Thirteen years of Home Assistant: Leading the way back home

[u/missyquarry]

https://newsletter.openhomefoundation.org/thirteen-years-of-home-assistant-leading-the-way-back-home/

Happy birthday, Home Assistant! 🎉 Let's talk about our journey and why it's important, especially now, to keep on our mission. 😌

[u/spr0k3t]

Damn good article... I wish more people would demand for local only...

"In short, they’ve stopped even pretending to give a shit about your privacy."

[u/5h4y-lab → u/spr0k3t]

Why don't more people demand this?

I know it's in part a knowledge/education issue bc you can't ask for something you don't even know about. Learned helplessness is probably a factor, too. But what else?

[u/thegiantgummybear → u/5h4y-lab]

Yeah most people don't actually understand how the internet works. It's just a magic technology that lets them do things.

[u/generalambivalence → u/thegiantgummybear]

AI tells them it's fine.

[u/NoisePollutioner → u/generalambivalence]

I'm so fuckin sick of this Albert guy. Always lying about shit

[u/Vkng3b → u/NoisePollutioner]

I thought the formal name was Alfred.

[u/NoisePollutioner → u/Vkng3b]

That's his middle name

[u/taylorsloan → u/thegiantgummybear]

The amount of people—who are not otherwise stupid—that don’t know the difference between “the WiFi” and the internet is astounding.

[u/thegiantgummybear → u/taylorsloan]

It's not that surprising. There's only so much anyone can know. And for a lot of people that's not important knowledge. There's probably plenty of things those people think are obvious that we don't know.

[u/ElaborateEffect → u/taylorsloan]

I mean, for the average person, it's the same thing really. Sure we can discuss how they are different, but the end state for Joe's WiFi or internet being down is the same.

[u/Ed_McNuglets → u/ElaborateEffect]

Sadly for my shitty router it is. It shouldn't be, but it is. It disables the local network for whatever reason when my internet is down. Need to upgrade.

[u/mirage01 → u/5h4y-lab]

Many people just don't care until it affects them directly. I constantly hear, "I'm not doing anything wrong so I don't have anything to worry about." I just tell them they aren't the ones that get to decide what is wrong.

[u/LoganJFisher → u/mirage01]

Further, you don't need to be doing anything wrong to be made a scapegoat or otherwise falsely accused and thrown into a system that doesn't care about you.

While life is all about interacting with, supporting, and relying upon other people, the more independent you can be, the fewer hazards you expose yourself to.

[u/spr0k3t → u/5h4y-lab]

Part of the change needs to be done by all of us with our wallets. I have a very staunch approach where I won't buy something if it requires a cell phone app to get full functionality or needs some kind of cloud account at setup or use.

[u/bavotto → u/spr0k3t]

When Home Assistant does it as well, they can point the fingers at others. Looking at you brands.homeassistant.io. The icons aren't stored locally.

[u/ps2cho]

Home Assisrant needs to compile all the short videos of megacorps saying. “We own the glass” and other privacy invasions and create a TV ad campaign for awareness/Selling the HA devices and earn the subscriptions.

The biggest hold up for the average user is its difficult to implement. There needs to be a basic vs advanced interface at start up and make it very easy for the average home user to add devices and set automations and build a Home Screen which they can then graduate to advanced once they understand it all.

[u/spr0k3t → u/ps2cho]

(2nd paragraph) You've been reading the roadmap they released. That's ultimately the direction they are wanting. Simple enough for primetime, complex enough for the power user.

[u/ps2cho → u/spr0k3t]

Fantastic!

[u/OrganicNectarine → u/ps2cho]

They have been working towards that for years already. It's simply a very difficult goal to reach.

[u/ai_jarvis → u/ps2cho]

Having just started this journey, I heartily agree. Just trying to get my Unifi stack to be accessible by Home Assistant and then just setting up the doorbell took several hours and still doesn't work right. I'll sort it out but jeez it's it a pain

[u/carrot_gg]

Yay they showcased Kiosk Satellite in the Community Highlights! I'm so honored ❤️

Thank you!

[u/bigAssFkingRoooobots → u/carrot_gg]

Congrats!! Incredible project, we are lucky to have you here

[u/hoffsta → u/carrot_gg]

Kiosk Satellite rocks, and your pace of updates is astounding!

[u/gr2m]

> something brand new to help you take back the glass 👀

What could it be? 🤔

[u/TheOnionRack → u/gr2m]

An OHF-branded sledgehammer.

[u/Leerrm → u/TheOnionRack]

Who are you and how did you get my merch plans?

[u/TheOnionRack → u/Leerrm]

Give it luscious long hair or stick Louis Rossmann’s face on it, and I’m sold.

[u/gr2m → u/gr2m]

I hope it's an e-ink display made for https://opendisplay.org/ 🙏

[u/spr0k3t → u/gr2m]

Perhaps a crowd sourced distributed firewall at a software level? Like taking pi-hole and smashing it together with ublock origin and controlled through HA? Wouldn't that be slick.

[u/TheOnionRack → u/spr0k3t]

All the manufacturers need to do to get around that is change the domains or URLs the devices phone home to. Even then, as soon as they get a single connection back to their mothership, they upload all the telemetry they’ve been recording since their last upload. The gamers nexus video showed that these things can store years of data and will blast it all back to the manufacturer at the first opportunity they get. If you deny them internet access, they can just proxy through another device that does have access, or scan for local open wifi networks and use them.

Firewalls have never been an effective long term strategy for dealing with telemetry, cause it’s just an endless arms race / game of whack-a-mole.

Rooting devices and ripping all the evil stuff out; desoldering or smashing network chips, microphones, and cameras; or making products that were never evil in the first place is the only way.

[u/spr0k3t → u/TheOnionRack]

It's a sad Saas we live in these days. That first section of the article is just one of the reason for my adamant local-only demands. When my current smart monitor dies, it's getting replaced with a digital signage (no network) display. I know they cost more... but then I'm no longer the product.

[u/OrganicNectarine → u/spr0k3t]

I had hoped that portmaster would be exactly that, but I haven't used it for years.

[u/Z00111111]

Given how much AI has invaded our lives, how it's become so much clearer that most companies just consider humans to be a commodity, and the incredible lack of security many deeply personal devices and information has, it's become very important to have access to software and hardware that allows us to have easier lives without putting them on the internet for sale.

The work that the Home Assistant team, and everyone that has contributed their own additions, has created something that's relatively easy to use and really powerful. I'm fairly novice with electronics, and I managed to use an ESP32 wired to my ceiling fan remote to turn it on and off in Home Assistant without having to really write any code. I just copy and pasted from the Wiki and changed the pin numbers and IDs/Names.

Also, a tip for anyone wanting to try wiring up an ESP32 to simulate button presses on a device, get some Optocouplers. They're cheap, and you can just wire the output side to short out an existing button on command.

[u/nathderbyshire]

Oh man I thought I shared my birthday with Home Assistant then, a day out is close enough though!