Comment by imoverclocked
10 hours ago
Then what about all the cloud enabled spyware? How would that work? (/sarcasm)
Truly though, smart-home stuff runs the whole gamut of privacy and device manufacturer relationships. eg: I have used three different smart/room AC units:
- one requires its own cloud-enabled app for any remote connectivity, no HomeKit integration - one integrates with HomeKit but then leaves an upgrade hint that can only be done through an app with a login - one integrates with HomeKit and pretty much just works
HomeKit then allows me to remotely control via HomePod/AppleTV acting as a router ... of course this is just a different cloud connectivity but with on-premises devices controlling other on-premises devices.
For each manufacturer of smart devices, there is potentially a separate cloud where data is being funneled through. Some devices support multiple upstreams.
I get that Matter should be a way to fix it but the reality feels more like https://xkcd.com/927/
Part of me just wants dumb devices back. Get rid of buttons on a microwave (just give me a knob for time and maybe another knob for power setting.) Remove touchscreens from cars (mine glares at me with certain sun-angles.) Bring back the desktop/computer hutch and phones that don't live in your pocket. However, having the ability to start cooling my bedroom 45 minutes before I arrive home is ... pretty compelling too.
Manufacturers just need to realize that LANs exist and allow their devices to be used with the Internet turned off.
When I'm sitting in my home and I want to turn off the AC unit in the other room or close my garage door, there's no reason I should have to do an IP roundtrip to the manufacturer's server. Both devices are on my LAN. They should just talk to each other. This has been a solved problem for decades.
I have a Vizio TV that was advertised as a Chromecast TV, and I got it because of that. It was HDMI and Chromecast only. A few years later they did a silent update that added apps and generally made the UI much slower. I mainly use it with an AppleTV or game consoles, but it still irks me that they completely changed what was in my mind a nearly perfect TV.
Can you factory reset it to the prior state and turn off updates?
(I know this doesn't change what Vizio did, but it might get your perfect device back)
Why was it connected to the network?
They realize. They hate it and wish it would go away. LAN connectivity makes it really hard to spy on you, inject ads, require subscriptions, and brick perfectly functional devices so you have to buy new ones.
I have been toying with the idea of building some kind of "home cloud" that hooks into all of your smart devices (at least all of the open devices that it can), allows photo backups from mobile devices, idk. Stuff like that.
Something you can just scan a QR code with your phone and it hooks it into your backups so your "cloud backup" is sitting in your utility room at home instead of being "someone elses computer"
Obviously this is all achievable by a savvy techie, but I'm thinking along the lines of a black box any idiot can use.
The idea is very appealing to me, I would love to decentralize "the cloud" for your average person.
And if it were possible to get one of these in every house and apartment, then the idea of a "smart home" starts to really click in ways it doesn't right now. Your smart home would have a "home cloud" box that acts as the brain
Idk. I think there's a product idea here somewhere but ultimately it's just something I'm kicking around now and then.
Lowest common denominator? They have to round trip due to various NAT/router/firewall/App BS.
Your average ‘idiot’ can barely get a managed App to work, and that typically requires some kind of cloud endpoint to co-ordinate.
Other stuff is the land of prosumer.
You only need an external server if you want to make it so the end user can access their device remotely. Otherwise, an app can very easily just scan the network for the device. Heck, the app itself could be the thing that sets up the device on the network in the first place.
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