Privacy friendly smart bulbs recommendations
Privacy friendly smart bulbs recommendations
Hi, i have been using smart lamps from aliexpress for awhile now. But these lamps force me to connect to an android app that phones-home to Beijing. Without the chinese yeelight app, i cannot change the color of the lamps. I find that kind of creepy.
Is there a good smart lamp system that is privacy respecting and hopefully opensource?
One that is locked to my local lan instead of a chinese trojan horse that spy's on me 24/7.
I'm an arch linux user and i know some basic python scripting.
Buy a zigbee stick and use zigbee lamps; they are widely available (Ali, Ikea, Philips etc) and this solution doesn't cost a fortune. It also prevent you from needing to throw the lamps away whenever the app stops working or the manufacturing company goes bankrupt.
26I second zigbee. Fast, local control, with the added benefit of not clogging up your WiFi network.
9Isn't ZigBee just a standard? What makes it more private?
1ZigBee is low-power radio (think Bluetooth but simpler), so there's no Internet involved at all unless you connect it to an Internet-based device, and there you have many choices including open source or home-grown solutions.
8
Most Wifi bulbs work locally with home assistant for example. And you can stop their communication with the internet with some basic network administration. Otherwise, Zigbee bulbs do not communicate over the internet, they can't. You will need a zigbee router, but there are open source solutions for that.
22zigbee and/or zwave with a self hosted router like HA is the way. It even works if your internet is out snd nobody can just shut down the servers if they dont feel like paying for them anymore
24
Anything that is flashed with tasmota is fine. You can also buy them preflashed. https://tasmota.github.io/docs/
13That or ESPHome.
2
Anything Zigbee or Z-Wave.
8Shelly makes smart bulbs. They can be used only locally if you want or connect to homeassistant.
I have some Shelly plugs and they're great. If I ever buy a house, I plan to populate it with Shelly devices. I do want to try out Zigbee, but I don't have a need yet as I rent right now.
8If you don't mind "dumbing down," the bulbs with an infrared or RF remote don't require any apps. I prefer those for that reason
6definitely would agree. the less things connected to the internet the better. same goes with using a timer unit in a heater instead of an app
2IME those can be unreliable though, and they're barely cheaper than Zigbee bulbs
1Eh you get what you pay for. I have a "kamija" branded one that I use on my nightstand daily for about 5 years now. Has an aluminum base and weighs a ton. Looks like they didn't survive covid though, RIP
1
I won't be adding anything to the conversation but I have to ask: why does a light bulb require internet/network access?
Right now I'm feeling very old. It feels a bit too much.
5If you're really old, odds are you have experienced physical pains that have made "forgetting to turn off the light/appliance/device" a difficult experience rather than just inconvenient. I never liked the idea of IoT devices until chronic pain fucked up the whole mobility thing for me, now I realise it's a total necessity. Especially for societies with rapidly growing older demographics, increased rates of chronic illness, and inadequate social and medical systems.
3I'm not that old but I grew surrounded by older people with several degrees of mobility and other painful conditions amd none ever required go to such points.
Issues with lights were solved by moving the height at which the switches were placed. Certain potentially dangerous appliances were placed with timed mechanical sockets or a special purpose circuit breaker was put in place. Low power night lights for safety during dark hours.
Simple, very cheap and as safe as possible solutions.
IoT is not a solution for me, unless you can make sure your entire network can live fully disconnected. Otherwise, no thank you.
1
How would you turn them on and off if they weren't smart?
2Automation. For example, The lights for my entire house are connected to Home Assistant. Essentially a smart home server that will let you manipulate virtually anything you can turn on and off. By using sensors (light levels, time of day, movement sensors) and you can have 'smart' lights.. so, for an example using these sensors, in the middle of the night if you get up, it detects movement in a room and puts the light on, but because it's night they are at 30% brightness..
Another thing you can do is turn the lights on and off rapidly in a room when you're at work and know the missus is home but hasn't seen your message. Failing that turn the TV off, turn the fans on, close the curtains and boil the kettle
It's a fun having automatic smart lights right up until people use the actual light switch to turn it off and then you have to get up.. or the fact that it takes time to get your phone, unlock it. Open the app and change the lights,rather than getting up of your fat arse and doing it yourself
2Nothing absolutely needed, it's just a convenience factor. For example you can program them to turn on when your phone connects to the wifi, which will probably be a couple meters from your home. So the light is already on when you get home. Or you can program them to turn on and off at certain hours when you're off vacationing to simulate a presence.
2Controlling them remotely from a phone, scheduling on/off times, exact RGB controls
1
Check out the IKEA ones, ZigBee - meaning there's absolutely zero internet connectivity required.
2A simple network sniffer is enough to figure out what sites the app is connecting to, then you can just block them on the router.
If you are using Android, you can do that easily right on your phone with PCAPdroid, it's on the play store. No root required.
1Why not just stick with dumb light bulbs? Why does everything need to be smart?
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