Obligatory:

https://biggaybunny.tumblr.com/post/166787080920/tech-enthusiasts-everything-in-my-house-is-wired

Smart home type stuff is with minor exceptions a total nightmare. Bad security, bad privacy, and bad longevity. Just no. There are some of these things that just don’t work without connection back to the mother-ship, or at least lack major features. Generally it is recommended that if you do have these sorts of things, put them on a separate network at least.

Have we really forgotten how to press a buttons, twiddle a knob and actually think.

In our home, we have an on/off switch, the kind one actually needs to move their ass to in order to be able to press it, for our electricity and light bulbs. Our fridge does cold and that’s it. It also don’t nbeed no WiFI and never needed any update. Toilets are flushing water just fine with the press of a button, no WiFi required either. Our heaters do… heat when we turn them on (so much work!). Our coffee pot is just that, a coffee pot that’s using good old coffee we dose with a spoon with hot water on top of it, exactly like we do with tea just in a different pot. Our washing machine washes the laundry after the turn of two buttons (thinking about it, maybe I should file for extra-hours for all that work?). We don’t own a dishwasher because most of the time there is only the two of us worth of dishes to wash and I kinda enjoy washing them by hand while I let my mind wander (often get my best ideas like that, like when I’m under the shower). Oh, almost forgot, our doorbell is just that: a doorbell with no WiFi, no camera, no cop to ask to see the footage, no cloud subscription, and no hackers.

And that’s kinda the same with our not so smartphones: no app installed beside the few ones we really need access to (bank, security and shit like that), no social media apps, no email, no games, no Netflix, or the likes (we have quit subscribing to all those ‘services’ a few years ago, moving back to physically owned media). And for our TV, well, we don’t own a smartTV, as a matter of fact we own no TV at all since we’ve decided some 25 years ago that we wanted not to pay good money while still be forced to watch ads (anyone noticing a parallel with what streaming services have started doing in recent years?).

Our books are physical books. And that was the last digital bastion in our home, as I had been almost exclusively reading ebooks for decades, out of convenience, but realizing how we did not truly own them and how they tracked our reading habits, it’s back to print.

In summary: there is a loft of dumbness going on in hour home which suits both my spouse and I, I’m (not) afraid to say so ;)

Now I do have a Traegar Woodridge smoker/grill that is connected to the wifi, and is secured. It does come in handy when I am smoking a big ol’ brisket or pork shoulder that takes a good 12+ hours to smoke. The remote will allow me to adjust temps from my bed during the night which is quite nice.

Now my Rumba is just a dumb bot running around sucking up dog hair and does not need wifi connectivity to acomplish that.

I used to work on making those types of devices. There’s one good reason to connect them to the internet, and that is to report the health of the device and automatically call up maintenance if things go wonky. But nobody does that. Instead, they all snag user interaction data and send it off to the magical cloud without knowing why. Or to upsell you consumables like water filters and detergents.

One other reason to have them connected is to send push notifications when something needs attention. Like when the power to the chest freezer in the basement has gone off and the body parts are starting to leak.

LET ME USE SNMP TO CONTROL MY APPLIANCES

I’m trying to save money on the power bill so I’ve reluctantly connected a few things to the wifi in the hopes that I can set them up to easily tun in a delayed way to use off-peak power. Turns out, neither the dishwasher nor the washing machine or dryer even support that! The dishwasher does, but you have to use the app every time - you can’t set it up to run delayed by default when you press the start button on the machine

So, back off the wifi they go. It was the first use I had for ‘smart’ devices and it didn’t even do the thing.

Epresso machines. washing machines, fridges, freezers, TV’s, who the fuck connects that shit to the internet.

TVs make sense… other appliances, not so much. Your energy is best spent on companies for peddling IoT into things that don’t need the “I” in IoT.

I’ve decided I am going to de-auth the espresso machine for a few days, so they cant have coffee before work. That has got to be the worst way to teach privacy to common people. What this will end up doing is just turn you from a smug know-it-all to a smug script kiddie asshole, and as for the recipient, they’d just end up getting their “faulty” appliance replaced at most.

Does it kill you to just raise awareness about privacy in a less intrusive way or what? If that’s a bougie you’re disrupting then forget anything I said, otherwise this is silly as hell.

Check

• HomeAssistant/WebThings (open source gateways, no need for Internet connection)
• ZigBee/ZWave (dedicated IoT wireless protocols, not WiFi or BT)
• ESP32-C6 (small cheap low-end device that supports ZigBee and can thus become an IoT sensor/actuator via e.g. ESPHome)

because basically there is NO reason to rely on “smart” objects that are expensive, power hungry and, last but not least do not respect your privacy while giving you less control.

I admit it: I need a definition for “white goods”.