- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- lemmydirectory@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- selfhosted@lemmy.world
Title text:
It’s important for devices to have internet connectivity so the manufacturer can patch remote exploits.
Transcript:
[A store salesman, Hairy, is showing Cueball a dehumidifier, with a “SALE” label on it. Several other unidentified devices, possibly other dehumidifier models, are shown in the store as well.]
Salesman: This dehumidifier model features built-in WiFi for remote updates.
Cueball: Great! That will be really useful if they discover a new kind of water.
Source: https://xkcd.com/3109/
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welll… devils advocate… i could see the wifi being used so the device can be incorporated into the home automation system [climate control]. its not about dehumidifying, its solely about engaging the dehumidifying as needed.
Yeah, or the manufacturer bricks the device bcz they want to sell you a new one.
That’s why projects like this are great: https://github.com/Hypfer/esp8266-midea-dehumidifier
My Midea Cube dehumidifier can never be bricked and will never send data outside of my home. It talks to Home Assistant via MQTT and nothing else.
A dehumidifier that doesn’t have any wifi can’t be bricked either.
Yeah but I want to control it with the average humidity from sensors across my house
1st world problems
It’s almost like you can just set the dehumidifier to a certain humidity level and fan speed and then never touch the settings again. That’s what I did with my humidifier. It’s as dumb as a box of rocks, but it quits working during the summer when the humidity goes up and then turns back on the rest of the year with zero interaction besides adding more water
You can, but it only measures the humidity at the (de)humidifier. I want it to account for the state of the whole house.
I mean, yeah. I wouldn’t have found that project and gone to the effort of using it if a simple dehu was all I needed. I wanted something I could control with my local home assistant install, and you can’t just hard power cycle a dehumidifier, it kills them.
Literally nobody is doing this shit.
They didn’t brick it, but the Nest thermostats that customers bought before Google acquired the company will be offline only now. No opening of the firmware, so they’ll become useless at some point, and already have lost major functionality.
But they can close their server and render the device inoperable, just like what happened to a water sensor I had.
That’s why it’s important to make sure the device can also run purely locally (e.g. via HomeAssistant).
(Not meant as a rebuke, just good advice for the future)
Exactly this. The device either needs to be open enough that it can easily integrate to HA without internet access.
Or dumb enough that I can mod it with an ESP.Anything that has to go through the manufacturer’s servers goes in the bin, the risks of data theft/rent seeking are too damned high.
“Nobody” like in “SONOS literally bricking its old devices and telling you to buy a new one”? https://www.whathifi.com/news/sonos-explains-why-recycle-mode-bricks-old-speakers
They didn’t brick anything. They gave a button for you to get a discount if you did it yourself
Literally false and you’re retarded.
Hey bud, no need to attack someone’s intelligence. You can pick apart their argument with sources like a big kid but nobody logged in to see you be a butthead online today.
Bullshit asymmetry principle, been there done that. Name-calling serves a small but real purpose in the right contexts.
Doofus.
Hey bud, no need to attack someone’s intelligence. You can pick apart their argument with sources like a big kid but nobody logged in to see you be a butthead online today.
To steel-man the argument some more, if you have variable-rate electricity, it could turn on when electricity is cheap.
Dehumidifiers already do that. They’re equipped with hygrometers that kick the machine on or off depending on the relative humidity. It’s old tech and it’s pretty reliable, wifi isn’t really necessary for it.
The built-in hygrometer’s not necessarily going to be as good as a well-designed home automation system, especially if the fan’s not running all the time, so it has to wait for damp air to diffuse into the machine. It also lets you do other things, like not bother turning the dehumidifier on if there are open windows if you’ve got some way to detect that, or report the humidity to something that will graph it. It’s not stuff that most consumers will care about, but a microcontroller with WiFi like the ESP8266 or ESP32-C3 costs less than an accurate hygrometer chip, so it doesn’t make much, if any, difference to the final price, particularly if the product was going to use a microcontroller anyway.
It’s ironic that you can implement all this cool automation for a device but in the end still have to manually lug water to it.
Well it’s a **de-**humidifier. You need to lug water from it. For the dehumidifier in my basement, we have it hooked up to a hose that takes the water right down the drain.
But I do take your point, it is pretty funny.
Like how every source of power is still steam since before the industrial revolution.
Just most sources of power. Photovoltaic, wind and hydro aren’t steam based.
Dehumidifiers aren’t there to make your house more comfortable though, they are there to keep (usually basements or garages) from growing mold. In fact they usually heat up the space they’re in. So unless you want to have a log of humidity, there’s stop no reason to automate it over WiFi, since the humidity setting on the unit is automatic.
As others have said, an alert if the tank is full would be legitimately useful, for a model that doesn’t have a drain line.
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I got new appliances a couple weeks ago and they’re all “smart”. Turns out a smart microwave just sends you a phone notification when it’s done. By default.
As someone with multiple people living in the house, I can confidently say this is the dumbest “smart” feature ever. Promptly disabled.
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The only smart thing I’d want an oven to do would be to turn itself off. That’s it, really. Did I leave the oven on after I left the house? Easy fix. Otherwise everything else is pretty much useless.
I don’t know, I wouldn’t mind also being able to tell it to start to preheat while I’m on my way home. Would save a chunk of time if I could literally walk in the door and throw the food in the oven without the extra wait for it to preheat which is usually long enough to be annoying but not long enough to do anything else.
Any appliance with IoT is a value-subtract.
They do it so in the future they can monetize you in perpetuity in some way
I can see value in HVAC IoT. Away from home and there’s a cold spell? Turn up the heating so your pipes don’t freeze, but also run it higher when electricity is cheaper (if you have variable pricing).
I don’t think I’d want my microwave, washing machine, or toilet to have IoT features though.
My toilet sings when I lift the lid or sit down. I kind of wish I could upload a new song after all these years
Wtf
For that price, does it at least wash and dry your ass automatically? I can’t imagine paying 10k for a toilet for lights and music lol
Meanwhile here I am installing ESP32C3’s into everything in my house to automate everything.
I can turn on my floor heat, hallway light, or even open a vent from an app on my phone. And bonus, no shady manufacturers to spy on me. Just China.
Can you flush toilets tho
I can do that but I don’t wanna - Bart Simpson
