I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and other
stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in. I know Philips Hue and
Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels of
interoperability, also a certain amount of hacking can be done, but not
necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

Andy Burns wrote

I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart
sockets and other stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary
lock-in. I know Philips Hue and Ikea Tradfri are actually
zigbee based and have limited levels of interoperability,

Not really limited at all in fact and there are a lot
more than just those two going the zigbee route.

also a certain amount of hacking can be done,

But isnt necessary to get a viable result.

but not necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

Yeah me too.

This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

But it remains to be seen if it produces buyable products.

Andy Burns wrote:
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and other
stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in. I know Philips Hue and
Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels of
interoperability, also a certain amount of hacking can be done, but not
necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

I think Zigbee is interesting because devices themselves can't phone home -
they don't have a route to the internet nor the ability to speak IP (nor the
power budget). So it's good for things that just do their one job, without
ads/malware/surveillance thrown into the mix.

The hubs can and do phone home, but you can use the devices without the
hubs. I recently came across:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/informati...d_devices.html
which seems quite comprehensive in support for a wide range of devices.

That can then hook into a third party stack that you trust.

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

It's interesting, but note that the proponents are hardly the most privacy
focused. So remains to be seen whether it's a spyfest or not.

Theo

You can mix and match, we have a number of BG Smart sockets, some plug in adaptors from various sources that use e-familycloud software and Hive for the heating. Hive has its own hub the others do not, the unifying factor is Alexa everything can be controlled from three echo dots in various rooms. As yet we do not have control of the oven, washer or dishwasher and somehow I cannot see us going for that as it will require quite some investment. To me it seems the choice is more between the top level controls such as Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri etc. at the moment it seems Alexa has more compatible devices. I cannot say that using Alexa is the best but market share often out trumps quality (remember VHS).

Richard

On 20/12/2019 09:02, Andy Burns wrote:
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and other
stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in.Â* I know Philips Hue and
Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels of
interoperability, also a certain amount of hacking can be done, but not
necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

I have a sonoff wifi switch for my garage door.

It was definitely hard work to get it to integrate with OK Google and
the integration stopped working after a few months.

Standard protocols would be very welcome.

On 20/12/2019 09:14, % wrote:
Andy Burns wrote
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and
other stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in.Â* I know Philips
Hue and Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels
of interoperability,

Not really limited at all in fact and there are a lot more than just
those two going the zigbee route.
also a certain amount of hacking can be done,

But isnt necessary to get a viable result.
but not necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

Yeah me too.
This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

But it remains to be seen if it produces buyable products.



Certainly zigbee based beasts seem to be reasonably flexible. While I'm
a fan of the Hive system as it works with our heating (including working
with Alexa), the various 'smart plugs' etc are grossly over priced as
are the lights. It doesn't work with other lights- at least not without
some work.

I use Alexa as a 'centre of integration' (if I can use that term), the
app allows you to interface a wide range of devices from other vendors-
including Hive, Ikea (without the Ikea hub- see note below), Hue, and
various 'cheap' smart plug in switches. One niggle, it seems you can't
easily have multiple locations- ie a second home, a motorhome, etc if
you want to control things there.


The Ikea lights have a 'funny'. When you first set them up, if you have
problems with Alexa 'finding them' set them up initially close
(physically) to an Alexa device (either the 'tall' Echo or the later dot
- something with the built in hub). This seems to be an issue which came
about after, I assume, some update. Once set up, all is well and the
light can be away from the Alexa 'hub' device. (The early Dots lacked
the hub required, the later ones have it.) Reseting the lights can be
'fun', see YouTube. I made a lead to do it- just a lead with a momentary
push switch, plug, and holder.

We find having smart lights and switches etc convenient. Being able to,
for example, control the heating remotely, turn on the electric blanket,
etc when you are out is great.

Theo wrote:

I think Zigbee is interesting because devices themselves can't phone home -
they don't have a route to the internet nor the ability to speak IP (nor the
power budget). So it's good for things that just do their one job, without
ads/malware/surveillance thrown into the mix.

The hubs can and do phone home, but you can use the devices without the
hubs.

Or you can use the hubs purely locally and firewall them from the cloud,
though if you want voice control via smart speaker/phone then you will
require connection to the cloud

I recently came across:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/informati...d_devices.html
which seems quite comprehensive in support for a wide range of devices.

see also mosquitto and node-red, both suitable uses of an rPI

https://mosquitto.org
https://nodered.org

That can then hook into a third party stack that you trust.

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

It's interesting, but note that the proponents are hardly the most privacy
focused. So remains to be seen whether it's a spyfest or not.

Yes, I'm not amazingly bothered about being able to control lights when
I'm not there, Google have tempted me into at least having a look at
this stuff, by offering me a free Nest Mini Gen2, maybe that'll be a
smart (!) move on their part.

Pancho wrote:

I have a sonoff wifi switch for my garage door.

I've seen them, but consider they're a bit too low quality for devices
to wire everywhere in your house, the Shelly devices seem more like it.

It was definitely hard work to get it to integrate with OK Google and
the integration stopped working after a few months.

I know you can put 3rd party "tasmota" firmware on the sonoff devices,
worth a try?

Standard protocols would be very welcome.

Indeed, I think all the zigbee/zwave/etc protocols were a bit damaged at
birth by having too many standards, and no obvious winner, I'll be happy
if zigbee can come out ahead by this new alliance.

Did you read about the recent problems with amazon Ring cameras being not
only hackable but also can be coaxed to reveal their address, and I mean
street address.Obviously the meaning of security has been changed....
Not to mention Airtel and the patient network in India.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and other
stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in. I know Philips Hue and
Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels of
interoperability, also a certain amount of hacking can be done, but not
necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

Brian Gaff wrote:

Did you read about the recent problems with amazon Ring cameras

Yes, I read about it, but if you give your ring password to someone
else, can you really class it as hacking if they use it to look through
your cameras?

% wrote:

Andy Burns wrote

I know Philips Hue and Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and
have limited levels of interoperability,

Not really limited at all in fact

What I mean by "limited" is e.g. Ikea lamps and switches can be linked
to a Philips hub, so they become part of the zigbee mesh, but they don't
show up in the Hue app

a certain amount of hacking can be done,

But isnt necessary to get a viable result.
but not necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

Yeah me too.

It may be fun, but it can soak up a lot of time, and then there's
documenting it for the following owner.

Brian Reay wrote:

Being able to, for example, control the heating remotely, turn on the
electric blanket, etc when you are out is great.

Irrational, but in my mind, that equates to "Alexa, burn down my house"

Andy Burns wrote:

I think all the zigbee/zwave/etc protocols were a bit damaged at birth
by having too many standards, and no obvious winner, I'll be happy if
zigbee can come out ahead by this new alliance.

And the day after zigbee's announcement, z-wave are opening up too

https://z-wavealliance.org/z-wave-specification-press-release/

"Brian Reay" wrote in message
...
On 20/12/2019 09:14, % wrote:
Andy Burns wrote
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and other
stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in. I know Philips Hue and
Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels of
interoperability,

Not really limited at all in fact and there are a lot more than just
those two going the zigbee route.
also a certain amount of hacking can be done,

But isnt necessary to get a viable result.
but not necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

Yeah me too.
This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

But it remains to be seen if it produces buyable products.



Certainly zigbee based beasts seem to be reasonably flexible. While I'm a
fan of the Hive system as it works with our heating (including working
with Alexa), the various 'smart plugs' etc are grossly over priced as are
the lights. It doesn't work with other lights- at least not without some
work.

I use Alexa as a 'centre of integration' (if I can use that term), the app
allows you to interface a wide range of devices from other vendors-
including Hive, Ikea (without the Ikea hub- see note below), Hue, and
various 'cheap' smart plug in switches. One niggle, it seems you can't
easily have multiple locations- ie a second home, a motorhome, etc if you
want to control things there.


The Ikea lights have a 'funny'. When you first set them up, if you have
problems with Alexa 'finding them' set them up initially close
(physically) to an Alexa device (either the 'tall' Echo or the later dot -
something with the built in hub). This seems to be an issue which came
about after, I assume, some update. Once set up, all is well and the
light can be away from the Alexa 'hub' device.

That is due to the fact that zigbee devices act as repeaters.
That repeater effect isnt there until the device is registered.

(The early Dots lacked the hub required, the later ones have it.) Reseting
the lights can be 'fun', see YouTube. I made a lead to do it- just a lead
with a momentary push switch, plug, and holder.

We find having smart lights and switches etc convenient.

Yeah, me too. I have no switches at all, almost everything
is done with movement sensors except turning everything
off when I have gone to bed. Thats done with a voice
command, usually with siri or google. My echo dot isnt in
the bedroom.

Being able to, for example, control the heating remotely, turn on the
electric blanket, etc when you are out is great.

Yep, wouldnt do without it again now if I have a choice.

On 20/12/2019 11:16, Andy Burns wrote:
Pancho wrote:

I have a sonoff wifi switch for my garage door.

I've seen them, but consider they're a bit too low quality for devices
to wire everywhere in your house, the Shelly devices seem more like it.

It was definitely hard work to get it to integrate with OK Google and
the integration stopped working after a few months.

I know you can put 3rd party "tasmota" firmware on the sonoff devices,
worth a try?


It looks like I would need to solder up some kind of USB connector to
the Sonoff pcb, so worth a try, probably not.

I might consider looking at a pi zero solution before trying that. My
sonoff is only 24v switching so any heath robinson set up would be ok.



Standard protocols would be very welcome.

Indeed, I think all the zigbee/zwave/etc protocols were a bit damaged at
birth by having too many standards, and no obvious winner, I'll be happy
if zigbee can come out ahead by this new alliance.

I kind of just want a standard, I mean how damaged could a standard be?
.... I know stupid attitude, slap my self around the head, ...against
stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

On Sat, 21 Dec 2019 05:06:20 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:

Yeah, me too. I have no switches at all, almost everything
is done with movement sensors except turning everything
off when I have gone to bed. That¢s done with a voice
command, usually with siri or google. My echo dot isnt in
the bedroom.

Being able to, for example, control the heating remotely, turn on the
electric blanket, etc when you are out is great.

Yep, wouldn¢t do without it again now if I have a choice.

That's because you got NO humans to interact with and to talk to, as
everyone in real life gives you cantankerous senile pest a wide berth!

--
Marland revealing the senile sociopath's pathology:
"You have mentioned Alexa in a couple of threads recently, it is not a real
woman you know even if it is the only thing with a Female name that stays
around around while you talk it to it.
Poor sad git who has to resort to Usenet and electronic devices for any
interaction as all real people run a mile to get away from from you boring
them to death."
MID:

On 20/12/2019 09:02, Andy Burns wrote:
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and other
stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in.Â* I know Philips Hue and
Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels of
interoperability, also a certain amount of hacking can be done, but not
necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

Also he

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/1...standards_war/



--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote:

Also he
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/1...standards_war/

"It will be an IP-based protocol so it can connect directly to the
internet rather than require a hub; it will be open-source and
royalty-free and allow for end-to-end secure communication; and it will
work with core standards like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi."

Hmmm, I think I prefer the current method, with zigbee stuff in its
isolated non-IP mesh, and a single gateway ...

On 20/12/2019 09:14, % wrote:
Andy Burns wrote
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and
other stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in.Â* I know Philips
Hue and Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels
of interoperability,

Not really limited at all in fact and there are a lot more than just
those two going the zigbee route.
also a certain amount of hacking can be done,

But isnt necessary to get a viable result.
but not necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

Yeah me too.
This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

But it remains to be seen if it produces buyable products.

I now have an outdoor LED light above the door step which turns on when
it is dark and there is some one there. It only cost a few quid on ebay

I also have some BG Home 13 amp double wall sockets which I can program
to turn on and off as required and can monitor and control with an
Android mobil phone app.

--
Michael Chare

"Michael Chare" wrote in message
...
On 20/12/2019 09:14, % wrote:
Andy Burns wrote
I've been wondering about smart lighting (maybe smart sockets and other
stuff) but wanting to avoid proprietary lock-in. I know Philips Hue and
Ikea Tradfri are actually zigbee based and have limited levels of
interoperability,

Not really limited at all in fact and there are a lot more than just
those two going the zigbee route.
also a certain amount of hacking can be done,

But isnt necessary to get a viable result.
but not necessarily wanting to go the home-brew route.

Yeah me too.
This seems to be a significant announcement to open things up ...

https://www.connectedhomeip.com
https://zigbeealliance.org/news_and_articles/connectedhomeIP

But it remains to be seen if it produces buyable products.

I now have an outdoor LED light above the door step which turns on when it
is dark and there is some one there. It only cost a few quid on ebay

I also have some BG Home 13 amp double wall sockets which I can program to
turn on and off as required and can monitor and control with an Android
mobil phone app.

There have always been some of those. The problem is finding
ones that are fully integrated so you can add another for
something else like say a temperature sensor and have it
available in Homekit or controllable with siri alexa or google
just by adding it to the existing collection and naming it.

On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:49:57 +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

Being able to, for example, control the heating remotely, turn on
the
electric blanket, etc when you are out is great.

Irrational, but in my mind, that equates to "Alexa, burn down my house"

Similar thoughts here as well. Why do people need to control the
heating remotely? That's what thermostats, preferably programmable
ones, are for. Even if some one is living alone and away for
unpredictable periods of time most places warm up pretty quickly. If
they don't then the heating is never "off" but always under control
of the programmable stat.

Electric blanket, again how long does that take to warm the bed? Do
people really come through the front door and dive straight into bed?
If they do the bed won't stay cold for long...

I'm also uncomfortable with something "out there" knowing the status
of the heating system, various sockets or lights. These things are
"free" to the consumer but still cost someone somewhere money to
provide. That money has to come from somewhere and that is by selling
the data they gather. They say it's "anonymised" which for any given
single dataset is probably true but buy a few different datasets and
start mining them and any anonymity soon disappears.

--
Cheers
Dave.

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
idual.net...
On Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:49:57 +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

Being able to, for example, control the heating remotely, turn on
the
electric blanket, etc when you are out is great.

Irrational, but in my mind, that equates to "Alexa, burn down my house"

Similar thoughts here as well.

I organise things so it wont burn the house down even
if I don't happen to be there when it catches fire.

Why do people need to control the heating remotely?

Plenty don't find the time that they will be home
completely predictable and its handy to be able
to turn the heat or cooling on well before you will
be arriving home so its comfortable when you do.

Same with cars, handy to be able to start it remotely
so its comfortable when you get into the car.

That's what thermostats, preferably
programmable ones, are for.

Not everything knows when they will
be home or up and about at home.

Even if some one is living alone and away for unpredictable
periods of time most places warm up pretty quickly.

But handy to be able to control it remotely when they don't.

If they don't then the heating is never "off" but
always under control of the programmable stat.

But useless when you come home early for whatever reason.

Electric blanket, again how long does that take to warm the bed?

But more convenient to be able to turn it on before going
to bed instead of having to go into the bedroom to turn it
on and then going back out again while it warms the bed.

Do people really come through the
front door and dive straight into bed?

Yes, when going out to fix a fault at night.

If they do the bed won't stay cold for long...

But still more convenient to get into a warm, bed.

I'm also uncomfortable with something "out there" knowing
the status of the heating system, various sockets or lights.

Mindless paranoia, particularly when anyone
with even half a clue makes the house look
occupied using that stuff when away for a while.

These things are "free" to the consumer but still
cost someone somewhere money to provide.

I don't care.

That money has to come from somewhere
and that is by selling the data they gather.

I know that apple doesn't sell any data they collect.

They say it's "anonymised" which for any given single
dataset is probably true but buy a few different datasets
and start mining them and any anonymity soon disappears.

I couldn't care less if google sells a list of which garage
sales I have chose to visit or which shops I have asked it
the opening hours of. I am also not actually stupid enough
to use cash for all purchases so my purchase history is
completely secret and I have never cared that the phone
company knows who I have called and who calls me.
Or that the postal service knows who sent me stuff.

I recently changed the manual TRVs on our radiators to the Hive Smart TRVs and what a difference it has made. Previously all the the TRVs were set to the required temperature but if you wanted to increase the temperature it meant manually resetting the TRV to the required temperature. However, if the rest of the system was up to the set temperature simply resetting a single TRV often made no difference at all. The Hive TRVs have heat on demand and working alongside the Hive Active Heating programmable thermostat can actually heat up individual rooms whilst others simply stay at their set temperatures. All this can be done with a short conversation with Alexa.

Richard

On 20/12/2019 11:05, Andy Burns wrote:

Yes, I'm not amazingly bothered about being able to control lights when
I'm not there, Google have tempted me into at least having a look at
this stuff, by offering me a free Nest Mini Gen2, maybe that'll be a
smart (!) move on their part.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwdxIUeMrSM&t=1m52s

Adam

Google are arguably ahead in the AI for the spoken word, but Amazon have the
higher market penetration.
Brian

--
--
From the Bed of Brian Gaff -

Blind user, so no pictures please!
Today is Yesterdays Tomorrow.
"ARW" wrote in message
...
On 20/12/2019 11:05, Andy Burns wrote:

Yes, I'm not amazingly bothered about being able to control lights when
I'm not there, Google have tempted me into at least having a look at this
stuff, by offering me a free Nest Mini Gen2, maybe that'll be a smart (!)
move on their part.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwdxIUeMrSM&t=1m52s

Adam

Andy Burns wrote:
Theo wrote:

I recently came across:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/informati...d_devices.html
which seems quite comprehensive in support for a wide range of devices.

see also mosquitto and node-red, both suitable uses of an rPI

https://mosquitto.org
https://nodered.org

I ordered an Aqara temperature/humidity/pressure sensor for a tenner from
ebay. It's a tiny thing, barely larger than the coin cell that powers it.

I bit of jiggling with a CC2531 Zigbee stick (the firmware needed
reprogramming, which I did with a few wires and a Raspberry Pi Zero W), and
I've hooked it up to another Pi running hass.io

Setup was a bit fiddly - had to set up Mosquitto and zigbee2mqtt, for
which there are hass.io plugins but needed a user creating for Mosquitto
and telling zigbee2mqtt the login details. (It's all covered in the
instructions)

Once enabled in the config, pairing is easy - just press the button on the
sensor and it gets detected and all the channels set up automatically. All
I did was rename it to something sensible, and I get this:

https://postimg.cc/7J9qWVCc

I'm impressed that it works so well wirelessly from inside the fridge, on
only a single coin cell which is supposed to last a year.

Looks like it's not a happy fridge though...

Theo

On 29 Dec 2019 at 23:12:49 GMT, "Theo" wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:
Theo wrote:

I recently came across:
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/informati...d_devices.html
which seems quite comprehensive in support for a wide range of devices.

see also mosquitto and node-red, both suitable uses of an rPI

https://mosquitto.org https://nodered.org

I ordered an Aqara temperature/humidity/pressure sensor for a tenner from
ebay. It's a tiny thing, barely larger than the coin cell that powers it.

I bit of jiggling with a CC2531 Zigbee stick (the firmware needed
reprogramming, which I did with a few wires and a Raspberry Pi Zero W), and
I've hooked it up to another Pi running hass.io

Setup was a bit fiddly - had to set up Mosquitto and zigbee2mqtt, for
which there are hass.io plugins but needed a user creating for Mosquitto
and telling zigbee2mqtt the login details. (It's all covered in the
instructions)

Once enabled in the config, pairing is easy - just press the button on the
sensor and it gets detected and all the channels set up automatically. All
I did was rename it to something sensible, and I get this:

https://postimg.cc/7J9qWVCc

Did you use hass.io to generate that graph? Could you have chosen a longer timeline?

One problem I've found with the Samsung Smarthing hub is that it's not easy to generate that type of thing - whether using their own or third party sensors.

RJH wrote:
On 29 Dec 2019 at 23:12:49 GMT, "Theo" wrote:
https://postimg.cc/7J9qWVCc

Did you use hass.io to generate that graph? Could you have chosen a longer timeline?

One problem I've found with the Samsung Smarthing hub is that it's not easy to generate that type of thing - whether using their own or third party sensors.

Yes, that's just the 'current status' popup for a particular sensor.
There's also a 'history' view where you can select a range of dates to see.
For example: https://postimg.cc/xNrDhN7b

although it only offers to show 1 day/3 days/a week in one go. There might be a way
to change that in a setting somewhere, there are lots of plugins.

Theo

On 30 Dec 2019 at 10:35:33 GMT, "Theo"
wrote:

RJH wrote:
On 29 Dec 2019 at 23:12:49 GMT, "Theo"
wrote:
https://postimg.cc/7J9qWVCc

Did you use hass.io to generate that graph? Could you have chosen a longer
timeline?

One problem I've found with the Samsung Smarthing hub is that it's not easy
to generate that type of thing - whether using their own or third party
sensors.

Yes, that's just the 'current status' popup for a particular sensor.
There's also a 'history' view where you can select a range of dates to see.

For example: https://postimg.cc/xNrDhN7b

although it only offers to show 1 day/3 days/a week in one go. There might
be a way
to change that in a setting somewhere, there are lots of plugins.

Theo

Ah right - thanks

Theo wrote:

I ordered an Aqara temperature/humidity/pressure sensor for a tenner from
ebay.

Is it showing you the temperature inside someone else's fridge today?

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/google-disables-xiaomi-smart-home-integration-after-major-security-breach

Andy Burns wrote:
Theo wrote:

I ordered an Aqara temperature/humidity/pressure sensor for a tenner from
ebay.

Is it showing you the temperature inside someone else's fridge today?

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/google-disables-xiaomi-smart-home-integration-after-major-security-breach

Nope - I'm not using the Xiaomi hub, so the sensors never get anywhere near
the internet. They're just on the local Zigbee network, which doesn't have
capacity to do much more than send periodic readings. They could send
malicious readings but somebody would have to hack them locally to do that.

It's one of the advantages of using Zigbee instead of wifi - all the 'cloud'
stuff goes away, the sensors are purely local-only.

Theo

Theo wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

Is it showing you the temperature inside someone else's fridge today?

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/google-disables-xiaomi-smart-home-integration-after-major-security-breach

Nope - I'm not using the Xiaomi hub

yes, I was pulling your leg

so the sensors never get anywhere near
the internet. They're just on the local Zigbee network

exactly why I've gone for the hubitat, so I can have local z-wave and
zigbee devices.

Theo wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:
Theo wrote:

I ordered an Aqara temperature/humidity/pressure sensor for a tenner from
ebay.

Is it showing you the temperature inside someone else's fridge today?

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/go...smart-home-int
egration-after-major-security-breach

Nope - I'm not using the Xiaomi hub, so the sensors never get anywhere near
the internet. They're just on the local Zigbee network, which doesn't have
capacity to do much more than send periodic readings. They could send
malicious readings but somebody would have to hack them locally to do that.

It's one of the advantages of using Zigbee instead of wifi - all the 'cloud'
stuff goes away, the sensors are purely local-only.

Theo
It would be entirely possible to have an isolated WiFi network, either
using VLANs or a separate access point. This might actually simplify
the control of some sensors.


--

Roger Hayter

Andy Burns wrote:
Theo wrote:

Nope - I'm not using the Xiaomi hub

yes, I was pulling your leg

Indeed

so the sensors never get anywhere near
the internet. They're just on the local Zigbee network

exactly why I've gone for the hubitat, so I can have local z-wave and
zigbee devices.

How do you get on with it? What do you find most useful - and anything
you'd like to do but can't?

Theo

Roger Hayter wrote:
It would be entirely possible to have an isolated WiFi network, either
using VLANs or a separate access point. This might actually simplify
the control of some sensors.

Indeed it is. However the business model of a lot of wifi stuff is they're
controlled via a cloud app or backend. If you take the internet away, they
tend to break.

A sizeable chunk of the Chinese wifi smart home stuff is controlled via an
ESP8266 that can be reprogrammed with more sensible firmware, but it's nice
for things to be designed out of the box to be local only as they are with
Zigbee and Z-wave.

Theo

Theo wrote:

Andy Burns wrote:

I've gone for the hubitat, so I can have local z-wave and
zigbee devices.

How do you get on with it?

only arrived today, so far I have it talking to a couple of ikea bulbs
(dimmable with variable colour temperature, not full rgb) and google
nest eavesdropping device

What do you find most useful - and anything
you'd like to do but can't?
Seems it won't talk to this ikea remote, so I could have saved £10 by
buying just the bare lamp, rather than the lamp+remote kit.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/tradfri-remote-control-30443124

have some xiaomi temp/humidity sensors on the slow boat, plus a usb
zigbee sniffer stick.