Miek Gieben
benbrown (new server edition)Damnit, yesterday Google emails about deprecating my Nest thermostats, and today Wemo emails about deprecating my wifi plugs. I am never buying a smart device again.
Socketwench@benbrown [sung to the tune of Ducktales]
🎵 E-Waste! Woooo-oooo! 🎵
phooky@benbrown [chortles in Tasmota]
(for reals though the idea of having a smart plug without open firmware is bewildering to me)
Courtney Rosenthal@phooky @benbrown I bought some Sonoff S31 smart plugs and they are shiat. Or, more accurately, the proprietary software is shiat. I thought I'd give it a try, but it's terrible. So, I plan to flash ESPHome on them.
As far as thermostat, I'm using a Venstar -- which has far inferior features and usability to my old Ecobee, but it has a local API, so yay!
I feel ya, Ben.
@courtney @benbrown I have an S31 with Tasmota installed on it, and it's excellent! There's a couple of guides; it took me about fifteen minutes.
https://tasmota.github.io/docs/devices/Sonoff-S31/
They integrate with all the usual systems, but I just use mine as a standalone web server to switch the PBX in the basement on and off from my phone.
Good luck! I think you'll be pretty happy with them once you flash the firmware.
@courtney @benbrown haha and writing this just reminded me that I'd turned on the PBX for the kids earlier in the evening and I need to remember to turn it off now so they don't call each other in the middle of the night again (you haven't seen rage until you've seen a six year old who's been woken up by a prank call from his brother at four in the morning)
Daniel Leigh
Johannes@JmbFountain @phooky yes i might look for a zigbee switch
SynAck the Employed! 
@benbrown that's because you never actually "bought" them in the first place - you were just renting those "service access devices" all this time.
It's the cable company set-top box all over again.
@SynAck (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Jayne@benbrown as a former Nest Labs engineer, thank you for being an early adopter, and fuck Google for what they did to the company and what they continue to do to the environment.
AFAIK, there is absolutely no technical reason why support for gen 1 & 2 devices needs to be dropped; they were even designed with serviceable batteries in case their LiPo's needed replacement and no amount of read/write stress testing could ever kill the flash memory.
These devices were built to last, which is incompatible with Sundar's business model I guess 
HoldMyType@benbrown have you tried a pine64 device ? You can upgrade it yourself
@xameer do they make power switches?
@benbrown they do , but you gotta build what you need , that's kinda what ohw is
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?pid=11095
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?pid=11095
MidgePhoto@benbrown
I like clockwork and switches.
Preferably brass switches.
And universal Turing machines and Open Source programs.
As a practical thing, I'd like actuators and sensors to have terminals, so a different Tx or Rx can be attached to them if the older one is orphaned.
Interpipes 💙@benbrown @lproven urgh. I have a couple of old wemo plugs. I should check if they’re affected.
I am long overdue doing something with home assistant. These wemo plugs might be the catalyst.
For others in the uk worried about this sort of forced obsolescence and sufficiently time rich to tinker with this stuff, they could do worse than the likes of https://www.mylocalbytes.com (run by an acquaintance) to source things that don’t need anyone else’s computers to work.
@interpipes @lproven it’s all Wemo devices I think
@benbrown @lproven welp, this does indeed appear to be a thing (31/01/2026), they just haven't bothered telling me about it directly - https://www.belkin.com/uk/support-article/?articleNum=335419
mattlqx
lord pthenq1@benbrown
Try TUYA compatible devices. They cannot deprecate for technical reasons.
Try TUYA compatible devices. They cannot deprecate for technical reasons.
vampirdaddy@benbrown
Never buy CLOUD-ONLY things again.
My Shellys are working just fine in my isolated OT network.
Never buy CLOUD-ONLY things again.
My Shellys are working just fine in my isolated OT network.