Just confirms my experience that whenever "there is an app" for a device, it is a red flag as the device's ecosystem is fragile: when the vendor looses interest in maintaining app or servers, your device turns into a brick. Plus, those apps demand suspicious permissions like access to the address book or the ability to make phone calls.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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I absolutely hate when networking equipment forces you to use an app to set it up, and the app doesn't do anything that a website couldn't do.
I encountered this with some solar equipment from Enphase (IQ Gateway, which all the inverters connect to). The installer had to set it up using wifi and an "installer app" before I could connect it via Ethernet cable or access the (local!) web UI.
On the flip side, I have to give Enphase a shout out for having a fully-featured local web API running on the device itself. I've had Home Assistant polling it every second for years (to pull data about solar generation per panel, total power consumption, grid import/export, etc) and haven't had issues. With so much stuff being cloud-reliant, it was a good surprise.
I absolutely hate when networking equipment forces you to use an app to set it up, and the app doesn’t do anything that a website couldn’t do.
but the website wouldnt demand 87 permissions and have the ability to silently upload all your contacts and god knows what else to a secret server for advertisement and identification/tracking purposes.
Which is why every company uses apps.. even if those apps are just a website wrapped in a app container. because you are the product. not the device you are using.
Depends on what the app does. If required I don't want it, if it's optional features I would never even touch then ehh whatever.
My oven has an app, don't care what it does and will never use it.
It's basically what the Eero line of routers does, you can't configure it without the app, and there's no web UI.
I'm still more confident in Eero than Motorola to not fuck it up, yet I returned that shit back and bought a GL.iNet instead.
Lol I have almost the same experience. I tried Eero. Never mind that it had literally only one LAN port. You also had to do everything on a mobile app, without any options to modify stuff under the hood. It was also detecting phantom devices and dropping my actual devices from wifi. When I contacted support, I discovered during troubleshooting they had live visibility of my network. I switched to a basic, traditional Netgear router after that, and now I’m using a GL.Inet (openwrt) router as well.
Even worse is that you can't even split the 2.4GHz and 5GHz into different SSIDs.
Surely easier for the average person, but it sucks if you have some stubborn devices that tend to prefer 2.4GHz over 5GHz for no good reason.
My fiber install last year came with a "free" eero router, I sent it back.
My fiber install this year came with one, this time I refused to let them install it.
if it's optional features I would never even touch then ehh whatever.
Until they push a software update to your device to force using the app for basic features...
How do they push out an update to something that I will never connect to?
That is the way to prevent it.
But, frustratingly, most people who have one will probably connect it to the internet just because that's what the manual says to do during the set up procedure.
It's getting harder to find devices that don't insist on being connected.
Where are you finding users who read the manual? Wish we had more of those..
This is completely unrelated but you said “suspicious permissions” and triggered my need to moan about not being allowed to make or join teams calls (since last year, I think?) unless you give Microsoft a list of all devices on your network. Fuck you microsoft and your dogshit apps
Check if your router is supported and switch to OpenWRT.
Unfortunately, Motorola does not have a lot of compatibility, but still.
If your device is not compatible with openwrt there is still a chance that freshtomato supports it so check it out too if needed
I've been really happy with buying a ~$200 mini PC and putting OPNsense on it. You just have to make sure it has two Ethernet ports. OpenWRT is another great option if you don't have the money for that.
That sounds really cool. Any idea for a low powered (as in doesn't draw a lot of power) OPNsense option?
You don't need much. A raspberry pi3, or similar, with two ports will do it. 4GB memory is way more than enough even if you're loading all the pfblocker block lists, and 1GB will do it if you aren't.
And it really is nice. You get to do all sorts of cool networking stuff.
There are white box n100 based fanless devices on Amazon for this purpose. They come with four ports and all you need to do is add a ssd https://a.co/d/09BB3vAJ
Any tiny/mini/micro systen, get one second hand from EBay, get the Allstate insurance option in case it turns out to be a dudd, and slap opnsense on that thing. Most of their energy pull will be sub 15w, many even sub 10w.
Technically any x86 PC with the ability to have two separate Ethernet ports would work, but unless you plan on grabbing a NetPC from the 2000s/2010s (which will have dogshit processors and probably no expansion slots for the second Ethernet port), you might be out of luck.
Although if there is an ARM based version of the software (or if you could run it through a compatibility layer like FEX somehow), there's tons of low power devices that could be repurposed.
A NanoPI with OpenWRT (there is a variant that NanoPIs have that is called FriendlyWRT, but don't use that, it sucks), they have an ARM CPU so the power usage is low. My NanoPI R5C can reach up to 600Mbit/s (up/down) with SQM enabled (Smart Queue Management, to keep your latency down on high network usage), and 800Mbit/s with something called Hardware offloading.
for a miini PC I recomend the M720q from Lenovo ... it's kind of overkill but it has a PCIE slot which means you can add a network card inside the original case and because it's 16x you can go up to 10G if you wanted to.
I add external 2.5G cards on my other models via the USB3.0 ports but it's messy and then I have to setup LACP on the switch
How do you type your username to login?
The 🦄🦄🦄 you see is only the displayed name, not the account name :)
I bought a 35 euro WiFi router that works great with OpenWRT.
That doesn't transmit wifi though, right?
From a quick look at the documentation, if the hardware has WiFi capability you can configure OPNsense to be an access point as well. Personally, I keep the two separate: I have a small N200-based box as my OPNsense router and a separate access point running OpenWRT for the wifi devices on my network.
I can’t find anything that doesn’t bottleneck my available bandwidth of 2Gb/s. I’ve looked, they get expensive after 1Gb/s speed. Couldn’t find anything mini PCs that can do it.
What is your use case for that kind of speed in a residential setting?
It’s just buying stability in peak moments. Lots of family member members, and lots of devices.
I have 2 Gb/s down using opnsense on a n150 mini pc. The one I got has 2 x 2.5gb ports. I don't have too many devices, but I've never had issues getting that full download speed. During downloads where I hit my full speed, it hits about 30% usage. During normal usage like games/streaming/web browsing I don't see above 10% usage.
Any chance you remember where you got it from? Did it come with the two NICs at 2.5Gb/s out the box?
Looks like they don't make it anymore but I got the aoostar n1 pro on amazon. I would try eBay or AliExpress to find something similar. https://www.amazon.com/AOOSTAR-N1-PRO-Upgraded-Full-Featured/dp/B0F9K1G96Q
It has both 2.5 gigabit ports built in. Its basically purpose built for opnsense. I just connected a multi gig switch and a WAP and it's great.
Interesting, found this for $420
That would definitely work. It's overkill but with the current PC market it might be hard to find something cheaper. I paid $140 for mine about a year ago
not "motorola" (as in the mobile phone company that's now part of lenovo, or the old cable box/modem company which is owned by arris), but rather a licensee of the name and trademarks for certain networking products.. "premier logitech" (which has nothing to do with the computer peripherals company), which is owned by one of those buyout/"investment" firms "tide rock".
i wouldn't expect a thing out of them, especially support for gear designed, made or sold prior to tide rock's ownership (acquired in 2024).
That's the neat thing about this: If you license out your name, your name is on the device. Those licensees profit from your name, from your brand. If you license out your name to some shit company, you totally deserve that everybody does think that you are some shit company
I would never buy a such a critical piece of equipment if it depended on an app. I've seen too many devices being rendered useless or crippled when their app disappears or worse, forces a subscription model. Meanwhile, I SSH into my Mikrotik router, as the gods intended.
never thought I'd see the day where someone would say "I saw what happened to all the other stupid devices that did X, so I'm never buying a device that does X".
But it seems there are people out there who are capable of learning.. rare as it may be.
Thats a nice gentle breath across the last dying ember of hope I had.
Holy shit I would take a JTAG without header pins over whatever the fuck this is.
Whatever the fuck is a JTAG header pin??
If they don't add this, you gotta pull out the soldering iron before you can communicate with your device.
Still easier to maintain than a Motorola router.
It's pure qam.
You just barely replied to the wrong comment.
You replied to the person asking what JTAG is instead of replying to the person who didn't know what these "app connected only" Motorola devices are using.
Which Motorola Motorola mobility or Motorola solutions???
Motorola Motorola, yes
If your networking gear isn't running open source and/or non-cloud connected software, it isn't yours.