Might as well just go to rent a center instead of buying smart shit.
This is yet another example of businesspeople taking laypeople for a ride. They want a lifeline to your wallets.
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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If you want fancy IoT that's quick to set up, look for Matter devices with full offline support
While the Matter spec requires offline control support, it doesn't require full OEM independence, so you have to look up the individual devices first to check if they're independent. The main difference being that some OEMs have a lot of extra features outside the Matter spec and other extras which require an account and device registration, etc, so check that the specific features you want works FULLY offline and with 3rd party apps. (I've seen Matter controller devices with screens and whatnot which are only configurable with the OEM app)
You can use Home Assistant with its Matter module (open source) as your home controller, together with necessary radios (specifically Thread/Zigbee), and firewall off your devices if you want full control.
And Home Assistant of course also has support for a little bit of everything, like MQTT and custom HTTP commands and more, so you can still control random devices even if they don't support Matter
Tech feudalism needs to be made 100% illegal.
Laissez-faire means it's up to the (stupid) customers to stop buying this crap just because businesspeople told them to.
Unfortunately, customers just aren't that smart despite how much excess wealth they may have.
Sort of, but we don't have laissez-faire capitalism.
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Source Hardware (OSH) for the win!!!!
I'm imagining some poor rube who bought fully into the IoT. Like every appliance they own is smart. Then one day they wake up to their entire house no longer functioning because the smart devices can't connect to whatever services they need. Can't even work the smart locks on their doors.
IoT isn't exactly reliable and many, including the rich are trying to reverse the IoT trend: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/real-estate/tech-free-homes-luxury-trend-1236177909/
also
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/23/analog-bag-screen-free-wellness
I was never able to really make all that stuff work in the first place so I've got three "smart" bulbs I bought in maybe 2018 that still (mostly) work, and am generally switching my smart plugs to mechanical timers because I only really use them for grow lights.
I do feel better about being away from home overnight in winter with my weather station (which includes a sensor inside the house) but everything adds nothing to my life at all.
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I dipped my toes into "smart" thermostats with a Wyze. Meh. I don't really need to set the temp from my phone, or any of the other features, beyond having a simple schedule. I'm seriously considering reverting all the way back to an old-school bimetal strip, dial on the wall type, in private protest of all this crap.
(Don't get a Wyze. I think they've been discontinued anyway. The damn thing loses connection to the wifi three or four times per year, then I need to go through the ENTIRE setup process again, from the very beginning. The wifi antenna is in the closet not three feet away. POS.)
Those things should be zwave or matter or something sensible, not WiFi anyway.
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We adopt new tech simply because it exists, not because it is wise to do so.
Once we were manipulated into believing that our desires were needs it was quite easy for them to get us to buy whatever they wanted us to.
I bought a $500 dollar video security system and they pulled this shit on me. Not Google, but Arlo. Not even a 'hey we will just disable some of the cloud benefits' just straight up disabled my shit and gave me a shitty 'heres 10 percent off a new system!' email. I don't buy into smart always connected tech much as is, but that was def a reason for me to not buy anything further.
Joke's on them, mine hasn't been connected since about 2018. Works very well as just a thermostat
Release the specs so users can maintain them themselves.
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