Philips Hue will force users to upload their data to Hue cloud

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• pineapplelover@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Ah yes to make your lights work, we need all your data. Stuff like this is why I don’t have “smart” anything.

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  • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You can have plenty of smart home stuff without this junk using stuff like home assistant and keeping devices like this from phoning home. Some products won’t work at all without an internet connection but plenty still do.

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• unsaid0415@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I bough a TP-Link smart bulb once. It was very nice - I could just download a “tp link bulb client” written for everyone by some third-party dude. If I wanted to, I could add a desktop shortcut to turn on/off the bulb.

  Then TP-Link decided to automatically update the firmware of the bulb without my knowledge. The update turned off the REST API that made the third-party client to work.

  The update was impossible to revert (though TP-Link said “Ok write to our support and we’ll give you the downgrade file” no fuck you).

  Ever since I’ve vowed to heavily think whether I want to buy a non-open-source firmware smart device ever again. Recently I bought a smart bulb and two smart sockets that come pre-flashed with “Tasmota” and “WLED” firmware out of the factory and they work great.

  And I OWN them too

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  • tryptaminev@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Many years ago i bought an RGB LED and naively thought the remote signal must have some standard protocol, because it is so simple commands that would allow for some cool shit if automated. Oh boy was i wrong. Proprietary smart home software is the most insane. How on earth should your home become “smart” when it is locked into some ideology (manufacturer) or worse yet you have multiple “parties” fighting over the government causing a shutdown.

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    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      NGL you kinda went into left field at the end there, but I still agree.

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  • DarienGS@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The update was impossible to revert (though TP-Link said “Ok write to our support and we’ll give you the downgrade file” no fuck you).

    That doesn’t sound like it was impossible, it sounds like you just didn’t want to do it.

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    • unsaid0415@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Factually, it was how you described. Poetically, it was making my life as a customer unnecessarily difficult to the point where the word “impossible” is a valid form of artistic expression. I didn’t want to have to beg anybody to please unlock the device I paid for.

      …home-assistant.io/…/tp-link-offers-way-to-add-lo…

      We are hoping for a better solution, but for now this is what you should do: Submit a ticket to technical support 27. Make sure to include the MAC address of your plug. Go to the forums and send this user 24 a message with your ticket ID and MAC address (just to be sure).

      community.home-assistant.io/t/…/107

      Please be advised that I intentionally cherry-picked the comments that support my point, as I was just skimming the thread.

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  • topinambour_rex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    There is esphome too, it’s not used a lot by fabricant yet, but still exist and compatiblr with all devices using an esp as chip.

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  • whynotzoidberg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Pi-hole.

    My two top-blocked domains are related to TP-Link.

    While I can’t always get local-only devices, I can at least separate their traffic and block the shit out of them.

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  • JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Why do they do this shit? Is “User A turned their lights on at 9 AM” that valuable of data that they’d disable third party shit?

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    • unsaid0415@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I guess it’s because it’s “insecure”. Any device on the network could control the lights. Tasmota allows setting a password for the control panel though.

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  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Tasmota is great but I’ve found the number of available devices is limited. For instance Tasmota smart dimmer plugs do not exist, nor could I find a stand alone controller.

    Z-wave or Zigbee integration dramatically expand the number of available options and work with local controllers.

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    • unsaid0415@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I too get the feeling that the selection of devices with Tasmota pre-flashed is rather limited. Due to the nature of Tasmota, those devices will only be Wi-Fi devices, which further causes problems with battery usage (contrary to Zigbee/Z-wave etc.) 15 minutes ago I was looking at smart buttons that can run Tasmota, and I’ve only found the Shelly Button 1. And funnily enough, it’s possible to connect it with microUSB (!) so it stays charged.

      All zigbee devices’ firmware is proprietary though, no? This is why I’m willing to suffer for Tasmota

      The device list seems larger if you’re willing to flash Tasmota yourself: templates.blakadder.com

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• grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  IoT stuff isn’t safe to use unless it’s flashed with a third-party Free Software firmware like Tasmota or ESPHome.

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  • cooopsspace@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I mean IKEA is fine.

    It’s entirely ZigBee, there’s no internet.

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    • Lhianna@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      But the green part of RGB only works if you’re using their app

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  • Zetta@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    ESPhome for the win! I have like 12 smart plugs with power monitoring flashed with ESPhome

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    • grue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I have 8! (They’re literally the only smart home devices I have so far, although Home Assistant automatically detected my Roku and my printer.)

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• nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Thankfully, while I have a smart plug from them, I’ve made sure that it’s a Zigbee powered one, meaning it’s directly connected to my Home Assistant server over it’s own frequency/protocol. Guess that choice is paying off now.

  Also, someone should tell whoever is managing that Twitter support account that you should never use the phrase “We’re sorry you feel that way” even when you’re going for a non-apology.

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• dan@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Isn’t the “take it or leave it” approach to consent considered consent bundling? Didn’t google get fined for doing a similar thing?

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• Ronno@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Awesome timing, was about to add a whole lot of them to my new house, guess that ain’t happening

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  • spez_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Any recommendations for what next? I’m in the same situation? I want to avoid WiFi lights - ZigBee, Zwave or Matter only

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    • Ronno@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m adding the ones I have to home assistant, which is what I was planning all along. Maybe add some other brand smart lights, not sure yet which

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• Gryzor@lemmyfly.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Start leaving 1 star reviews in the app stores from Google and Apple complaining about this.

  They read those because stakeholders who understands nothing about tech only care for more stars.

  I’m definitely starting to find a way out of hue and freezing my plans to buy more bulbs from them.

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• Polar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I was forced to move (landlord sold house) and when I got to my new place, I just never got around to setting up any of my smart home devices. Thermostat, cameras, lights, assistants, sensors, monitors, etc, and weirdly enough I am somehow happier now.

  The random issues, glitches, delays between asking an assistant/pressing buttons before an action went through, fixing integrations, fixing Home Assistant, fixing random unpairs, etc. was driving me nuts.

  Worst was when you’d ask assistant to do something, and it somehow misheard you and does something else. Fried an aquarium thermometer that way. Turned on ALL lights when everyone was sleeping, despite me asking to turn OFF a very specific light…

  The only thing I truly miss is being able to turn off my bedroom light when I am in bed. But the stress I save, is worth getting up and turning it off.

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  • watcher@nopeeking.link ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Huh, sounds like a very unreliable setup. Admittedly mine is mich simpler and I refuse to use voice control for anything at all, but I experience zero glitches with my Shelly switches and HA integration.

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    • Gargantu8@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Gotta admit I use hue and Google voice commands and it always works perfectly and I love it… sorry I also like Firefox if that helps!

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  • Lemonparty@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Put a lamp on your nightstand, it’s a fucking game changer. We have a ceiling fan with the main lights, but lamps on both nightstands. It rules, always within arm reach, light immediately if you need it, but much softer light than the main light, and not pointed into your eyes when you lay down.

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  • Silentiea@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The only thing I truly miss is being able to turn off my bedroom light when I am in bed. But the stress I save is worth getting up and turning it off.

    It is possible to just install the one smart light, you know.

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  • Iam@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m reading this thread thinking “people are jumping through hoops just to do this stuff? Why?”

    “because you can” evidently.

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    • Polar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      When it works, it’s great. But no matter how much you spend, which brands you go with, how you have it set it, eventually something is going to fuck up, and you’ll spend half your day fixing it all.

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  • Exec@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Fried an aquarium thermometer that way.

    How did that happen?

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    • Polar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Asked assistant to turn off basement light and instead it turned ON “10 gallon aquarium heater”.

      However it heard that, no idea.

      My girlfriend was cleaning her tank, and the water level was below the heater. I was somewhere else in the house, and so she never noticed, and within 60 seconds the thing shattered from being turned on and not submerged.

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  • Suspicious@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You can get remote controlles for lights and keep it on your bedside table

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• obinice@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  They’re light bulbs. What data can they possibly hold on the users beyond how bright they like their bulbs.

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  • local_taxi_fix@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What times your lights are on or off can expose more than you might think over time. It reveals when you’re gone for work, your sleep schedule, how many days a year you spend at home vs traveling/elsewhere, when you stay up late, etc.

    But it gets worse. If you give Hue your email or install the app then now you can be uniquely id’d across other products. Hue will sell that data to some advertising agency, who also buys data from Google, Facebook, etc. Now your usage data from other systems can be combined with the Hue data and used to more even more accurately track your day and behaviors.

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    • sebinspace@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Big data is a fascinating field, if not completely horrifying.

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    • unsaid0415@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m not sure how do Hue lights work, but if they have any Wi-Fi component they’re essentially a device in your network. If compromised (by a hacker or by Philips themselves) they’re no different than a device next to yours on public Wi-Fi. Someone will definitely have a desktop PC with vPro with default credentials, or once in a while someone will log into something using HTTP without the S and leak plaintext credentials.

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    • electromage@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Also when the keys are inevitably discovered on an unsecured S3 bucket, everyone will have it! In addition to your billing information and other PII.

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  • glimpseintotheshit@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    In addition to what the other commenters have said: They don’t just sell light bulbs but also motion sensors that can even measure temperature.

    So they wouldn’t just be able to tell which room you’re in at any given time but may also be able to tell when and for how long you shower or how often you cook food in the kitchen based on slight temperature changes.

    And if you wanna get really paranoid: Hue Sync analyzes what’s on your screen and synchronizes lights accordingly. Who knows what is really going on there if they pull this kinda shit lol

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  • LrdThndr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    It’s also not about what data they hold, but what data they have access to.

    To you, it’s a light bulb, but internally, it’s a network-connected microcontroller, meaning it’s also connected to everything else in your network.

    It theoretically could scan and exploit any number of security holes in other devices, including but not limited to phones and desktops.

    Even if the manufacturer is ethical with it, other nefarious actors can use it as an attack point to try to gain deeper access. Some of these devices run a full Linux install internally, and if you know how, you can even get a shell session open on them.

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• orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Companies these days: “help us think of products we can sell to procure data. No, I don’t care what the product is; we just want the data.”

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  • jcit878@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I often wonder are we in some sort of “data bubble”? all this obsession over collecting it but not actually providing stuff people will pay for surely has an endgame

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    • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think the endgame is to speedrun getting filthy rich and buying up a chunk of the earth before it’s completely destroyed.

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• originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  reason: "your data isnt secure in your home, we need to control it. trust us. "

  uh huh.

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  • serratur@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    5 months later: “Data breach, but we believe they didn’t get all personal data”

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• dotnon@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  This is immensely frustrating. Feels like a rug pull for anyone that cares about their data, privacy and (ironically) security.

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• Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Welp, their products are completely out of the running for our setup then.

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  • Polar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    and RIP to anyone who invested thousands into them. Those lights were NOT cheap.

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    • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Hopefully this spurs someone to go to the CFPB or something and sue. These companies need to stop pulling this retroactive change bullshit, like Unity, Wizards, ad now Hue.

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• Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Anyone have a good resource for connecting existing bulbs to zigbee and moving off the hue app?

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  • nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    To start off, you’ll want to have Home Assistant running on a local server or Raspberry Pi and a Zigbee USB dongle, like the Conbee II or SkyConnect. If you’ve never worked with Home Assistant, their Getting Started guide is pretty comprehensive.

    To migrate the apps off the Hue gateway, there’s a section describing various methods to do so in the Home Assistant Zigbee guide.

    I’ll mention that there’s also a whole bunch of other Zigbee gateways out there that work similar to the Hue Bridge, but these could all eventually share the same fate as Hue, if they aren’t already forced to be online.

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    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Cool… I got a Phillips hue hub, but already have a Pi as well, Just never thought of using it this way. So I just need the Conbee II, and I should be able to make things work off the Pi. One less device to have plugged in.

      Besides the stupid login stuff, I’ve noticed a lot of my stuff just isn’t as reliable as it used to be. It seems Phillips is just enshittifying things generally.

      Thanks for the links!

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• urda@lebowski.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Lutron FTW

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• Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Hue stuff sucks anyway. If you own a home or rent and have access to your breaker box, Lutron Caseta is a much better option.

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  • Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Please note in many places it’s very illegal to do electrical work for yourself

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    • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Where is it illegal for someone to change a light switch?

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• nxfsi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Huehuehue

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• June@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Home assistant should shield me from this right?

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• thrakkerzog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If I use Home Assistant for control and block the Hue hub from the internet, will things keep functioning as they are today?

  I like how my stuff works and don’t want them to mess me up.

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  • nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    To be safe long-term I would probably suggest to throw away the Hue hub entirely and get a Zigbee USB dongle for your Home Assistant server. Personally I’ve had no issues with the ConBee II. Home Assistant also released their own dongle earlier this year, called SkyConnect, which I’ve heard is pretty good as well

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    • thrakkerzog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s likely the path that I’ll end up taking. Everything hue related that I have is Zigbee.

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• Sir_Fridge@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Man fuck this. I use my lights in sync with my Philips tv when I watch movies so I can’t even switch to a zigbee thing or anything.

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• AdmiralShat@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • foggenbooty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah… a Bluetooth light sounds terrible. I’d rather stick with ZigBee.

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  • sebinspace@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Bluetooth, eh?

    That bulb is communication with an app on your phone, and I don’t need to tell you how much data that little glass slab collects.

    doesn’t ask for shit

    Neither does a rapist. It just doesn’t give a shit about consent.

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