Which home automation setup is recommended for people who value their privacy?
Home Automation Setup That Safeguards Your Data
jlev on 01/12/2020 - 07:00
Comments
Thank you! I figured there had to be one.
Will have a bit of a dig into it. Do you still have to be careful with your appliance choices? Or does it block data going to China, for example?
If you're using tuya or similar theme the devices will still rely on China servers. So to answer your question or depends on the device. If it requires internet then home assistant won't change much. But considering tasmota if using tuya devices and you can remove from cloud and use entirely locally via home assistant.
HA does require some know how. Or some googling.
If you're using tuya or similar theme the devices will still rely on China servers.
Agreed…. You need to do some careful device selection to get devices that have 'local control' options.
Tuya out of the box goes via china.
Yeelights can allow local lan control without flashing.
Shelly devices are good for local control and not having to flash the firmware.
But yes otherwise most devices need some flashing.
But considering tasmota if using tuya devices and you can remove from cloud and use entirely locally via home assistant.
The later firmware from the factory/OTA makes flashing hese much harder without the flashing pins being exposed to connect to.
@JimmyF: I'm using Wyze sensors (motion/contant) which are great and simple, no flashing required. Bridge connects to RPi and sensors work with HACS addon. Works incredibly well.
If you are someone who is not technically minded and lacking a lot free time then HA/hassio may not be the ideal solution as it involves a lot of tinkering around and flashing your own firmware(Tasmota/ESP) on smart devices and sensors. If you have done it right all data stays locally and you can start your HA journey by running it on a Raspberry Pi.
If soldering and playing around with config files is not your thing then look at Hubitat. It is similar to HA but most of the hard work is done by the developer and much more user friendly. If you go Zigbee instead of Wifi for sensors and smart devices then you need not do any flashing and you can intergrade them directly with your HA/Hubitat setup and all data will stay locally.
I'm happy to flash firmware if it means locking down the device.If this requires soldering then I'm probably going to look for another option.
Will check out Hubitat - thank you.
Home Assistant