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The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing into stupidity (rachelbythebay.com)
submitted 1 year ago by Emperor@feddit.uk to c/smarthomes@feddit.uk
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cross-posted from: https://derp.foo/post/265688

There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.

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[-] thehatfox@feddit.uk 7 points 1 year ago

Philips are providing another demonstration of the dangers of using proprietary smart home platforms. If you don't control the platform, you don't control your home. The only way to avoid this is to use an open platform such as Home Assistant, which just celebrated it's 10th birthday and continues to go from strength to strength.

[-] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 5 points 1 year ago

Fortunately, as I happily tested yesterday, my modern-ish Hue bulbs work with standard zigbee integrations now.
I'm certain Philips will now release a new line that do not.

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

With Matter integration it would be tricky but I imagine someone on the board of directors is pushing for this.

They may just settle on the fact that 99% of their customers won't do this. However, HA has really worked hard to lower the bar on this - you can buy an HA Green and a ZigBee dongle, then it's done quite quickly and easily.

[-] generalEdo@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Is this just the hues or does it include the wiz as well. I use those and they have been great so far.

[-] Emperor@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago

Wyze have had their own problems recently (which I haven't posted about here, I'll fix that now) but they haven't volcanically shat the bed the way Philips have.

There's no guarantee that Wyze won't try a similar move in the future and with their proprietary communication protocol (or so I believe, I don't use them) you are going to be stuck with them or you are going to have to re-buy everything. With Zigbee bulbs it's relatively easy to switch over to just running things through HA and you can get rid of the hub (as I just did with my IKEA bulbs).

[-] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Haha, I kinda agree with Rachel's quote on hass Javascript plus a "curl | sudo sh" attitude to life indeed.
However, as the lesser of two weevils, I know which one I'll eat.

[-] thehatfox@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

Home Assistant and its developers may not be perfect, but at least the imperfections are out in the open. We can’t comment on the quality of the commercial black boxes because we can’t see it.

I think that quote is a bit harsh, JavaScript is not inherently bad, or at least no worse than the people writing it. Install script piping is not an officially recommended installation method by HA. Both are also found in projects far more critical than HA.

Giving a kneejerk rejection to Home Assistant to instead adopt another proprietary hub a bit earlier in the enshittification pipeline doesn’t seem a great plan to me.

[-] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 3 points 1 year ago

I agree. The standard nerdsnark can be a bit grating, when the person on the receiving end is, basically, doing the best they can to offer an open solution, while also balancing funding the project without everyone feeling they're just milking.

HASS hits a really good balance, imho. They offer a paid service on top, but have no problem with people just running locally, or using a VPN to access.

[-] rgb3x3@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Quick question, you do know the phrase is "lesser of two evils?"

It would just be hilarious if you thought the phrase was about weevils, which I could totally see.

[-] GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

Haha, yes, I do know the phrase. I just love using the line.

this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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