Comment by jcgrillo

21 hours ago

Not sure why this is being downvoted, it's a pervasive flaw across all these IoT products. See my description elsewhere here about how Haier "smart" controls work. It's completely insane, and pointless. For systems that can't fail--I include heating systems in the winter--this kind of "move fast and break shit" way of doing it is malpractice. The last thing in the entire world I want my furnace controls doing is an automatic OTA firmware update. Ever.

Exactly. I want a "smart thermostat" that's entirely under my control, not the manufacturer's.

  • But then you would have to configure something on your router and have dynamic dns for remote access and that’s too hard.

    • Sell an additional $200 box containing a Raspberry Pi with Home Assistant on it and a cheap capacitive touchscreen and pre-configure it with Tailscale. Would be reasonably consumer-friendly. Give it a fancy name and start slapping "{$HOME_ASSISTANT} Compatible" branding logos on partners boxes.

      If it's not quite as consumer-friendly as you want it to be, contribute your engineering hours to the Home Assistant product until it is.

      Bonus points for giving it 25-250W audio output to power speakers and letting you pair them together to play music in sync across different rooms of your house connected to speakers of your choice.

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