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The Philips Hue ecosystem is collapsing into stupidity (rachelbythebay.com)

submitted 1 year ago by narwhal@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

102 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can't access your stuff. But that's just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it's getting worse.

It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage "cloud" "integration" involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you.

If you ever saw the South Park episode where they try to get the cable company to do something on their behalf and the cable company people just touch themselves inappropriately upon hearing the lamentations of their customers, well, I suspect that's what's going on here. The management of these places are fundamentally sadists, and they are going to auger all of these things into the ground to make their short-term money before flying the coop for the next big thing they can destroy.

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[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think what they're saying is that you can buy that hub and continue to use your existing Hue products. Or are you saying that you can currently use them through Home Assistant without that hub? I'm curious because I've got a bunch of Hue bulbs and I'm looking into swapping over to Home Assistant because of this license change, and it's not clear to me what I need in order to do that.

[–] targetx@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You'd need a way to run HomeAssistant and some interface to talk Zigbee, like the Conbee 2 or the SkyConnect mentioned here. I was looking into purchasing the SkyConnect last week after hearing about this Philips Hue crap but am not convinced it's the way to go, I found several reports of reduced range with SkyConnect compared to the Conbee. See for example https://community.home-assistant.io/t/conbee-ii-vs-skyconnect-performance/545759/2 or https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues/86231. Personally waiting a bit before I purchase either option as I have a hub that works now, but leaning towards the Conbee2 at the moment.

[–] PDBaer@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The conbee 3 was just approved by some licensing agency.

But I would recommend the Sonoff Zigbee Gateway ZBDongle E. Upgraded to this with ZHA from Conbee 2 and deconz and it works much more reliable and faster.

But most important: Don't forget that 2 m USB2 cable to prevent the USB3 interference bug.

[–] shasta@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please tell me more about this interference bug.

Also wanted to add that I use the Nortek Zigbee / Z-wave combo stick and it's worked great https://www.amazon.com/QuickStick-Combo-HUSBZB-1-Nortek-Cert/dp/B0157GOEA8

[–] PDBaer@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

USB3 has a bug in its specification which causes some interferences on the 2.4GHz band. This yields to a massiv signal strength drop to a zigbee usb stick if you have something plugged in next to it in a USB3 slot. https://youtu.be/tHqZhNcFEvA?si=l7do_2YtG8DH4hJW This video from HomeAssistant demonstrates the effect very nicely.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://youtu.be/tHqZhNcFEvA?si=l7do_2YtG8DH4hJW

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] shasta@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting. Well I have no other USB plugged in so I guess it's fine

[–] boatswain@infosec.pub 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks! I've got a server at home for media stuff at the moment; I was going to throw the Home Assistant software on there too. I'll look into hubs, and hope that Phillips doesn't lock me out of my lightbulbs before that shows up.