Philips Hue will soon force users to create an account
defcon.social
defcon.social
Is there a way to force the company to return the money I have paid for my bulbs and hub so far? Even if it is arduous and cost me more money than I'm able to gain back I would be inclined to do it to signal my displeasure with this change.
The fact that they use ESP-NOW means they can be controlled (theoretically) by any ESP* that has ESP-NOW support. So far, folks have only managed to go the other way—to intercept remote key presses [0]—but I imagine it won’t be long before they suss out control of the bulbs.
The default is "Warm white, full brightness", probably mostly to avoid confused people sending back bulbs because they flipped the switch ON and the bulb remained dark. Since traditionally that meant a failed bulb.
I'm using that as a backup solution in my house. All lights are zigbee, permanently powered, normally most are controlled automatically by presence sensors. But I have a couple of Zigbee remotes in a box that are bound directly to the lights to use in case my home automation system is down.
The _real_ light switch is permanently on, and the _hue_ light switch sends a beacon to the hub to turn the configured lights on/off (the light bulb socket is always-on)
It may require a bit more tinkering though, you either need to use it via its web dashboard, or write a simple program in anything that has a mqtt client library (which is basically everything), if you want to link it with things like zigbee remotes or some external triggers, etc.
One of the issues with these "standard" Zigbee devices is that you can't configure all of their settings.
I have a bunch of Aqara motion sensors and I can't set their timeouts or sensitivity unless I use the Aqara app and hub. Used as a normal Zigbee device they offer no configuration options.
The Hue app surfaces functionality that isn’t available on plain zigbee, such as soft on/off and motion sensor programs. It is possible to mimic this to an extent but the native implementation is superior.
I also have a lot of different lamps that are either plain Zigbee or IKEA, and no matter the approach - node-red, home assistant, homekit - the “integrated” experience sucks compared to the Hue.
Get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and switch on the light called ‘bathroom’? Hue knows.
A detailed record of when you leave for work and arrive home? Hue has it.
Go on vacation for two weeks? Hue will be able to infer that too.
This is beyond a privacy nightmare. It’s a privacy horror shitshow by a corporation that tricked millions of people to invest in pricey hardware and is now forcing these same users to give up intimate details of their lives to which it can sell to the highest bidder.
Don’t bother writing a letter to Signify. Call your congress person. This is a class action lawsuit. Sue these fuckers back into the Stone Age.
1. get rid of the Philips app (not the bulbs).
2. Replace the Philips Hue bridge (hub) with a RasPi or NUC computer.
3. Connect a Zigbee/Z-Wave combo USB radio dongle.
4. Load Home Assistant OS.
This solution not only replaces the Philips locked system, but it can replace (or take over) Amazon, Google, Apple, Ikea and more, simultaneously. About 2551 more.
Home Assistant is not perfect, but it provides just the privacy (and features) these vendors are taking away or never gave me.
I have Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Wifi devices on Home Assistant (RasPi 4 8GB peaks around 4% utilization). I rarely care about who makes the device nowadays. Is it Zigbee or Z-Wave and cheap? Great, I buy it, and it works.
As of this instance, it manages over 100 "devices", from a magnetic door sensor to the Synology NAS drive temperature.
( list of official integrations [because there are many more through community integrations]: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/#all )
If the device can not be connected to Home Assistant, or if doing so requires connecting Home Assistant to the vendor's cloud rather than directly connecting to the local device, you should look elsewhere.
Sometimes, especially if the device is based on one of the common ESP chips, there may be options for alternative firmware which solves this problem but whether the alternative firmware supports the features you want or can be easily installed with the hardware and skills you possess will vary situationally.
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I'm not an Apple user for the most part, but AFAIK HomeKit requires that a device be locally controllable so that's a good starting point when looking at a lot of competing products. If it supports HomeKit there's a decent chance HA will be able to interface with it directly.
Can you recommend a dongle?
I have a Nortek HUSBZB-1 model; got at the end of 2021. Never had to do anything to it. About 44USD now.
I chose it through reading community posts and such. One specific recommendation I took to heart was to put it on a USB port extending cable, so it is away from the electronics.
Of course you're free to use any software with it.
Now after one announcement it's something I want to get rid of fast and am ashamed of recommending it to my friends. I already block my Hue Bridge from accessing the internet, so that should keep it from updating so that the functionality stays the same.
Does anyone have any good app recommendations for Android? I use HA, but last time I checked you weren't able to configure the actual Hue scenes in it (and using HA scenes triggered Hue's spam limits).
You can keep your Hue bulbs and devices but threw away the app, hub, and need to work with hue as an institution at all.
I got a $30 USB zigbee stick to replace the hub. works great!
I'll still probably recommend hue light bulbs with the caveat that I don't recommend their bridge/app, compared to the other bulbs I've used they are much more reliable and handle color changes much more smoothly & consistently.
I've had this behavior on a physical dimmer switch and an ordinary cheap LED. It couldn't be turned off. Somehow the dimmer always feeds it some power, which the LED responds to. If that low power is at the edge of its "activation power", you're effectively rapidly turning it on and off.
This kills any LED. LEDs die from actuations far before they die from hours in use. Hue bulbs are praised for their reliability, so something is off.
In my case, I changed the physical dimmer into an ordinary light switch. That fixed it.
I have a bunch of these switches https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/TS0044.html#tuya-ts0044, and the solution of turning off the periodic battery reporting seems to have helped, I haven't had to change any of their batteries in many months. See https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/issues/14157#issuecomm.... Not sure if something similar can be done with original Hue switches or bridge (or whether it would help there).
One different kind of switch I have, which doesn't have this problem, has had the same battery in it since I bought it 2 years ago.
The problem tends to be that all of them want to sucker you into using their apps or bridges to tie it all together.
It's entirely avoidable, but most users don't know what to look for.
About the only reason I could think of to buy smart lightbulbs would be to suddenly turn all the lights in the house red, and yell "torpedoes in the water, brace for impact!" and that doesn't seem like a strong enough argument. I'd probably only do this 2-3 times a month anyway.
They become rapidly less useful when the toddler learns to say "hey Google" and decides to make all lights green all the time.
That's what I've done in our house. Lots of dimmers. Some are "rocker switches with a slide along the side," other are more digital "push button to turn lights on to the last setting, small rocker to adjust light level, you can always come up from 0 by using the rocker" types.
Or in another case, most of the lights are low in the living/play room, and I forgot to turn down the nursery lights, they're already winding down, walking up the dark stairs and into a dim nursery helps keep them chill. Walking into a blinding daylight blue room and then turning down the lights is liable to add an extra 20 minutes to our bedtime routine.
I will never not have voice activated lights so long as I can afford them.
I'll just note that most of what you complain about with dimmers isn't a problem with the correct dimmer - I don't have any dimmers that require coming to full brightness before dimming them down, no matter where they were last set.
https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/voice_remote_loc...
* it requires you to physically go to the switch (inconvenient whilst holding a squirming child);
* it controls only one hard-wired fixture - there is no master physical dimmer for all light sources (overhead, standlights, bedside lamps or whatever else) in a room;
* it's harder to install a switch than to screw in some smart bulbs
* Turn existing lights into timed night lights that turn on at a configurable brightness when I pass certain motions sensors and then turn off after a timeout (cool/useful when I'm wandering around house at night)
* Similar: Turn existing light fixtures into motion activated on switches (useful for dark staircase)
* Turn lights on in morning and evening when I'm traveling to make it look like the place is occupied if I'm traveling
* Party mode: cool colors shifting in cool ways in the rare event there's a party
* Gradually go from bright white light to softer light as the day goes on in the office, and then stay soft at night to help with sleep
* Turn on in a sequence when people are detected close by outside in the middle of the night to try to scare them off
* Turn a certain color to indicate something being off, like a server offline, water detected, etc.
There do exist products made for for a variety of Youtube/video/streaming needs, including lighting, and they are niche.
You might think "but there are many many Youtubers/streamers" but in comparison with the overall market for such lamps, they're insignificant in number.
Hue and co (from Amazon, IKEA, etc) are mass market products.
Now I realise that a lot of those points are not as clear cut and products would probably cost a bunch more but somehow I would prefer that. What do you guys think?
What can be turned into a subscription next! I can't wait to find out.
Maybe I'll become a survivalist who builds his own lightbulbs, computers, etc.
Once I figure the off-grid lifestyle out, maybe I can launch a paid newsletter about it...
On a whim, I googled and found this "Smart" toilet[1]
[1] https://www.kohler.com/en/products/toilets/shop-toilets/numi...
I have an old house, where it location of a few switches are just completely illogical. One solution would be to install a few "smart" switches and a relay or two. If I want to stay secure and care the least bit about cost and privacy, there's no choice other than run an open source gateway solution, funnily enough it's also the only solution that will work with almost everything.
There's an entire cottage industry and hobby scene around making 3D print and modifications to Ikea, Hue and other switches so that they'll look like "the real thing".
https://sonoff.tech/product/diy-smart-switches/zbmini-l2/
Yes, I saw Danish appliances, they look nice.
Honestly is there any IoT brand that we can trust long-term? Maybe IKEA stuff?
That is, be cautious about anything that will directly link to your wifi (and so doesn't need a bridge) unless you can confirm you can isolate them on their own wifi network or firewall them off should you feel the need to now or in the future, or anything that uses proprietary protocols where you can't rip out the bridge if the provider goes rogue.
Hue bulbs uses zigbee, so the bulbs themselves are not a problem. The bridge is. There are "dumb" zigbee bridges/interfaces, including USB controllers you can use with open source options like Home Assistant.
If you can't avoid a proprietary bridge, only buy what you can afford to replace, or where the device is still serviceable to a sufficient degree if you turn off/remove the bridge (e.g. Lightwave switches go "dumb" if you turn off the bridge, but still work), or if you firewall it (e.g. if you can still control it via wifi even if the bridge can't reach the internet).
Anything you can flash Tasmota [1] on should be good to go as well. I believe that includes all or most Shelly devices as well.
IKEA so far seems like a decent bet as well.
[0] https://shellystore.co.uk/ [1] https://tasmota.github.io/docs/
Of course, there's no guarantee for future products, but once they're set up they're not gonna change unless you go in and update their firmware.
I think if these had Z-Wave they would have cost a few dollars more each, due to licensing. It would be nice because I do have a Z-Wave mesh up and running alongside a zigbee mesh and a few oddball Wi-Fi only devices like these shellies, but they work well enough with home assistant that I don't consider to be a drawback yet.
The only thing I wish they could do better is expose more of their configurable options via whatever API they present to home assistant. A couple of these devices speak mqtt which opens up a few more capabilities, but there are still many fine-tuning aspects like controlling the way a switch attached to the device functions, i.e. whether it behaves as if it is detached or functional - useful with toddlers around) are invisible unless you are using the built-in web configuration page.
I really don't understand many of the "smart" device manufacturers. They clearly aren't capable of running the services required to manage their devices, so why do they keep insisting on doing so? My parents have a smart radiator that couldn't be managed for over a month because a server in Norway was down. Why not just have it be manageable by Homekit and skip the infrastructure cost?
Why don't companies offer better, longer-lasting products that can be community-driven after EOL? Because money.
99% of IoT devices would be fine with just "here is MQTT address" and a way to push updates (preferably with gateway downloading updates and devices updating only from gateway)
Raspberry, Arduino and others: Release some awesome open-sourced hardware standard for the smart home: lighting, measuring, interfacing!
Or does something already exist?
Not really. I do not use incandescent bulbs nor bulbs that require account. You've chosen 216 and you'll find it everywhere in nature.
It's our fault we're letting them do that. Bad behavior should be affecting profits. Probably through regulation.
this is an extremely dumb take, of course the people working at companies are responsible for bad dumb decisions that make their products worse.
Companies are not sentient “profit-maximizing machines, they’re a collection of people. And it’s people making the decisions.
Individually the organisation is made up of people, but at large it's a big anonymous machine because those people are rewarded super-duper one-dimensionally: Help profits and you're rewarded or hurt them and you're out.
It makes about as much sense to anthropomorphise corporations as it does to anthropomorphise lawnmowers. They can not feel empathy.
For home audio, Sonos is great. Their voice assistant is completely locally processed.
Tangential PSA: Red Sea (aquatics) does/did this too. I can't control the lights on my fucking aquarium without all four of them being connected to the internet over wifi and managed through an account registered with an app with location sharing enabled. Only the iOS app worked; the Android version was completely broken.
The app lets you group lights and model the lighting curves however you want but there's no reason this couldn't have been done over Zigbee. I assume my LAN is now part of some Mossad botnet.
Sonos might have been good in the past when they were selling a way of streaming your ripped mp3s around your house, they are no longer good now that they think they own the content too.
I have many devices and use them every day - but if I had a clean slate I don't think I'd buy them again.
Sonos has a ~10 year support timeline on their speakers. That's longer than even Apple supports any of their devices, and they're often considered the gold standard of long support of tech products.
I hate being made to defend Sonos twice as it makes me feel like a shill, but it is truly how it is.
Fun fact: eQ-3 is a subsidiary of the DIY electronics store ELV: https://www.eq-3.com/about-eq-3.html
Ideally, there would be a wired HomeKit secure video option, but I have yet to see it.
I will not be purchasing any more of their products and will do my best to extract a refund for the hundreds of dollars I've spent on them so far.
- official Hue apps - who cares
- hue bridge - bad, would break apps like HuePro and would force more complicated setup for some
- bulb - unlikely, that would mean everyone buying this for IoT lighting can throw out their whole set
I might not buy another base station again, though, if this gets enforced at that level.
Not throw out, just don’t upgrade the firmware again and not buy new ones that might have the broken firmware.
Enforcing it at the bridge level would break so many setups, apps, custom integrations that even if they try this, they'll dial it back from the avalanche of outrage.
It's not critically important, but the many individually small conveniences add up.
Then I remembered I have cats.
And if you're concerned about internet access, there are plenty of hubs for smart projects that don't need internet access. Some don't even need or have wifi capability, but can be wired physically into a dmz with an open source home automation system like Home Assistant. There are USB dongles with Zigbee support as well that you plug straight into your open source based home automation box if you want.
That said: Most people just don't care most of the time, because for most peoples use the worst possible consequence is being slightly inconvenienced.
E.g. should my Lightwave RF gateway get bricked, the worst case scenario is that my Lightwave switches revert to being dumb switches and I'll be slightly annoyed I won't be able to voice control them.
Hardly world-destroying stuff.
What's slightly different here is that this is a new move for Hue (it's not for any number of other smart home providers people happily sign up for online services from), and so some subset of their customers will feel compelled to switch zigbee bridges and incur a cost. (But if you're price sensitive, why the hell are you using Hue in the first place?)
I can assure you pretty much nobody goes to their fuse board and trips the main switch even when going on holiday, much less during their day to day life. Many of the people who don't do that still tend to turn off as much as possible when leaving the house.
Having the lights turn off automatically when there's nobody home is also nice though.
But I still don't trust it. I need to do the Japanese train conductor pointing and vocalising thing when turning stuff off when I leave the house for a longer time =)
Well, it was reason why it was installed, but what actually was used for is that we set up coffee to brew before leaving work and the timer turned it on right before people started coming to the office so we were welcomed by smell of fresh coffee
Security and privacy concerns don't even come in to play (although these do make the apps even worse)
This is a shame, because I had good experiences with my old Hue, when they still did remotes.
Something like this: https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1bweoSVXXXXbHXFXXq6xXFXXXG/New...
Maybe I missed it, but from the material that was available to me without actually buying one of these things, this seemed impossible: the boxes and stores didn't have any remotes, and I couldn't find anything on the website. If it is possible, then it's hidden pretty well and people are steered towards that app pretty strongly.
This line is uttered in a cloakroom scene. In the scene, the protagonist Ryszard Ochódzki goes to a cloakroom to retrieve his coat. He hands over his ticket to the attendants. They search but claim they can't find his coat. Ochódzki becomes agitated but the attendants are nonchalant.
The scene satirizes inefficiency and lack of accountability in bureaucratic systems.
Hue's "take it or leave it" answers ("Believe us, this change can only benefit the users, when it comes to security.") about their recent changes feel kinda the same. The message seems to be, "We're changing this and what are you going to do about it?"
It's scary how a movie about life in communist Poland can still feel relevant when dealing with companies today.
Perhaps centralization is the problem? I can't help but think all those people in crypto that said "we buy into the protocol, not the coin!" were onto something after all.
I voted with my money and when I needed a printer for my dad I got a Brother.
And what's his name? :D
Jokes apart, it's doable when people still haven't bought anything, but the frustration that I wish was changed is the change in terms and conditions that affects hardware functioning at a level where it's either you selling your data or you being unable to use the hardware, hardware that could also generate e-waste if thrown away
Phillips had made an excellent product - reasonably priced, reliable as lights and network-wise, compatible with Homekit, with their random app, with Home Assistant, and now apparently they want to make it worse.
It's the same argument as people who say Google should be allowed to censor whoever they want. "They're a private company, they can do whatever they want. Nobody is forcing you to use their services."
Clearly, in many areas of life, politics and the legal system needs to be realigned with the modern technological landscape. But so far, it seems most such efforts are pushing things in the exact wrong direction.
For the record, I don't agree with it -- just saying.
Does this just apply to the phone app, or to the base station as well?
IIRC, the base station has a REST API and there are 3rd party apps that can control it (but I haven't touched my Hue light setup in about 5 years, and don't really use any of the smart features anymore).
for i in `seq 1 10`; do http -v 192.168.xxx.xxx/api devicetype="my_hue_app#script"; sleep 1; doneIt's a quite powerful tool to integrate a variety of different smart home devices into one location and share them between ecosystems.
I have a wifi thermostat that requires a dedicated app and does not allow for Apple Home integration. With Home Assistant I installed an integration for that thermostat, then shared it with the Apple Home bridge (also an integration) and quickly was able to allow my iphone/automations etc, to modify the thermostat. And that's only scratching the surface and something that took a few minutes.
The cloud, and the internet always costs someone, somewhere, money that they ultimately wont' want to keep paying for free.
Since this means you will have to pay, it doesn't hurt to look at self hosting if you make it as far as using smart home tech that has a temporarily free cloud.
I have multiple lights, power plugs and sensors operating on z-wave being controlled by Home Assistant. None of these require me to log into a third party app or service.
I never even knew about their app, I've been using Wiz instead. My Phillips lights came with instructions to use Wiz and I didn't even know there was an official Hue app until I saw this today.
But I have a Wiz account..
I have used Sonoff Zigbeen to replace Ikea hub, bot haven't got around to replacing Hue hub just yet. It's on my list :-)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alistaircharlton/2023/09/07/bmw...
Hopefully Philips will learn the same. In the meantime, I'm making a mental note to avoid their brand all together.
If anyone has a setup like mine (a Hue Hub, but also using HomeAssistant) I would suggest firewalling off the Hue Hub from accessing the internet. While the Hue App will stop working your lights shouldn't... for now.
The more companies force this the less valuable data they get out of it. Sure you can email me, I am just opening the account once a month to keep it active.
Does anyone run multiple networks with all of their smart devices disconnected from the internet via firewall/air gap/etc? Does anything function close to what an average consumer should expect in that scenario?
Plus all devices interoperate with each other seamlessly. 10/10 would recommend
The SkyConnect from HomeAssitant/Nabu Casa works quite well: https://www.home-assistant.io/skyconnect/
They should use their influence with Signify to get them to take a long term view. Right now I regret buying more expensive "Philips" light bulbs, sync boxes and other hardware.
I'm pissed off that I bought one product and they've retrospectively changed the terms of usage.
Software (you may or may not need it for HA): https://github.com/dresden-elektronik/deconz-rest-plugin
1) set up homeassistant on rpi
2) get zigbee2mqtt adapter (hue bridge can be used to push sneaky updates to fuck up their bulbs further)
3) backup your rpi
4) bulbs --> zigbee2mqtt --> homeassistant
A couple of months later the same thing happend with a Mi Band smart watch. The app required to create an account.
Personally I won't be buying any smart devices ever again.
All I can find is references to something posted on twitter, which I refuse to accept as official communication.
“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "
^ That door, was "the main character's front door"
IoT.
edit: grammar
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
"You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt's money-gulping door.
"I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.
– Philip K. Dick, Ubik (1969)
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...
Vote with your wallet. Don't support over-engineering.
P.S. Some of the best LED lightbulbs I have were installed in 2012 and they are still working with very small degradation of brightness. Nowadays whenever I need to buy a LED bulb it is like a lottery. Smart IoT light bulbs? Just plain no. As with the rest of the gimmicks.
1. Next to our bed we have reading lamp sconces. The sconces we picked out do not have light switches (oops). It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as now the reading lamps automatically switch on in the evening before we come upstairs to bed, then turn off as part of the “good night” scene (which also alarms the security system, etc). If the alarm goes off, the lights automatically switch on to max.
2. Our front porch and rear lights automatically turn on and off with the sunset/sunrise. They also turn onto a flashing red/blue if the alarm is triggered (kind of corny but hey anything to scare off would be intruders)
3. Our kids have smart bulbs in their room lamps. We are able to switch them to a low red colored light as a night light automatically when it’s their bedtime.
Most of my lights are “dumb”. The few use cases for smart bulbs are nice though. I use the Nanoleaf essentials through Apple HomeKit so I don’t feel like I’m exposing my personal details to some third party.
Primary lighting is dumb and controlled by switches.
Secondary lighting/mood lighting is smart and has the ability to be color changed and timing controlled.
That said, 'smart' systems love to lose connection or their settings and do the wrong thing too frequently.
If you buy a product you should be able to use it even if you completely break all ties with the original vendor. Otherwise it's a service and not a product.
While I'd happily support regulating tethering as well, because it'd certainly make some things easier, with a little bit of thought you can build out home automation where it's all under your control. E.g. stick to zigbee and z-wave devices as the default, and get dumb zigbee and z-wave USB dongles, and connect them to an open source bridge, like Home Assistant, and you've got a good start.
I think this is a distinction without a difference unless there's something legally relevant to that distinction. I don't disagree semantically, but I also doubt Phillips cares whether they call their lightbulbs a product or a service.
My solution would be to require refunds for hardware if the underlying software materially changes in terms of features, excepting safety features (I'm fine with disabling features because of an unknown risk of fire or something).
To me, the underlying issue is information asymmetry. The vendor knows when they're going to make changes, and users don't. The vendor knows which features get used and which don't, impacting the features they change, but users would have to guess whether they're a major usecase or not. The vendor likely has a list of lines in the sand they won't cross, but users don't know where those are.
Those used to be irrelevant because it wasn't possible to live-update the features of hardware, but it has become relevant. The free market is lacking information to make informed purchasing decisions.
"Even your home's light bulbs will require an Internet-connected computer account that spies on you."
Primacy needs to be destroyed and the company's obligations divided evenly among all stakeholders: shareholders, employees, and customers
In this case, they have a canned copy/paste answer saying that it’s for “security”, so feel free to try to debunk that in your initial comment.
Also leave a 1-star review on Amazon. It's totally fair: if they can "update" their product, I can update my opinion of it.
Unfortunately for me (now), I bought all my Hue stuff at local stores because it was more convenient than Amazon.
With that being said, I'm done with Hue.