zlacker

>>linker+(OP)
Per the one tweet in the article that says they only bought one of these appliances because of the HA plugin: the lesson is don't buy smart devices that have cloud control. Whether or not they have local automation plugins (like HA), or just that have apps/cloud services, expecting those capabilities to remain for the life of the device is a fool's errand. We have a host of examples of cloud services being killed and open integrations getting taken down, and none of the examples where this hasn't happened have existed long enough for us to say anything besides "so far".

If you want smart functionality, it had better run entirely locally, or else you should not care about or depend on that functionality.

-edit- I also had to learn this lesson (somewhat) painfully. I chose the EVSE that I did for 2 reasons: it was on the list of devices my power company would help pay for and it had an HA integration. less than 6 months after I bought it, the company killed the API that the HA integration relied on.

Luckily for me, the HA integration wasn't that big of a deal, more of "nice to have", but I learned my lesson to never use non-local cloud functionality as a selling point.

>>Mostly+tc
Philips Hue did run locally, and now they are rolling out updates where a cloud account is required.

>>Tomte+Uc
Yeah the second rule is: for anything that runs locally and for which your use doesn't require an internet connection: put it on a separate network without WAN access.

I also had to learn that lesson painfully when my network connected Brother printer got a (unasked for and unapproved) firmware update that disabled the 3rd party toner cartridge it was using. It's now blocked from the internet in my router, but it's unfortunately a case of shutting the barn door after the cows are gone.