Cloud services for controlling things inside your house are the worst - eviltoast

I recently moved away from MyQ to local control of my garage door and I’ve been loving it. I stumbled across the linked issue where MyQ shit the bed for roughly 3 days and it just confirms to me that the extra effort to move away from a cloud service was worth it. I’m down to just one last cloud service for something inside my house. My mind is pretty much made up that if I can’t accomplish it locally, I won’t do/use it.

  • root@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I actively avoid and move away from HA type devices that do not work without WAN. There’s no reason that me pushing a GUI button to turn off a light needs to do anything more than travel to my AP, to HA and then to the light. Let’s not bring the cloud into this.

  • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.me
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    1 year ago

    You don’t like being forced to buy a new garage door opener every time the manufacturer’s product manager takes a shit?

  • StandingCat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    FWIW i use myQ locally with no issues. I use the myq “homekit bridge” to integrate with home assistant locally.

    • walden@sub.wetshaving.social
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      1 year ago

      That’s interesting, I don’t think that was an option back when I was using MyQ. I guess that’s why Matter would be such a big improvement for things.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        First myq was completely open to integrate, then I believe they locked it down then they opened it up to homekit a year or two later.

        I won’t buy one out of principle. Any product or company that was a pain to work with during my days as a control4 integrator is blacklisted from my home. I won’t do app-based setups, either.

    • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com
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      1 year ago

      Ditto here. I spent even less - a Wemos D1 mini and a relay, all housed snugly in a 3D printed case.

      Has worked flawlessly for years now.

      All I can say is, thank the gods for esphome and Home Assistant.

  • walden@sub.wetshaving.social
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, MyQ is hot steamy garbage. I gave up on it after giving it a chance for way too long. Their app, of course, will continue to work, but they would constantly change the API forcing the integration devs to scramble.

    I use sonoff wifi switches with Tasmota now. They’re set to turn on then immediately off, simulating a button press. Combined with z-wave door sensors and some template sensor stuff copied from a forum, it’s super solid.

    • nakal@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I like Shelly hardware. The devices default to local communication and cloud is optional. Custom firmware can also be used, but not really needed. I wished they made more kinds of IoT stuff.

      Since the device state can be queried with HTTP requests, it’s easy to integrate it to my monitoring system (Prometheus/Grafana).

        • peregus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Exactly, the community has been asking them to make ZigBee devices and they just announced the new…ZWave line of products 😭

          • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.me
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            1 year ago

            Nothing wrong with Z-Wave. I have 3 radios (2 zw [one for Aeotec HEM since it generates tons of traffic], one zig) just so I can use whatever is cheapest or available for a particular application. All of the “energy controlling” (meaning, not light bulbs) is ZWave because it seems to have more robust state verification built into the protocol. Also, it’s 915MHz and I live in a very crowded RF environment on 2.4.

            • peregus@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              No no, don’t get me wrong, nothing wrong with Z-Wave, I just prefer ZigBee because I’ve found more expensive devices or no alternatives on Z-Wave: buttons, temperature/motion/door sensors, bulbs. What Z-Wave devices do you have?

              • amigan@lemmy.dynatron.me
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                1 year ago

                I agree mostly; for example, ZW bulbs are outrageously expensive. I have a Kwikset lock, a couple Zooz ZEN15s, some dimmable lamp modules, Aeotec HEM, a Remotec IR AC controller, GE switches, and Honeywell T6 Pro thermostats.

    • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I just ordered a pair of the ratgdo devices for full, local-only control. Ratgdo also allows control of the lights separaely, so I’m going to automate the light turning on when someone goes into the garage.

  • Obinice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    local control of my garage door

    This is wild. I never imagined I’d even need to control a garage door remotely o.O

      • qupada@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I’ve definitely forgotten to close mine once or twice, even though my custom (LoRa) integration is just simulating pushing the button on the wall by closing a relay contact and watching for closed status with a reed switch, it means I can do it from anywhere.

    • phx@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, my IoT network is segregated from any of my regular network. The control node can be accessed by VPN but otherwise has no access to or from the internet

  • chockblock@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Unfortunately my furnace (Rheem) only works this way which is so disappointing. I wish it could be cracked so that it could work independently with home assistant.

    • Feliberto@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      Anything RTSP will do, but I’d recommend VLAN the shit out of it unless you are confortable having it call home every second.

      I use wyze cameras with custom firmware.

      • HidingCat@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Ooo, you can do that with Wyze? That’d be the best of both worlds. I’ll go search on it, but if you have any advice, I’m all ears.

    • buedi@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      We use Reolink wired with PoE and recently switched from ZoneMinder + ZMNinja to Frigate + Home assistant and are very happy so far.

    • Omacitin@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Have you checked out Frigate? It’s a local service that captures RTSP streams from cameras and uses neural net image recognition to trigger events / recordings. It has good integration with Home Assistant.

    • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I have Blue Iris NVR with Reolink cameras. A bit of tweaking, but it was easy to follow tutorials online and they integrate into HA nicely. Blue Iris isn’t free, but I couldn’t get Frigate to work and don’t have the background to troubleshoot it very well. I’d say it’s worth the cost, though.

    • jo3shmoo@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Personally I’ve been pretty happy with Unifi Protect. Reliably records locally but accessible remotely and notifications are quick within a few seconds. Cameras can connect to HA and support RTSP if you want to link them into Frigate.