Philips Hue will force users to upload their data to Hue cloud
3 years ago by NekuSoul to c/technology
It’s perfectly possible to have a smart home that does not call home. Home Assistant is an amazing piece of software that can allow smart devices from different manufacturers talk to each other without connecting to a cloud service — all done locally.
This is the only way I would go about it. Maybe in the future if I really want it but really, the more tech, the more vulnerabilities. I'm fine with manually turning things on and off even if it's self hosted.
Unfortunately, no. Ultimately it’s a tiny computer that happens to produce light when a certain gpio pin is enabled. The light bulb is the portion you see, but inside, it’s an internet-connected microcontroller. I’ve even seen smart devices that internally run a full Linux distro complete with a shell session you can access if you know what you’re doing.
The problem is that some of these firmwares and/or exploits for these firmwares actively scan your local network and report things. Further, they can be used as a jumping off point for attacks deeper in your network.
I don't want to be annoyed
It opens up another vector for attacking other sensitive devices on my network. I haven't segregated my network so I don't feel safe doing this.
How
Put home assistant on a raspberry pi, plug a Zigbee dongle to it, and start connecting smart gadgets to it. Or better yet buy a home assistant Green. You can check the home assistant docs to see if a smart device requires cloud connectivity to work — in general if it connects through Zigbee (or ZWave or Matter) then you’re good, but if it connects through WiFi then it probably is cloud based.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
Can confirm. I run Home Assistant and Rhasspy with Sengled bulbs and none of transmits info. The devices themselves aren't generally the issue, it's the hub that operates them that would be collecting and sending the info. Remove that, and you don't have to worry.
Why do I need a RaspberryPi? I can't use my regular Linux PC? What is a Zigbee dongle and why is it mandatory? What do I do if he device is cloud based?
@tjhart85 care to explain?
If i understand correctly this is Home Assistant saying that Hue is taking away that ability on devices people have already bought and installed.
You can have plenty of smart home stuff without this junk using stuff like home assistant and keeping devices like this from phoning home. Some products won't work at all without an internet connection but plenty still do.
Edit: If this is actionable, I would be interested in participating in a class action suit against Philips for materially altering a product’s functionality after purchase. This is like buying a normal car and being told a year later it was given a remote update and now can only use Ford (tm) brand gasoline which costs $10/gallon.
If you do have an existing investment in Hue products, I suggest reaching out to them to request a refund because your purchase was made under a different policy, and this policy change is going to render your products useless without consent on your part. If they’re going to force a significant change that compromises the functionality of what might be hundreds of dollars worth of equipment without permitting recourse for legacy users, they should have to accept returns on what essentially is now a product you did not purchase and would not have purchased.
Or just get a ZigBee hub and keep using the bulbs without the Hue hub
Indeed I've never even installed the hue app, always assumed it was just a zigbee thing anyway. The hardware is just a basic zigbee bulb.
Mostly I've been moving to using the ikea ones though as they're much cheaper.
Any recommendations for a Zigbee hub to use with HomeAssistant? I'm planning to make the switch now that Hue is doing this
If you have home assistant, you don't need a zigbee hub, just a ZigBee USB stick. There's a whole bunch of them, I think they're all pretty similar, a few have Z-Wave also. I'm 100% Z-Wave so I can't say personally what is the best stick to use... Just check the forums and whatnot.
I started the email thread with them on Friday. So far I’ve only received canned messages like they told the HA folks.
Guess I can sell that Hue hub after I move my Hue devices over to my HA/Zigbee config — what wasn’t broke and didn’t need fixing… will now finally be fixed and finished.
After they make the change, someone with an old Hue bulb should go to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Making this decision retroactive is clearly false advertising and anti-consumer. I don't really give a shit what their terms of use were.
They can do what they want with their future bulbs. The old ones need to be grandfathered in.
Many years ago i bought an RGB LED and naively thought the remote signal must have some standard protocol, because it is so simple commands that would allow for some cool shit if automated. Oh boy was i wrong. Proprietary smart home software is the most insane. How on earth should your home become "smart" when it is locked into some ideology (manufacturer) or worse yet you have multiple "parties" fighting over the government causing a shutdown.
i wanted to compare the issue with the principles of government and the structures needed,because that what smart home should be, organizing your home to certain effect.
And like with state government that requires transparent and consistent rules, cooperation of the different branches and accountability.
The update was impossible to revert (though TP-Link said "Ok write to our support and we'll give you the downgrade file" no fuck you).
That doesn't sound like it was impossible, it sounds like you just didn't want to do it.
There is esphome too, it's not used a lot by fabricant yet, but still exist and compatiblr with all devices using an esp as chip.
Pi-hole.
My two top-blocked domains are related to TP-Link.
While I can’t always get local-only devices, I can at least separate their traffic and block the shit out of them.
Tasmota is great but I've found the number of available devices is limited. For instance Tasmota smart dimmer plugs do not exist, nor could I find a stand alone controller.
Z-wave or Zigbee integration dramatically expand the number of available options and work with local controllers.
Zigbee does work with a generic controller on Home Assistant and other platforms, and there are >3100 devices that are compatible with zigbee2mqtt, a Zigbee to MQTT bridge that exists to bypass the need for proprietary Zigbee bridges. No proprietary app or Internet access required either, but it was not easy to set up. Here's a list of supported devices: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/
The list of Tasmota devices is extremely limited if you don't want to flash it yourself, but a bit less so if you use Tuya Convert which is done via WiFi. It seems the device list is getting shorter all the time as vendors switch to other hardware implementations, but I seem to remember reading that a new Tasmota version will be coming that supports additional hardware.
To get plug-in dimmer and smart button functionality (Shelly Button 1 didn't exist at the time) I had to put in Z-Wave. and I've since added a few new devices. Z-wave works pretty well, but not flawlessly. My Tasmota stuff just works and works much better than the original firmware on my smart bulbs and plugs.
Just getting my feet wet with Zigbee because I need yet another dimmer plug for a different location, but my understanding is most (but not all) Zigbee devices are not proprietary and work with most controllers. I'll know next week.
I mean IKEA is fine.
It's entirely ZigBee, there's no internet.
From what I read, it's not a bug.
Many bulbs trade on the green LED for more variation in white. Red/Blue serve a function to make whites warmer or cooler, green has no such function.
And because most people use white, they ditched the green LED. That's why the green it has is more yellowish than you would expect.
It probably also means the bulb API has no dedicated green setting, which is why the remote and 3rd party apps don't have proper green settings.
It's a bit of speculation though, not entirely sure. Apparently older Hue bulbs also do this.
Really? Huh.
I'm just using the PM2.5 and temperature sensors.
Unfortunately yeah. We've tried the E27 and green just didn't work. Thought it was broken and returned it, told them why. "Oh, you used the remote, right? It only works with the app, it's been like that for years and hasn't been fixed yet"
Thankfully, while I have a smart plug from them, I've made sure that it's a Zigbee powered one, meaning it's directly connected to my Home Assistant server over it's own frequency/protocol, no app required. Guess that choice is paying off now.
Also, someone should tell whoever is managing that Twitter support account that you should never use the phrase "We're sorry you feel that way", even when you're going for a non-apology.
Start leaving 1 star reviews in the app stores from Google and Apple complaining about this.
They read those because stakeholders who understands nothing about tech only care for more stars.
I'm definitely starting to find a way out of hue and freezing my plans to buy more bulbs from them.
Huh, sounds like a very unreliable setup. Admittedly mine is much simpler and I refuse to use voice control for anything at all, but I experience zero glitches with my Shelly switches and HA integration.
Put a lamp on your nightstand, it's a fucking game changer. We have a ceiling fan with the main lights, but lamps on both nightstands. It rules, always within arm reach, light immediately if you need it, but much softer light than the main light, and not pointed into your eyes when you lay down.
The only thing I truly miss is being able to turn off my bedroom light when I am in bed. But the stress I save is worth getting up and turning it off.
It is possible to just install the one smart light, you know.
When it works, it's great. But no matter how much you spend, which brands you go with, how you have it set it, eventually something is going to fuck up, and you'll spend half your day fixing it all.
You can get remote controlles for lights and keep it on your bedside table
reason: "your data isnt secure in your home, we need to control it. trust us. "
uh huh.
What times your lights are on or off can expose more than you might think over time. It reveals when you're gone for work, your sleep schedule, how many days a year you spend at home vs traveling/elsewhere, when you stay up late, etc.
But it gets worse. If you give Hue your email or install the app then now you can be uniquely id'd across other products. Hue will sell that data to some advertising agency, who also buys data from Google, Facebook, etc. Now your usage data from other systems can be combined with the Hue data and used to more even more accurately track your day and behaviors.
Big data is a fascinating field, if not completely horrifying.
Also when the keys are inevitably discovered on an unsecured S3 bucket, everyone will have it! In addition to your billing information and other PII.
In addition to what the other commenters have said: They don't just sell light bulbs but also motion sensors that can even measure temperature.
So they wouldn't just be able to tell which room you're in at any given time but may also be able to tell when and for how long you shower or how often you cook food in the kitchen based on slight temperature changes.
And if you wanna get really paranoid: Hue Sync analyzes what's on your screen and synchronizes lights accordingly. Who knows what is really going on there if they pull this kinda shit lol
It’s also not about what data they hold, but what data they have access to.
To you, it’s a light bulb, but internally, it’s a network-connected microcontroller, meaning it’s also connected to everything else in your network.
It theoretically could scan and exploit any number of security holes in other devices, including but not limited to phones and desktops.
Even if the manufacturer is ethical with it, other nefarious actors can use it as an attack point to try to gain deeper access. Some of these devices run a full Linux install internally, and if you know how, you can even get a shell session open on them.
Hopefully this spurs someone to go to the CFPB or something and sue. These companies need to stop pulling this retroactive change bullshit, like Unity, Wizards, ad now Hue.
I've been very happy with Home Assistant. There are zigbee USB sticks such as ConBee that work well with it, and home assistant runs on many different types of computers including Raspberry pi.
To start off, you'll want to have Home Assistant running on a local server or Raspberry Pi and a Zigbee USB dongle, like the Conbee II or SkyConnect. If you've never worked with Home Assistant, their Getting Started guide is pretty comprehensive.
To migrate the apps off the Hue gateway, there's a section describing various methods to do so in the Home Assistant Zigbee guide.
I'll mention that there's also a whole bunch of other Zigbee gateways out there that work similar to the Hue Bridge, but these could all eventually share the same fate as Hue, if they aren't already forced to be online.
Cool.. I got a Phillips hue hub, but already have a Pi as well, Just never thought of using it this way. So I just need the Conbee II, and I should be able to make things work off the Pi. One less device to have plugged in.
Besides the stupid login stuff, I've noticed a lot of my stuff just isn't as reliable as it used to be. It seems Phillips is just enshittifying things generally.
Thanks for the links!
If I use Home Assistant for control and block the Hue hub from the internet, will things keep functioning as they are today?
I like how my stuff works and don't want them to mess me up.
To be safe long-term I would probably suggest to throw away the Hue hub entirely and get a Zigbee USB dongle for your Home Assistant server. Personally I've had no issues with the ConBee II. Home Assistant also released their own dongle earlier this year, called SkyConnect, which I've heard is pretty good as well.
(This is assuming that all Hue devices are based on ZigBee, which I believe they all are, based on this useful database.)
That's likely the path that I'll end up taking. Everything hue related that I have is Zigbee.
Hue stuff sucks anyway. If you own a home or rent and have access to your breaker box, Lutron Caseta is a much better option.
Please note in many places it's very illegal to do electrical work for yourself
Where is it illegal for someone to change a light switch?
Australia for one
Interesting. TIL
Man fuck this. I use my lights in sync with my Philips tv when I watch movies so I can't even switch to a zigbee thing or anything.
Yeah... a Bluetooth light sounds terrible. I'd rather stick with ZigBee.
Bluetooth, eh?
That bulb is communicating with an app on your phone, and I don’t need to tell you how much data that little glass slab collects.
doesn’t ask for shit
Neither does a rapist. It just doesn’t give a shit about consent.
@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
go to feed...
@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
go to feed...
Ah yes to make your lights work, we need all your data. Stuff like this is why I don't have "smart" anything.
save