alt Hacker NewsI am a simple man. When I see people buy devices with Zigbee, Z-Wave, or other fully local protocols, I nod. When I see people reward vendors that lock in with their money, I shake.
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Counterpoint: many vendors with lock-in use the price of the subscription and ads they show you to subsidize the device itself.
By buying the device and then breaking the lock-in, one does more harm to the anti-consumer device manufacturer than had they done nothing at all.
How do you feel about Matter [1]? Asking as someone all in on Home Assistant, open local protocols, and ready to reverse engineer and spend whatever is needed for digital sovereignty, for both myself and the community.
I am a simple man. I don't buy smart devices, mostly. Offline only is completely acceptable.
The connected home was an idealistic dream that has been made perverse by the Zucks and Elons of the world. It is not accessible for normal people and it might never be - at least, not without the blood sacrifice of your privacy.
Especially "security" cameras.. *shiver*...
What I don’t like about Zigbee though is that it is on the Wifi band so every device with wifi antenna can snoop on it. Even assuming the protocol is secure, anyone can infer patterns and devices based on traffic shape. For example, a motion sensor that sends data whenever someone walks by. In the end, nothing beats physical wires in terms of privacy and reliability if I understand correctly.
It's not always that simple. I have a bunch of devices in my home that have WiFi IoT: bedroom AC, dehumidifier, refrigerator, and washer/dryer. I bought all of them regardless because they work fine without WiFi and I've never connected them. I'd love it if I could connect them to Home Assistant without data leaving my network. Reverse engineering them is on my list of future projects.
In the meantime they continue to function as "dumb" devices just fine.