Originally published at: I am in full control of the big room | Boing Boing
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Indeed- the damned thing requires WiFi and a smart app with an account on Kasa’s servers, which are hosted who knows where.
I’m phasing my initial run of Stupid Home stuff (plugs like that and lights) out for actual ones that are controlled entirely locally, because I’m tired of having to either re-add the damn things when they lose their internet connection for whatever reason, or the app that they link through craps itself and I have to re-build the entire setup from scratch for the 5th or 6th time.
Which is also sad, because as far as I can tell, the devices are a pain to reverse engineer to make them useful locally without their server to talk to.
Edit: I can recommend either Hubitat (or if you have the hardware and a lot of time to screw around with it) Home Assistant for a locally controllable home automation hub- I went with Hubitat because it has an Alexa skill built-into it, unlike Home Assistant (which is like a $5 purchase or a $5/month subscription for it’s flavor of it) and the hardware has Z-wave and Zigbee radios in it. (Home Assistant has a couple USB Zigbee/Z-wave combo sticks that work with it.) Sure, Zigbee/Z-wave lights and devices are more expensive than the Wifi stuff, but they are rather faster on the uptake and are entirely local- If I hit the button on one of my remotes to turn on the lights, it’s all done on prem, whereas if I ask Alexa to do it, the conversation goes up to AWS, back down, and then to the hubitat for processing.
I won’t lie, there’s a bit of a learning cliff involved with both HA and hubitat, and there’s a good deal of mucking around to get things to work the way one wants them to. It’s still worth it in my arrogant opinion.
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We inherited some Kasa stuff (the same company as TP-link, which makes extremely good wifi routers). They work well, and are especially useful for situations where you might need to control the devices from outside the home - their app has been easy to use and responsive so far.
I wish they had HomeKit support, but alas, few companies want to pay for that (or meet the stringent security requirements needed).
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I’m sorry, Dave…
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The Big Room is the one off the Front or Back door, with the clouds (somewhat often.) Nobody has to be in control. That back plug should be more NEMA safe…nah, just the sockets normally. Microgrids everywhere!
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Your Internet is down. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
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