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
Totally correct.

Furthermore: reject them not only when the regular use goes through a cloud, but also anything that needs a specific app download or cloud connection just to change settings. All functionality available on local network and with standard tools or nothing.

I saw that a lot with cameras. "It has ONVIF, you just have to download--," nope, that's it, next candidate.