a good feature
ZigBee
I have multiple smart plugs in my house that monitor energy usage for various devices. I have them set up on Home Assistant via ZigBee. All completely local, works without internet.
Zigbee or z-wave for example?
FFS an air fryer is a heating element, fan, and thermostat.
Why are any of them being built with online connectivity and data harvesting capabilities in the first place?!
Manufacturers: To deliver solutions to nonexistent problems. Free money.
Politics: To save our economy. It can only survive if people buy new stuff all the time. Could also come in handy as surveillance measure one day.
People: Oh how cool, I can monitor my chicken nuggets from my couch ~5m away.
People: Oh how cool, I can monitor my chicken nuggets from my couch ~5m away.
This would genuinely be handy for me though. I've got a nine year old, and have similar aged kids over quite regularly. If I'm dealing with the kids, I can't always hear the air fryer finishing. A notification to the phone that's in my pocket would be really helpful.
As you say though, there's always shit tacked on :(
There are numerous benefits in IoT / smart home and ubiquitous computing. Used in the right ways it can make your life so much better and even save lives. It is just sad to see all the wasted potential, the greediness and straight up noncompliance with basic human rights and needs for simplicity and privacy in its design.
Funny enough, it got me into reading some threads of people reverse engineering air fryer APIs (didn't expect that to ever happen) and it reminded me again of how great and compassionate some people are. Makes the stupid cat and mouse game seem even more stupid when 3 guys in their spare time can rebuild a 5 layer deep authentication stack with some unknown Philips / Xiaomi server that probably needed tens or even hundreds of engineers to build in an obfuscated manner in the first place.
I set a timer on your phone to match(ish) the timer on the air fryer
"hey Google, preheat the oven to 350°"
It'd be nice to be able to do that while my hands are dirty doing something else, instead of stopping and cleaning them so I don't put salmonella on the oven knobs.
You could just do that first
As someone with ADHD, the implemented order of operations is never logically optimal.
The more steps I have to do to course correct the more likely I fuck up the next thing.
Home automation is a godsend for me.
I don't have an air fryer but if I did, the biggest help for me would be some sort of obnoxiously obvious reminder the nuggs are done so I don't A) burn the house down, or B) have cold nuggs when I wake up from my hyperfocus an hour later.
My husband has been wondering if he should get formally diagnosed for ADHD now that our kid has been. (Talk about a carbon copy of a parent, this kid, geeze.) This explains a lot about the way he cooks. He always says it’s because he “needs more practice” but all I see is a chaotic stressful experience, and of course if I try to help him I just get in the way and make him irritated that I seem to think he can’t manage it on his own. Anyway all I’m saying is that it’s interesting to read your comment because I wonder if that’s my husband’s trouble, too.
Certainly sounds familiar, my tip to him is to try and write recipes down and get in the habit of mise en place-ing (prep chopping / pre-measuring) when you know what you're gonna cook. Once the food hits the hot pan, any semblance of a plan goes out the window
(but also know "sticking to habits" is hard for us with ADHD, as it frequently goes against our nature, so don't be shocked if he struggles there)
I tend to be the one to cook the "whatever's leftover in the fridge" dish, which is a guaranteed source of a little chaos. In those instances it's always helpful to have my wife around to pass ingredients or do some prep tasks on the side so I don't lose focus and burn the onions.
Also, if you don't already have recipes written down, having someone help build out a recipe book as you go can help smooth out future cooks.
Shout out to Recipe Keeper - after a first cook, usually from a website or book, we put everything we like in there for future reference.
Sometimes I forget. It would also be useful if I'm not in the kitchen and want to start it without having to go there and back to what I was doing while waiting for it to heat, if it's something like a frozen pizza that doesn't take much prep time.
I only buy cheap shit. And I never, ever, ever ever ever connect anything to the net that doesn't absolutely need to be connected.
If I need an air fryer and the cheap one has smart shit on it. I will never connect that shit to the net. Never. Why the fuck would I? It's an air fryer. Not a laptop.
I completely agree. If it's a household appliance, it better not fucking connect to the internet.
I just recently started getting into smart home products such as smart plugs and stuff and I absolutely make certain that they don't have internet connection and use home assistant to keep the data local.
I will only use Zigbee or Z-Wave devices so that there's no way they can connect to the internet.
'Last year, we asked the public for their views on smart products in a series of workshops. People shared concerns that products collect too much personal information, and said that they feel powerless to control how their data is used and shared'
Thank you to these people!
Easy enough to enforce. Put all your IoT devices into their own subnet/VLAN with no Internet access. Then, you'll quickly see which devices you need to replace, or just not use as "smart" devices.
I have a ton of smart devices that don't even connect to wifi at all. None of them have Internet access of any sort.
Easy enough! except, that most people don't even know what is a VLAN, let alone have any network device that supports it. It takes a special kind of router to have such settings, and no, OpenWRT is not the solution for that as they have limitations on the minimum amount of memory the device has to have
It takes a special kind of router to have such settings
Eh, most good quality routers from reputable companies can handle separate VLANs just fine. My old Asus RT-N66U had that capability right out of the box.
But, as already stated, most people don't even change the default password on their router, much less know what a VLAN even is.
Eh, most good quality routers from reputable companies can handle separate VLANs just fine. My old Asus RT-N66U had that capability right out of the box.
I haven't seen "advanced" settings like this on consumer tplink and asus routers, only on business grade tplinks, when considering these brands. but I also wouldn't consider those that I often see to be good quality, so there's that.
Yeah, hence the qualifications haha
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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