Homeassistant is cool though. Also most of my stuff would work without it, they just works better with it.
None of the devices I bought for it talk to the internet! Home assistant can control and even update the Shellys completely over the local network.
As it should be
Remember Home assistant =/= smart home nonsense
I dont need some AI assistant to automatically manage my thermostat, I just want to be able to control it all using my own local server.
I’ve been looking for some smart outlets, and it seems impossible to discover which ones can be used with normal well-known protocols and which can only be used through a phone app locked into a cloud service.
So, if I’m reading things right, anything that runs on Z-Wave or Zigbee will necessarily run locally, because those are mesh protocols?
Anyway, thanks a lot. Those are really simple keywords to check.
Yep.
My favorite smart outlet switch though was recently sold out and it’s an Aeotec smart switch 7. Zooz makes something similar though I think.
I’ve got it set up on Home Assistant so that whenever certain devices in my home are detected on or off via watt usage minimum changes I monitor on those smart switches, it toggles the Lutron Caseta (best smart light control there is) lights via commands for different rooms in my house.
I also have things like waterproof outdoor gate sensors made by Zooz that are smaller than a single stick of gum where the small flat watch battery in it lasts for almost a year and it will alert me when the gate opens or closes, but only when I’m a certain distance away from the house’s geofence I’ve set up.
You will also need an overall little USB stick to connect to your Home Assistant server device (like a NAS or Raspberry Pi) to control everything, but there’s one that’s made by Aeotec that does both Zigbee and Z-wave long range protocols. Z-Wave LR (long range) works really far too… like I think around a mile potentially, if you have a nice clear line of sight signal.
The Hook Up had a great video on this. He compared a lot of different options and ranks them based on functionality with and without internet.
Check out the new IKEA Matter over Thread stuff. They have two smart plugs (an indoor single plug and an outdoor double plug). You can flash one of the esp-idf example images to an ESP32-C6 and plug it into your HA server to turn it into a Thread Border Router for under $10. Everything on Thread uses a fully local encrypted mesh network that by default has no Internet access (leave NAT64 turned off in the HA border router add-on).
P.S.: Make sure to update the firmware on the devices (which HA can do), as several don’t act as routing end devices until after the first upgrade.
I have several US V2 plugs from athom.tech and they work great via home assistant. They just sit on WiFi don’t call home and are reliable through hoke assistant
Any suggestions for someone tech savvy enough to run a proxmox server for a handful of services, to get started with home assistant?
Can you replicate something like a Google home with voice commands?
I may or may not be getting a new house soon. I’m good with electrical to replace switches with wireless ones. But what do you get? Where do you start and where do you end? What about the WAF?
I saw LTT did smart switches in his house and it was a mess of incompatibilities.
Any good resources? I don’t even know what I don’t know haha
Look into ZWave and ZigBee mesh networks. I run Home Assistant with a couple hundred devices and integrations. ZWave tends to be my hardwired switches, and ZigBee tends to be my battery operated motion sensors, remotes, etc.
Personally, I run Home Assistant on its native HAOS on a raspberry Pi. In addition to Home Assistant, I have lots of automations running in Node Red, a no/low code orchestration addon.
For voice control, I’m playing with the Atom Echo.
Couple hundred?! Are most of those lights or something? Forgive me I’m totally ignorant about home automation.
Is it a hobby to you or have you found significant time/energy savings? Or both?
Part hobby, part time and energy savings. One thing I love about Home Assistant is the integrations with so many devices and services. I have smart switches., remotes, smart plugs, energy monitors, RGB bulbs, thermometers, etc.
It’s a slippery slope of wanting to integrate absolutely everything! My doorbell, alarm system, thermostats, garage door, door locks, and so on.
Many are local “smart devices” using ZWave and ZigBee, and others are cloud integrations with other services.
I’ve gotten to a point where the Home Automation routines I rely on are so useful that I get annoyed if I ever have to do things “manually”.
Couple examples:
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I have a remote by my bed that, when the goodnight button is pressed, turns off all the lights, sets the HVAC back to programmed mode, puts our computers to sleep, arms the alarm, locks the doors, and closes curtains.
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I have a button by my garage door that sets an “auto arm” toggle that opens the garage door, unlocks the door to the garage and the waits for me to close the garage, at which point it arms the alarm, turns off the lights, locks my computers, turns off the HVAC, closes curtains, locks doors, etc.
That’s pretty dope and I see how it could actually really help my ADHD if I had an “everything off” button. Thanks for replying.
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This video is a good starting point. If you’re already running proxmox you’re definitely ready. 👍
Community scripts has home assistant, both lxc and VM options. Use the VM version and you can get HA up and running super quick.
https://community-scripts.org/
Also shout out to community scripts! If you run proxmox and aren’t using community scripts then you’re about to hate yourself for all the manual builds you’ve done.
Fuck. I almost wish I didn’t read this.
I have not been using community scripts, and I feel an amount of silly. Thanks!
Well, you shouldn’t keep a gun next to it, unless you want the printer to take ahold of it and rob you.
Why On Earth would you keep a gun NEXT to it!? That’s just asking for problems. That printer knows if it gets a hold of that gun, it’ll look like a suicide, not a murder.
“no smart home crap” Yeah… That’s just a choice. I have two homegrown smarthome solutions that are amazing and complex without creating security holes.
You can tell it’s an IT guy’s home assistant if there’s no hardware that requires someone else’s cloud.
My home automation philosophy is that everything in the house should work with or without internet. It’s going well so far.
I’ll add that things should also fail gracefully. If something breaks, they should all revert back to working like the dumb equivalent. Dumb switches, dumb thermostat, etc.
For sure. That one is a bit harder to get right, but is good to keep testing and striving for.
My home assistant is set up that way. If I turn it all off, the house is a little less awesome, but everythiing works fine. You just have to turn on/off lights and open/close doors yourself now. you’ll have to diddle with the thermostat and ceiling fans more too.
This is the Way.
This is why I’m conflicted about getting online weather information.
Pretty hard to replace weather info without internet. I don’t have any automations that rely on weather info, and I have a cheap rain gauge that a friend 3d printed for me. It uses a simple zigbee door sensor to detect rain accumulation. Pretty clever device (not my invention.)
So eventually I want to automate the watering of my garden, and I intend to use the rain sensor to help there. But honestly, it never rains in the summer here in the PNW, so my 3rd reality moisture sensors are more useful than actual weather data.
Pretty hard to replace weather info without internet.
Hard to tell the weather without the “Cloud.”
Home Assistant and local, cloud-free protocols and devices are great
Boom. Exactly. Self hosted solutions are amazing. We have choices about this stuff.
I have an apartment and it is dumb
I always loved the saying, “The ‘S’ in IoT stands for security.”
As plenty people already said here, I don’t see any problems if it’s staying in your local network, selfhosted
The more you understand tech, the more you trust the simplest version of it 😅
I just don’t understand the desire to control everything in your house with an app. It’s not like that app can load or unload the dishwasher or clothes dryer. That would be automation I could really get behind. And thermostats are programmable and then left to themselves. Even ice makers are automatically controlled with a microswitch.
And yes, I did try the internet enabled thermostat thing and found I never used the app. Nor is the journey to the thermostat so arduous that I can’t get up and walk over to it if I should ever feel the need. Maybe I’m just too old to get it.
But if you like it and want it then have at it. I certainly won’t stop you from enjoying it.
If you don’t understand the desire then you don’t have a use case. And that’s ok. But that doesn’t mean other people don’t have a use case.
Properly set up home automation can reduce your energy usage. Track temperature throughout your house and open blinds, only direct heat/cooling to rooms that need it, etc. Sure a thermostat is programmable but it’s limited by the ability to just turn on/off heat and a few temperature sensors. You can drastically expand what your thermostat can do (ie motorized blinds) and information it has access to (temperature outside, current weather, etc).
Or maybe someone is the type to have panic attacks about forgetting to turn the oven off. Having the ability to see oven status on the go is nice.
Or maybe someone has a larger house than you and the journey to the thermostat is more arduous than yours. Or the journey to the dishwasher or clothes dryer to see if it’s done is arduous.
Or maybe someone has a disability and having quick access to various things is a huge time saver.
Maybe someone has a sensory issue and loud buzzing from a dryer finishing is problematic, so they want to disable the “finished” alert from the device and just receive a notification on their phone.
but if youre gathering that much data and making decisions with it, then from the OP “no internet connected thermostats” is a must. None of your smart home stuff should be able to phone home. Basically the openWRT argument but also for smart home. Use zigbee or zwave so devices can’t just directly phone home and must simply connect through a hub (that you should control).
tl;dr - plenty of reasons to want these things, they just may not apply to you.
Getting back from holiday in a few hours and the weather is cold? Turn the heating on from your app before you get back. Wow. Life changing. Don’t have a use case for most things being connected but thermostat really isn’t that crazy IMO.
“Set and forget” time based thermostat programming only works if your daily routine doesn’t change daily or weekly or have outliers. The ability to change manually, or add other factors (is anyone home? let it get a bit colder, since it doesn’t matter) is pretty great.
But I would still advocate for
no internet connected thermostatsfrom the OP. Your thermostat should be isolated to your home network (via zigbee/zwave or a quality VLAN) connecting to a server/hub you control. And your app should be communicating to your server/hub. Your thermostat shouldn’t be able to report back to google whether or not you are home.Door locks and garage door openers are sweet to automate. My instance knows if I left by car/bike/foot, and welcomes me home with the proper unlocking/opening.
Also, never having to worry about if I left the door unlocked or garage door open is nice.
I’ve never gotten any automated locks because I’ve always been concerned about security around them, but also, Ive had too many warped doors in my life where I have to lean on the door to get the deadbolt to properly set. Which means that there is no way an automated lock would be able to automatically set itself.
Is the answer here: “there are just some doors this won’t work on” or do the smart locks have some way of working around that?
I think you gotta fix the door before you can have complete confidence.
My automated deadbolt can ‘force’ its way shut when it has full battery. But when it gets low on juice, the door needs to be ‘fully shut’
So your best bet is to better align your strike plate so the door doesn’t need shimmied to close fully.
I work every 3rd day, so for an odd schedule it’s nice. I set up Home Assistant to look at my calendar.
HomeAssistant and vlans are kind of the answer to most of the issues/concerns regarding smart devices this post has
I have to say though, I find anyone who leans too far either way to be extremely silly
Well chosen devices from reputable manufacturers can drastically improve quality of life
One big one for me was window blinds on a sun timer. Because after a decade, I was swapping from nights to days permanently having spent that past time swapping from nights to days every Wednesday and had signifcant issues both waking up and staying up on those days, and even now I still do
Having my bedroom windows open in the morning on their own to use natural lighting to wake me up has been extremely helpful for that, and then using HA that could be tied into external camera systems to close the windows automatically if a person or vehicle is detected within specific parameters, or having the ability to open my son’s window if I hear him crying to be picked up from a nap but I can’t immediately respond has been wonderful
Now there’s also your Rings, your creepvacuumbots, any smart TV at all and any other host of problems with iot devices, but there are some gems that make life much better without the dark patterns we increasingly associate with connectes devices these days
A lot of the “automation” we can buy is a joke: it should be unobtrusive and provide actual quality of life improvement and it’s not. Turning on a light shouldn’t require us to interact with an app on our phones.
HA with some good hardware choices does that if you don’t mind putting in the work up front. Most of my automations require no interaction to work: they passively check conditions and trigger automatically – if I’m home, leaving, need to wake up for work, etc.
My phone has a built-in calendar and is about the only “extra” I use it for. It works flawlessly, and I have no other need for any other electronic calendering system. I do admit to using a wall calendar for certain things too. Old habits as a farmer are hard to break. Ye Gods, how I miss the weekly flip calendars I used to get from Cenex every year…
I just don’t understand the desire to control everything in your house with an app.
Shrinking the size of my wallet and getting rid of all my keys has an instant appeal. I’d much rather just carry around a single phone-sized multipass than a janitor’s worth of hardware for accessing a dozen different gates and appliances.
Did you notice your electronic locks all have keys for when they fail? For me, I only need one key for my door lock so it adds nothing noticeable in my pocket. And in all my life I have never seen any home appliance that needed a key to operate-- excepting something like you would see in a laundromat. But you likely don’t have the keys for that either.
As for gates, I’ve owned a lot of gates to control livestock. None of which needed a padlock. But that is very much a YMMV thing. Still, if you have a need for locked gates, a set of combination locks all set to the same combination or keyed locks with all setup for a single key once again minimizes the need for a bunch of bulky keys. Plus they are all cheaper to install and operate. You can literally operate an infinite number locks with just one key or combination.
Did you notice your electronic locks all have keys for when they fail?
No, because I don’t have them. I have a fake rock with a key in it and generally don’t bother locking my front door anyway. But I’m lazy and cheap, not terribly interested in changing out all my locks myself or paying someone else to do it for a marginal quality of life improvement.
Still, if you have a need for locked gates, a set of combination locks all set to the same combination or keyed locks with all setup for a single key once again minimizes the need for a bunch of bulky keys.
Sure. And if you’re setting up a security perimeter from first principles, that’s fine. But then you add an interior gate or you need to replace a lock that’s rusted through or yadda yadda life happens, and you can lose the single key design.
Case in point, my front door lock did foul a few years ago. My wife changed out the front door but didn’t bother to sync it with the back door. She didn’t want to bother with an electronic lock because she thought they were too expensive. So now we’ve got a front door that doesn’t match the side door or the garage door. And we only have two keys to the new lock, one of which has been lost almost immediately.
A digital system that I can just sync from my phone would be far more appealing than juggling keys. Or staring at a key dish and trying to remember which ones actually link to which doors.
You can just get another re-keyable lock for any added later locks or replacement lock sets. It’s not rocket surgery and one of the reasons why you use re-keyable locks. And if you lost a key, just have a new key made. It’s cheap and quick. So you are still only needing one key per user. My key ring has a remote for my car, a post officebox key, (they do not deliver my mail to my house), and one door key to the house that has 3 locking doors. The car remote is by far the most annoying thing in my pocket.
Look, we all want to be part of some cool kids club. I want a new 3D printer because despite my trusty old bed-slingers working flawlessly, I would like a shiny new enclosed Core xy printer so I can be as cool as everyone else with a printer. And if I’m not careful, I can have the same problem with shiny new pocket knives at times. Same thing with digital homes. It’s driven by the cool factor rather than any real necessity. So go ahead and connect everything you want. But at least admit to yourself that probably half the reason you do it is just to be a cool kid.
You can just get another re-keyable lock for any added later locks or replacement lock sets.
All things that are a pain in the ass.
So is replacing an electronic door lock and a hell of a lot costlier.
I also got rid of a bunch of keys, and I didn’t need an app to do so. if I have to use an app, I’d hate it
You still need an interface. Bunch of ways to do it.
Having kids makes a big difference. It’s very useful to be able to shut off all the lights in the common areas and turn off the lights in their bedroom when they fall asleep. It’s also nice to be able to push a button to start a song on the speaker for musical routines (like cleaning up breakfast to Blue Danube or running to bed to Night Comes from Pikmin).
We also have a TON of lamps, and their switches are not always easily accessible (especially because our house is a perpetual mess).
The smart lock is because my wife always used to ask me if I locked the door after I got into bed, and I never remembered because ADHD.
Yeah, i think its all about use cases.
I use home assistant in a tablet on the kitchen wall, for light control, ev charging and battery level monitoring for mine and my wife’s car which is not intuitive or easy in the official app. I use it for our shared calendar. Amd weather updates as well as for monitoring my 3d printer and cctv cameras. I host everything locally. Nothing is in the cloud except for the API i need to monitor the EVs and the weather server. I keep finding new things to use it for. I dont do much automation with it. But i find it very useful overall.
Nor is the journey to the thermostat so arduous that I can’t get up and walk over to it if I should ever feel the need. Maybe I’m just too old to get it.
I live in a three story house, and sometimes only notice when what the thermostat is set to when I’m tired and ready for bed. Climbing a flight of stairs after going down and changing the thermostat doesn’t appeal much. I also got it on sale, which was nice.
That’s why you have a programmable thermostat. Set and forget. No need to climb stairs, (good exercise), to change the temp.
LOL. That’s not a bad approach. What I find happens in practice is that we turn it off during season transitions so we can open the windows, and then forget or need to turn it back on again to deal with the fluctuations in the weather. The temps here have shifted as much as 50 degrees in a single day. Hard to program for that in advance. :)
I live in northern Minnesota, so we get that a lot too in the spring and fall. But my thermostat is set to auto with a minimum temp of 68F to turn on the heat. And 74F to run the air conditioner when needed. It works with very, very little intervention from me year round.
Yeah, that’s a good option. However those temps swings also mean that it’s likely to get back down (or up) again the next day, and in the mean time I’m potentially running the thermostat.
I’ve also got an old brick house, which means that thermal mass is a thing in a way that’s hard to explain to people who live in modern buildings, but the easiest way to understand it is to realize the house walls are a lot slower at changing temps than the air, which will also mess with the thermometer.
I agree, but for elderly people, I think the technology would be useful.
I have some lights and speakers, that’s it. I like some automation things like speakers get set to X volume at 7pm, you can say “goodnight” and it has a list of items it does, asks for alarm, turns off all Lights, set speaker volumes lower, sets music in the living room for the doggo.
I have my network locked down and and IoT ssid. I like a few of the conveniences and I watch my network and traffic like a hawk.
Home Assistant is a free and open source alternative for home automation. Don’t have to completely give up the future.
This isn’t humor, and most tech people have some of this shit. 3/10.
Ive been gifted a few IoT things over the years. They stay on their own network / VLAN or are unplugged entierly when not in use. The meme about keeping the firearm near the one thing I cant reasonably make myself is not innacurate. Tech workers are aware of the vulnerabilities and issues with cheap insecure IoT nonsense. As part of one of my nerds cyber security learning we hacked a smart cat feeder to snoop on wireless networks and allow a back door (we had their permission, it was a gift that was unneeded so they let us take it apart).
Edit: also a ton of that junk phones back to AWS, and usually pretty lazilly, if your learning pen testing or cyber security its a fun exercise to get this cheap crap and find out how it works.
Cool but you’re not even close to ‘most tech people’.
Guys, gals, non binary pals; I can’t emphasize this enough. The average tech worker Isn’t some Linux guru working for a VC sending pics of their thigh highs. It’s a middle aged millennial with kids who just wants his shit to work.
Having worked in IT for 17 years. I don’t trust any MFer that uses their IT experience as a reason to do something.
I will trust people using their IT experience as a reason to avoid something, though
Not all of us will do it to the same degree though. IT security has always been a sliding scale between security and convenience. The most secure data is stored in a locked safe without being turned on or connected to anything. That’s not very practical, so we make concessions based on how often we need such data and other convenience metrics.
I’m not as paranoid as the OP, though I agree with some of the stuff said. Reasonable security measures are fine; you don’t need to look like a digital version of a prepper with a bunker, for most people.
Edit: for instance I don’t use my TV all that much, but it is a “smart” TV, meaning it has apps that connect to Internet, and I have some online libraries.
Exactly.
My first personal e-mail way back in the 90s was with my ISP. Then I changed ISPs and saw the problem with that. So I moved to Yahoo.
Some years later, in the 00s I just decided to get my own, paid for, Internet domain and have my e-mail there, even though I could’ve carried on using Yahoo or get Google Mail (very popular amongst techies back then) for free. The main reason was that I realized I must made sure the e-mail address was MINE, not actually owned by somebody else with me allowed to use it under their conditions.
Twenty years later and guess it was pretty wise to not have my e-mail in the claws of “Definitelly Do Evil” Google.
Experience using and living with Tech, mainly once your understanding of it reaches the level of understanding systemic elements, naturally informs ones choices in Tech, and that often means chosing something else than the mass marketed “popular” stuff that’s designed to lock you in, sell you stuff or sell your attention to others and eavesdrop on you and sell your data.
Another perspective. You got lucky that the dependencies you’re working with haven’t gotten as bad as the ones for Gmail and the like. Sure you’ve got a domain, but you’ve also got a domain registrar you’re dependent on. Yeah, you’ve got your own email server, but it’s dependent on open source software, and the monopolists allowing it to still connection, though that’s getting iffy. You’re also dependent on the kindness of a number of people continuing to contribute to Linux, and it not being compromised in some way.
I made a different choice 25 years ago, and went with Gmail, but the idea that you’re smarter because your dependencies didn’t turn to sh*t is as much luck as skill. 25 years is several eternities in tech, and there are no guaranteed outcomes.
Literally the worst that can happen to me if I’m really really unlucky is end up tied down to a single provider, same as you.
There were already 100s of registars back then (and as of 2024 there were over 2000) along with a standardized process for moving a domain to another registar, all regulated by an international regulator, ICANN.
Given that ease of migration is guaranteed by ICANN, making the market highly competitive, the only real risk that this entire system end up “consolidated” is if ICANN is totally subverted, a pretty tall order considering it’s in the interest of every single country in the World and millions of businesses (who also have domain names) that it is not, so that’s highly unlikely.
Meanwhile Google is just one and has always been just one. From the very start there was NEVER any perspective of there being more than one provider of gmail addresses so there was NEVER any perspective of being able to move away from Google and still keep your e-mail address if Google screwed you in some way. As for all your e-mails, those were always freely accessible to Google and they could always do whatever they want with that data.
In simple terms, you chose to be Google’s bitch and hope that they don’t screw you over too badly, whilst I, maybe, if I’m really really unlucky and an entire international system for domain name regulation is subverted against the interests of all countries in the World and most businesses, might one day at worst end up in the same situation as you.
I’m afraid your face-saving risk “analysis” on this is hilariously bad.
Literally the worst that can happen to me if I’m really really unlucky is end up tied down to a single provider, same as you.
No, there are a lot more risks you’re running that I am not. Since you control your infrastructure, you’re also responsible for it. Current penalty under CAN-SPAM act is up to $53,088 per email. So, no the worst thing that can happen to you if you’re really unlucky is to die penniless after being sued into oblivious for operating a spam operation.
Before the worst happens, it’s getting increasingly more likely that your domain will end up in a blacklist at Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook, for which there is no formal appeal process. All that would require would somebody hacking your domain, and sending spam, or just sharing an ip address with a spammer.
That’s before we get into the things that you’re already lost: time and effort maintaining the system, which I have not.
Anyway, I was just being polite, but since you’re incapable of doing so, and need to resort to ad homenium attacks, I think we’re done here.
You’re assuming I’m using my domain to send spam or am operating the e-mail server myself. That’s a pretty wild assumption.
Further, I don’t live in the US nor do I have assets in the US, so that act means shit for me.
You can pay a company that hosts e-mail to do it for you, and pretty cheap too.
Which I do.
Like the registar, one can change that provider too, and if do that I get to take the e-mail address with me as well as all my e-mails (all data is fully exportable), unlike with Google were the e-mail address is theirs, not yours.
Try again.
I used to work the IT help desk as well and I didn’t want to fix broken shit in my spare time either. Friends and family were constantly on me to fix their shit or worse, help them setup their new thing / upgrade or whatever. The thing that always irritated me about it was that no one ever considered this a favor, you know, actual labor. To them, I just knew the secrets, and should simply share those secrets with them like a good friend. Because whatever they wanted to do, in their minds, was very very bad easy, they were just missing some small secret answer that would make it all suddenly work. And of course they’d only consult me late in the game after they’d made the purchase or whatever and gotten stuck because it didn’t work. Eventually I had to formally declare that I wouldn’t be helping anyone anymore.
I just started writing up invoices for my side hustle and quoting prices to fix their shit.
I do that for a day job, so I have no interest in working more for free. Putting a price tag on the help definitely helped cut down how much bullshit they tried to get me to do
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If it’s a very well defined task with repeatable steps, sure. Often it’s more like “why won’t my CarPlay open my garage door?” And in those cases I barely even know where to start and need to experiment and fiddle, and the last thing I want is them hanging on my arm asking questions and offering bad theories.
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The only people I do this stuff for is my parents, because they certainly did a lot for me over the decades. Also, if I don’t do these things for them, some asshole will drain their bank accounts because their passwords would be the names of their children.
Mechanical Windows
As opposed to what, wireless windows?
Microsoft Windows
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How about bio-windows?
Technology under capitalism becomes a hazard and a threat.
This is me, nothing in my house needs automation for any reason. There is especially no need for internet connectivity. The closest to automation I have ever had is the timers that turn the lights on or off on my fishtanks.
I hacked this guy’s fish tanks, I reprogrammed the lights and I’m currently training his fish through EMDR to memorize all his passwords. In about six months time I’ll break into his house, interrogate his fish and clean out all his bank accounts.
bypassing a water-gapped security system
The fish have already emptied my accounts, you are going to be disappointed.
Why don’t you just get a realistic water pistol, paint it black and interrogate him directly? Put a chunk of depleted uranium in the end of the barrel so you can pistol whip him and it will be realistic and he will shit pants, which you can turn into dirt in the crafting screen.
Dude’s never heard of fishing attacks.
If you know a way to hack a mechanical timer I’d love to hear it.
As a general rule, if you buy “smart” anything where it requires an internet connection and a cloud service to function it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead within 10. And that’s assuming the company survives so long and is bothered to support it. That’s from planned obsolescence and the ongoing cost of supporting the platform when they have something new to sell. And while things can benefit from an internet connection, if its white goods then run a mile.
I think forward thinking companies could actually gain a lot of free publicity and sales if they openly pledged that their software was in escrow and would automatically release after a period of time and/or as a failsafe if the company discontinued the product and/or they went bust.
It should be required that companies either maintain their services perpetual or release the software with a permissive license to allow users to maintain their own service.
