So I really see the value of voice-activated stuff now that I have a baby. I have a few Ikea dimmable LEDs which work reasonably well aside from the 0.5s-5s delay to actuate them. I've even set up Homebridge to get non-Homekit baby devices (like the Hatch sound machine) voice activated via Siri.
But the phone home stuff is just insane to me. I bought an Insignia garage door opener trigger that works with Homekit natively without an app, figuring that would be the simplest possible setup (and cheaper than RF-based physical remotes). I Wiresharked the traffic it was sending out (in order to block it) and it phones home over a *Wireguard VPN tunnel*. I've seen some shady phone-home behaviour from cheap Chinese devices but never this.
So now it is totally blocked from accessing the internet and it does open the garage door, but I am told "there was an error communicating" every single time.
I will mention one device I absolutely love: CloudFree Smart Plug 2 for energy monitoring. As I mentioned on my Twitter※: [CloudFree Smart Plug 2] are the first IoT product I've ever used with zero friction whatsoever. First time usage, from unboxing to pulling power stats over HTTP API in under 3 minutes. No other products come close.
※ - just copy/pasted my Tweet, no need to hyperlink it
Just buy Open Source stuff. I recently bought a smart plug from "athom.tech" (on aliexpress) that came with ESPhome. No phoning home. I also had access to the HTTP API in less than 5 minutes.
I could open it and connect more stuff to the GPIO, patch out the annoying LED or do something else with it. Install tasmota instead. It's quite liberating :)
But the phone home stuff is just insane to me. I bought an Insignia garage door opener trigger that works with Homekit natively without an app, figuring that would be the simplest possible setup (and cheaper than RF-based physical remotes). I Wiresharked the traffic it was sending out (in order to block it) and it phones home over a *Wireguard VPN tunnel*. I've seen some shady phone-home behaviour from cheap Chinese devices but never this.
So now it is totally blocked from accessing the internet and it does open the garage door, but I am told "there was an error communicating" every single time.
I will mention one device I absolutely love: CloudFree Smart Plug 2 for energy monitoring. As I mentioned on my Twitter※: [CloudFree Smart Plug 2] are the first IoT product I've ever used with zero friction whatsoever. First time usage, from unboxing to pulling power stats over HTTP API in under 3 minutes. No other products come close.
※ - just copy/pasted my Tweet, no need to hyperlink it