xkcd #3109: Dehumidifier

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/

explainxkcd for #3109

originalucifer 87 points a year ago

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.

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NocturnalMorning 144 points a year ago

Yeah, or the manufacturer bricks the device bcz they want to sell you a new one.

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Badabinski 33 points a year ago

That's why projects like this are great: https://github.com/...

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.

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TachyonTele 11 points a year ago

A dehumidifier that doesn't have any wifi can't be bricked either.

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kn33 19 points a year ago

Yeah but I want to control it with the average humidity from sensors across my house

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Badabinski 5 points a year ago

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.

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deur -82 points a year ago

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codesaIat 93 points a year ago

"Nobody" like in "SONOS literally bricking its old devices and telling you to buy a new one"? https://www.whathifi.com/...

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tyler 10 points a year ago

They didn’t brick anything. They gave a button for you to get a discount if you did it yourself

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argh_another_username 65 points a year ago

But they can close their server and render the device inoperable, just like what happened to a water sensor I had.

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bob_lemon 26 points a year ago

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)

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Zachariah 26 points a year ago

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.

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1847953620 -30 points a year ago

Literally false and you’re retarded.

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ArsonButCute 19 points a year ago

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.

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blackbelt352 51 points a year ago

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.

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AnyOldName3 4 points a year ago

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.

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Geometrinen_Gepardi 12 points a year ago

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.

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Cocodapuf 11 points a year ago

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.

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TachyonTele 3 points a year ago

Like how every source of power is still steam since before the industrial revolution.

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Cocodapuf 3 points a year ago

but a microcontroller with WiFi like the ESP8266 or ESP32-C3 costs less than an accurate hygrometer chip

Ok, two things.

First, the cost of the Wi-Fi chip is clearly not the issue here. The real expense/concern is the effort and software mechanisms needed to secure that network connection. Connecting to the Internet is easy, securing that connected device is hard.

Secondly, at some point you still need the hygrometer, there's no way around that. Either your dehumidifier is tracking humidity, or your home automation system needs to track humidity. And you can't like... get that data from the web somehow, you need a local sensor, and it will generally only make sense to have it in the same room as the dehumidifier (meaning not necessarily where other smart home components are set up).

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princessnorah 4 points a year ago

So, first off, smart devices shouldn't need to connect to the internet, only the local network. I have everything connected to Home Assistant, and then for access outside the house I have HA connected to the internet, meaning I only have one point I need to secure.

On your second point, I think the poster above was talking about having both an in-built as well as wifi-accessible external sensor. It makes it possible to have a more powerful dehumidifier in one space, running to a lower humidity than needed based off what's going on in other rooms. Then have that air circulated by other fans, etc.

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AnyOldName3 3 points a year ago

You're missing my point. It's likely that the cheapest way to design and build a dehumidifier these days will already include a microcontroller interpreting results from a digital hygrometer because these components are cheap and easier to work with than purely electronic/electromechanical designs with no microcontroller. The cost of switching from a non-WiFi/Bluetooth/Zigbee microcontroller to one with one or more of these networks is negligible, and once you've got it, it's not meaningfully more expensive to pay a software engineer to expose the on/off switch and hygrometer readings via that network and have the marketing people write Smart! Now with WiFi! than it is to skip it and pay the marketing people to come up with some other nonsense to put on the box. If you care about security as little as the average IoT vendor does, then it's nearly free to turn a dumb device into a smart one, so if it makes a handful of extra people buy the device, manufacturers will make things smart. For a dehumidifier, there are reasons why a handful of people will prefer a smart one, so smart dehumidifiers get made.

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yucandu 3 points a year ago

a microcontroller with WiFi like the ESP8266 or ESP32-C3 costs less than an accurate hygrometer chip

No it doesn't. Those micros go for $1-2 bulk, but capacitive hygrometers are 10x cheaper.

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AnyOldName3 7 points a year ago

I can get a board from AliExpress with an ESP32-C3 on it with free shipping for £1.10, so I'm not inclined to believe the £0.765 unit cost for a 5000-part reel from Mouser is really the cheapest way to get them in bulk as the other parts on the same board and the shipping have to cost something.

The cheapest hygrometer that Mouser sell is £0.748 per unit for a 10,000-part reel, and its datasheet says not to leave it for more than 60 hours in greater than 80% relative humidity (which is a pretty likely scenario for a dehumidifier) as it'll drift, and if it happens often, it'll age faster. You need to spend more to get rid of that restriction. I'll concede that the accuracy penalty if you cheap out isn't as bad as I thought - I'd not actually looked at a datasheet to see how badly modern hygrometers would drift, I just knew that they did - so plenty of manufacturers wouldn't care, but the parts are still comparable prices, not a factor of ten like you're claiming.

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blackbelt352 1 point a year ago

And how does a well designed automation system measure how much moisture in the air? There must be some kind of measuring device that measures moisture, a moisture scope! Ooh wait let's latinize it to make it sound more impressive and sophisticated a hygro...me...ter... oh... uh... this is embarrassing.

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AnyOldName3 1 point a year ago

In the UK, it's common for electric showers to be on a separate isolator that needs to be turned on before they'll heat up, and it also activates an extractor fan, and most people turn it off again when they're done showering. It's pretty simple for a home automation hobbyist to swap the regular isolator switch for a smart one, and then their system can know when they're about to shower and activate the dehumidifier immediately. This can be much better than waiting ten minutes for enough humidity to diffuse into the dehumidifier for the humidistat to activate then waiting another ten minutes for the cold side to cool enough for any dehumidification to start.

I didn't say a home automation system would be measuring the humidity and reacting. The opportunity to do better comes from the potential to be more proactive if you can figure out a way to tell a computer about impending humidity.

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Sibshops 20 points a year ago

To steel-man the argument some more, if you have variable-rate electricity, it could turn on when electricity is cheap.

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dfyx 9 points a year ago

This can be done with something like Zigbee. Or even simpler: you hook a non-connected device up to a "smart" power socket. No need for the device itself to talk to the outside world.

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Zachariah 5 points a year ago

The solution to too many unnecessarily-connected devices is more connected devices?

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dfyx 5 points a year ago

The solution is not more but different connected devices so I can decide for myself what needs to be connected and by which protocol. Get the dumbest device on the market, no wifi, no internal clock, maybe not even a humidity sensor and then, if and only if I need to remote control it, for example to put it on a schedule, I can use the cheapest "smart" device on the market to connect it to an in-house machine that can turn it on and off.

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Cocodapuf 2 points a year ago

Now you're getting it!

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echolalia 0 points a year ago

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Hawke 3 points a year ago

You still have to have some device connected to the internet. This just transfers the problem from the humidifier to the outlet.

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ThePantser 9 points a year ago

Zigbee is local and if you really wanted to you can use Home Assistant 100% offline it will be just neutered and basic.

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dfyx 7 points a year ago

I run home automation with lights, switches, outlets, heaters and some more and not a single device has internet access. They all use Zigbee (a simple radio protocol) to talk to homeassistant which is open source and hosted on a machine that lives under my desk.

Separating tasks between the dehumidifier and outlet has the advantage that each individual device can be a lot simpler, leaving less attack surface. My power outlet can't read the humidity sensor, it doesn't need to talk to an external server, it doesn't even need to know that the thing connected to it is a dehumidifier. It's just a chip that receives a radio signal and toggles a relay on or off. That's it.

Separating the two concerns also lets me replace the devices separately if one breaks or my requirements change. If I suddenly need wifi or bluetooth instead of Zigbee or if it's for some reason no longer supported by homeassistant, I can just replace a 9€ outlet instead of the whole dehumidifier that could get bricked by the proprietary app losing support.

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Stillwater 6 points a year ago

You could do all that without internet connectivity, just sayin.

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originalucifer 2 points a year ago

who said anything about internet connectivity? wifi != internet

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TachyonTele 1 point a year ago

🙄

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DarrinBrunner 3 points a year ago

Because times when electricity is cheap coincide with the need for lowering humidity?

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cynar 4 points a year ago

Some places do electricity costs in 30 minute periods. If you know cost will spike when everyone gets home, and the sun sets, then running early makes sense. Other times, holding off for an hour might be more useful.

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DarrinBrunner 4 points a year ago

That's the feature they sell. But, its real purpose is to monetize your data and/or lock you into some sort of ridiculous subscription service and/or run ads.

That's pretty much ubiquitous for "smart" devices.

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programmer_belch 4 points a year ago

That's right, this would mean that the device has an api to activate or deactivate it through WiFi by sending it commands and I can make it unable to connect to the outside internet right?

Or I can only activate it with the proprietary app that doesn't even have a working schedule?

Connecting to WiFi is good when I have full control but not when the manufacturer does

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bob_lemon 3 points a year ago

Yeah, devices that can run fully local are the best. They can be integrated into Home Assistant (or similar), with full control over them. No reliance on a remote server or proprietary app.

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TachyonTele 3 points a year ago

Johnson. You're hired!

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hakunawazo 3 points a year ago

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bdonvr 2 points a year ago

Better solution: smart plug

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anomnom 2 points a year ago

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.

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captain_aggravated 4 points a year ago

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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NJSpradlin 1 point a year ago

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originalucifer 3 points a year ago

dont be dictatatin' my humidity comfort level.

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pftbest 1 point a year ago

But he is right though, you should be using your air conditioner not dehumidifier for climate control, it works better for that purpose. Watch this video to learn why

https://youtu.be/j_QfX0SYCE8

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originalucifer 1 point a year ago

and youre both wrong for assuming the temperature and humidity are the only reasons to want to control this device. It literally generates water as output... god forbid my home automation wants to manage that output.

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yucandu 61 points a year ago

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.

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odious 18 points a year ago

that vent thing is surprisingly clever, thumbs up 👍

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yucandu 18 points a year ago

Hey thanks, I've got tons of cool projects and gifs like these, and I love to share them and read the comments, but I don't know where to post them on Lemmy. I used to post them to Reddit but they started shadowbanning my github for some reason. Didn't even find out until the ESP32 mod messaged me and was like "we can't even manually approve your posts".

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Dave 5 points a year ago

What about !diyelectronics@programming.dev?

Or if you are using Home Assistant you could post in !homeassistant@lemmy.world

There is a Lemmy community search function here if you want to check other options: https://lemmyverse.net/communities

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yucandu 5 points a year ago

What about !diyelectronics@programming.dev?

I tried there but my posts never showed up. Tried twice. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm on old.lemmy.world so it looks like old reddit.

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LaLuzDelSol 10 points a year ago

I just installed motorized dampers in my crawl space using Shelly smart relays! Now I have an automatic schedule so I'm not cooling rooms that aren't in use (like the bedrooms during the day and the lower level of the house at night). Already seen significant power savings!

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princessnorah 7 points a year ago

It would be a lot more difficult to hide a backdoor on a bare ESP device, than a proprietary Tuya one, just putting that out there. Regardless, I still block internet access from my ESPHome devices, because I don't want to feel like I need to constantly be on top of updates, that can cause things to break at times. I do them every couple months when I have the time to sit down and make sure everything's still working, or roll it back where it's not.

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 1 point a year ago

Can you flush toilets tho

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yucandu 4 points a year ago

I can do that but I don't wanna - Bart Simpson

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jballs 48 points a year ago

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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veni_vedi_veni 20 points a year ago

Any appliance with IoT is a value-subtract.

They do it so in the future they can monetize you in perpetuity in some way

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boonhet 8 points a year ago

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.

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 4 points a year ago

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

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boonhet 3 points a year ago

Wtf

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tfowinder 2 points a year ago

American toilets get Singing toilets before bidets.

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aaaa 3 points a year ago

I want my washing machine to notify my phone when a cycle completes... But maybe not quite that much

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boonhet 8 points a year ago

Mine chimes a quaint little song. It's enough because it can be heard pretty much anywhere in the house unless I'm in the basement. If I'm not home, the notification wouldn't be particularly useful - I might as well just check when I get home.

I mean the idea isn't the absolute worst. I just don't think it's a huge QoL improvement either.

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ShouldIHaveFun 2 points a year ago

Any decent heating system will have a thermostat which will activate the heating when it's getting cold. Also no need for internet to be able to setup the time when electricity is cheaper. It's not like it's something you need to do regularly. Setting this all up directly on the heating system works well enough.

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boonhet 1 point a year ago

With day ahead pricing it changes... Daily.

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rmuk 13 points a year ago

Most people tend to stay in the same room (or a neighbouring room) when they're microwaving something. They could probably save on the cost of having a full-blown computer with wifi inside the microwave by just having the noisy thing from an alarm clock. But, ah, the fuck do I know?

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kadup 19 points a year ago

Some 90's microwaves actually used some chips to measure humidity and using a little reference table adjust how long certain foods need to cook for, for instance, popcorn can be popped perfectly without burning and almost without leftover kernels if you can measure how much water is being released. The same goes for cooking frozen meats, vegetables, and so on.

But what we get in modern ones instead are horrendous touchscreens, simple timers that never quite match the food they promise to work on, and Wi-Fi.

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HeyThisIsntTheYMCA 4 points a year ago

You gotta spend for the moisture sensors and other fancy shit that actually works. We moved into a place with one of those microwaves and we are dreading when it breaks (I think it's like 3k for a new one)

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lowered_lifted 7 points a year ago

a full blown computer, depending on how one defines the term, is so cheap that they are available in disposable pregnancy tests. This shouldn't be a thing because of the E waste and inefficiency but it's how things are.

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JordanZ 9 points a year ago

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ApatheticCactus 8 points a year ago

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.

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Schadrach 3 points a year ago

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.

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ayyy 3 points a year ago

Remote preheating sounds like a terrible idea. What if you mistakenly left something in there?

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WhyJiffie 2 points a year ago

we need to add cloud connected cameras! oh and AI detection, that prevents you turning it on even if it's empty, but also if there's no network or if you need to do your yearly password update

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joenforcer 1 point a year ago

Who mistakenly leaves things in an oven?

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ayyy 0 points a year ago

Well, there was at least that one time

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jballs 3 points a year ago

My stove won't preheat, I guess because it's a safety issue. Apparently you can set a remote start capability ahead of time that gets reset if you open the over door. But I've never tried it, since that seems like a lot.

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ayyy 5 points a year ago

How long are people microwaving things to the point where that is useful??!

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WhyJiffie 2 points a year ago

if it don't complete under a Tiktok I ain't waiting!

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joenforcer 2 points a year ago

You joke but attention spans are so pitifully short after the brain rot exacerbated by rapid-fire on-demand content that I'm sure plenty of people have started a microwave, wandered away, and completely forgot about it.

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space_iio 1 point a year ago

As someone who hates appliances beeping, I love push notifications

I'm so tired at things beeping at me

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ClydapusGotwald 45 points a year ago

I’ve looked into many WiFi dehumidifier’s and the one thing I wanted from it was to notify my phone if it’s full. None of them do that. All they do is let you change speed and stuff. Nothing that is important to me. I just want to know if I need to go to the basement and empty it or not.

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TeddE 27 points a year ago

Right? Like half of what I want from these things is when is the battery low? When is the outbox full? When is the feeder empty? And metrics to verify the device is generally operating safely.

Controlling the device? We've known how to do that for 50+ years. Help me maintain the device.

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LilaOrchideen 22 points a year ago

I put mine on a zigbee plug into my home assistant (docker on nas), and created an automation to notify me when the power consumption drops below 1 W or so (lower than when it's only running the fan when the hunidity is near setpoint). All local, works so far.

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tfowinder 1 point a year ago

That's really interesting, i was looking into Zigbee plug documentation, could not find if i can program them myself. Do i need to use their propritery app for whatever it does ?

How did you integrate the plug into existing home automation system ?

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LilaOrchideen 3 points a year ago

I'm using "home assistant" and add them there via the zigbee integration.

Edit: I have the Nous zigbee sockets, never used any other app than home assistant to do anything with them. They also have a small button with a light so you can still switch them on/off without any app. Via home assistant you can read out various info like power, current etc

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alekwithak 15 points a year ago

I feel you, trying to find a smart gadget that is actually smart in 2025 and not just a data collector is nearly impossible. Learning to DIY a lot of these projects. Throw one of these or similar in there with a little control board set to email you if 0 changes to 1 or w/e

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ClydapusGotwald 1 point a year ago

I need to look into this and see if I can have it send me a text or something when it’s full. Another diy project to add to the list.

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rumba 2 points a year ago

This is the around the long way method, but it'll start you on a crippling hobby to instrument your entire life.

Raspberry Pi home assistant zigbee USB zigbee water sensor.

you could stop here at notifications.

Descend into madness, put a small ac submersible pump into your dehumidifier tray with a smart outlet. When the sensor trips full, have it run the submersible pump for x minutes.

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ClydapusGotwald 2 points a year ago

Jokes on you I have like 5 raspberry pi’s that aren’t doing anything labeled future projects.

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alekwithak 2 points a year ago

Hey if your list of projects isn't insurmountable what are you even doing with your life?

Most carriers have an email to sms gateway address Usually your number@carrier.com or similar.

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rumba 6 points a year ago

https://aeotec.com/...

This little thing is a beast :)

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AnUnusualRelic 3 points a year ago

Do they at least tell you how wet your wifi is?

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ClydapusGotwald 2 points a year ago

Haha no they don’t which is why I went with one that didn’t have WiFi to save like 20$

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joenforcer 1 point a year ago

Pet Wirecutter, Midea and Frigidaire both have smart options that have full bucket notifications. It's baffling that they don't advertise that feature in their product listings, though.

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ClydapusGotwald 1 point a year ago

Welp if they don’t advertise it I’m not going to buy it. I bought the “dumb” Frigidaire because the smart features they list are just turn on and off and fan speed. Why wouldn’t they list full bucket ffs. Oh well time to diy solution it.

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pedz 25 points a year ago

Do they have a model with AI?

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Iron_Lynx 10 points a year ago

Shh shh shh, don't give them ideas.

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normalexit 2 points a year ago

Or Alexa?

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oyzmo 21 points a year ago

But does it have AI?

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tempest 6 points a year ago

You joke but my dehumidifier has an automatic comfort mode of some sort.

I guarantee that next run will have that button with screen print AI something something above it instead.

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NotJohnSmith 11 points a year ago

I feel like I'd benefit from a smart dehumidifier.

I'm on a Time Of Use tariff where my electricity is very cheap at night. I'd like to be able to schedule for it to come on for those 5hrs in the winter to take the moisture out of my shed-office. It achieves nothing to put it on a smart meter as you have to physically press go on the dehumidifier

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Shayeta 11 points a year ago

Unless you have an even dumber dehumidifier that starts working the moment you plug it in.

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NotJohnSmith 2 points a year ago

Yeah, I wish I did but alas not

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AwesomeLowlander 6 points a year ago

Just use a smart timer with a dehumidifier that either doesn't have a switch, or has an analog one that can stay in the on position when power is off

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JamesBoeing737MAX 3 points a year ago

Just use a power timer or whatever those devices are called.

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chatokun 7 points a year ago

They just said the smart timers/meters don't work. Maybe a non internet one with some regular timers. I have grow lights that have 12, 6, or 3 hour timers that repeat the start time daily as long as a power outage doesn't reset them.

Lower tech solution that would probably work for them, but someone would still have to make it. Not sure if they exist but wouldn't be surprised if they do.

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cdf12345 4 points a year ago

You need a smart button pressing device. Something like :

https://amzn.to/40vd8SN

I have not used this personally, but I have a home assistant setup that does operate based on real time energy prices and it’s awesome.

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NotJohnSmith 1 point a year ago

Hah, that's a cool solution [no pun intended]

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Robust_Mirror 1 point a year ago

I guess you have one with a digital on switch? Because every appliance I've ever owned with an analogue power switch can be left in on state for things like this.

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NotJohnSmith 2 points a year ago

Yup, spot on, I didn't explain it clearly enough but how you articulate it is better: it does indeed have a digital "On" switch so just giving it power doesn't achieve what I need

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PieMePlenty 11 points a year ago

If I can turn it on remotely, that's a good feature. I have solar, I want it to work when the sun is out and I'm producing excess energy.
Yes, I know I can use other peripherals to do this (sometimes) but its always nicer if its just built in so I don't need to waste carbon on other things.

The only thing I want when manufacturers add wifi to these things is to appeal to open source principles like allowing us to connect to it and communicate with it openly and not tie it down to some cloud service they run.

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nef 5 points a year ago

Why not plug a dumb dehumidifier into a Home Assistant controlled outlet?

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PieMePlenty 7 points a year ago

Yes, this is generally what can be done. Disadvantages include:

having to buy yet another device
knowing which dehumidifier will start working as soon as it gets electricity. The ones sold in my country are all no name brands with little information if they will work or not and few spec sheets.

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ArchmageAzor 7 points a year ago

There must be some way to remove the "smart" controller from a device and replace it with a dumb one, like an arduino or something. I want to lobotomize these devices.

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Simulation6 6 points a year ago

I bought a washer that has wifi connectivity. It want to texts me or something when the cycle is finished and doesn't even seem to have a 'play a loud beep when done' option. How does this make any sense at all?

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ArchmageAzor 8 points a year ago

My brother in christ, you bought the machine

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Railcar8095 6 points a year ago

I think we aren't yet used to machines fucking us over in unexpected ways for that sweet sweet spying/ad revenue.

Like, who would have asked 10 years ago "will my TV show extra ads?". Now it's hard to get one that doesn't have them. And dishwashers are next

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jwmgregory 3 points a year ago

How does this make any sense at all?

I bought a washer that has wifi connectivity.

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Simulation6 2 points a year ago

Ok sure. What I really did was buy a new washer that was on sale and I got $100 off. Maybe I will have it connect to my neighbors WiFi, since they never secured it.

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PeriodicallyPedantic 3 points a year ago

I'm still trying to figure out my network settings so that I can have my IoT one one network while still being able to access my home assistant from the other network.

Unfortunately, my ISP is also my cable company, and I have to use their modem/router combo else the cable boxes won't accept the cable signal. I'm using my own wireless access point (which also doubles as a switch for the handful of Ethernet devices I have), and it can split off a separate SSID, but that's not really doing much.

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bulwark 2 points a year ago

I have a separate IoT network. It's basically just a guest wifi for IoT. Anything coming in on that network gets a VLAN tag and only previous & established connections can get out. Honestly, it's kinda a pain in the ass with homeassistant because I keep HA on the other network so I have to manually find devices. It might be easier to just block it at the ip level or blacklist outgoing ip ranges to Tuya or whatever.

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c10l 2 points a year ago

I have HA on a separate VLAN from IoT devices and have set up mDNS reflection so it can find them.

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MITM0 2 points a year ago

I mean there's heavy water

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mEEGal 1 point a year ago

which we already know of, innit ?