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Philips Hue will force users to upload their data to Hue cloud

cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/5717757

Today’s story is about Philips Hue by Signify. They will soon start forcing accounts on all users and upload user data to their cloud. For now, Signify says you’ll still be able to control your Hue lights locally as you’re currently used to, but we don’t know if this may change in the future. The privacy policy allows them to store the data and share it with partners.

vodichar ,

Hue Cloud < Hucow

arc ,

LIDL is selling a bunch of “smart” crap this week including a “smart” kettle. According to the blurb “Can be linked to the Lidl Smart Home System using your WiFi connection”. And I’m thinking yeah and what possible reason ever would I have for needing that? And the same is true for most smart products.

Turun ,

Actually, having hot water for tea or coffee ready when you wake up is one of the few really good use cases.

Chee_Koala ,

First ‘public’ webcam stream was of a coffeepot to see if it was full or not, so more folks agree with that. How about making a cup in bed and then walking towards a fresh cup, it’s as if you had a very specific morning butler. I’m aware this is not a need (and I don’t have or need it), but it’s desirable for sure.

arc ,

Only if you remembered to put water in it and happen to want hot water at exactly the same time. Besides, a normal kettle boils in a minute so it is hardly difficult to just flick the switch on the kettle on when needed. Certainly less effort than fiddling with some app.

HurlingDurling ,

Glad I was always broke enough to not buy their bulbs

TeddE ,
@TeddE@lemmy.world avatar

Just get a bulb pre-flashed work either Tasmota or ESPHome. (ESPHome integrates well into home assistant, Tasmota is otherwise a bit more well rounded, but they’re both great)

templates.blakadder.com/preflashed.html

kaufha.com/blf10/

www.athom.tech/…/15w-color-bulb-for-esphome

osanuha ,

I have an adblocker for my home connection. By far, Hue subdomains are the most common blocked ones.

Philips Hue sends data to servers every few minutes.

hearthing ,

How do you have this set up? Is the blocker software on your PC or is it a raspberry pi?

filcuk ,

If you want it to block IoT and other device connections, you have to pass all network through it.

osanuha ,

Adguard Home or Pi Hole, in a device that, indeed, can be a Raspberry Pi.

NotMyOldRedditName ,

Is it that chatty because it keeps trying because you block it and it retries a lot?

It’d still be calling home without it, but maybe not as much as it seems?

osanuha ,

Not necessarily. Sometimes I turn off the adblocker for days and still have the requests when turning it back.

FontMasterFlex ,

Been on the fence about these for a while. Guess they made up my mind for me. Thanks!

spudwart ,

It was potential decisions like this that made me stop using various IoT devices in my life.

And year after year, i am proven right.

TwistedTurtle ,

With Home Assistant and locally controlled devices there’s no issues whatsoever. Completely locally controlled and solid as a rock ime.

Asifall ,

As long as you can find devices which let you do local only setup…

CodingSquirrel ,

True, but thankfully there are a lot of choices in that space, and it's constantly growing. And if there aren't, a lot of times it's possible to make one (or buy someone's) using an esp32 or similar. Zigbee, zwave, and matter devices should all be possible to run local only.

ratman150 ,

Once I heard this news I finally took the plunge on home assistant.

Been a learning curve but absolutely worth it, so much better than the first party control solutions.

Copernican ,

I wish I could get there. It works 90% of the time. I can’t figure out what is going on between Zigbee2MQTT and actually updating state. One every week or two I need to reboot the Raspberry Pi to resolve issues. Definitely more reliable than the cloud, but I am not sure what is going on.

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Look guys I know you like your smart bulbs and your smart fridge and your smart mirror and your smart toilet paper but maybe MAYBE the inconvienence of having to get up and turn something on with a physical button and not having it connect to your phone is worth the freedom of knowing you haven’t and cannot be datacucked by every company that produces your stuff. Throw your bluetooth connected garbage in the trash and stop thinking that controlling home automation stuff with your spyware phone is cool.

WiseassWolfOfYoitsu ,

Or take personal control. I have smart home stuff but I run Home Assistant and use ZWave devices, so it’s 100% local.

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

The average person just isn’t tech savy enough to locally host. Its easy to tell people to just host stuff themselves but its a lot of added complexity and maintenance responsibility that most just don’t want to deal with. I agree that it would be best if everyone just locally hosted all their services but we live in the real world where the average joe schmo is either too uneducated or busy with their life dramas to learn computer networking or just plain ol’ lazy and indifferent to giving up personal privacy as long as they can change RGB lighting with a phone app they are happy as peaches.

tinkeringidiot ,

That’s not the easy way, though. People go for home automation in the first place to make something easy. Getting some awful proprietary spyware doodad to work with HomeAssistant is usually not the “just works” experience they’re looking for.

Rodeo , (edited )

My neighbor bought a wifi enable rat trap the other day. It notifies her when it’s been triggered and send a picture of the cage.

A fucking rat trap and she felt the need to spend and extra $40 just so she can share her rat infestation data.

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Its important to know exactly when the rats neck gets snapped with screenshots and the exact velocity trajectory of the spring charted on a data plot, otherwise how else would you for sure the trap got the rat at maximum efficency?

Restaldt ,

Often not how traps work

Usually it catches a limb or tail and then the rat either starves or chews off whatever got trapped

Being notified when it goes off you could go check right away to release the rodent elsewhere (or quickly kill it if releasing its not your thing)

Rodeo ,

This was an electric one. Plugs into the wall and shocks them dead when they walk on it. Quite clean actually, not sure how humane it’s supposed to be though.

JackbyDev ,

I had buttons for lights in my room as early as 1999 and I’m sure they existed before that. Also, the clapper exists lol. We don’t have to resort to a light switch like cavemen!

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Lol good point!

dirthawker0 ,

I had to replace both my clothes washer and dishwasher in the past 6 months (19 and 22 years old respectively) and the clothes washer can connect to Wifi so I guess you can get notified that the cycle is done through their app. That feature will never get turned on. As for the dishwasher I bought the model that didn’t have Wifi. I mean yeah it’s cool we’re in the Jetsons world but the convenience you get isn’t really worth getting your information sold to everyone who wants to sell you an appliance.

dannym ,

You don’t understand, your lights need to track you, how else are they going to improve your user experience? Using lights is so complicated that it requires them to train AI models to better understand the necessities of users. The methods that have worked for hundreds of years cannot work with today’s users

dansity ,

I’m pretty sure basic usage statistics were updloaded previously as well without an account. Now they want you to login, give jucy permissions on your phone and upload all the “usage” data … for security.

JackbyDev ,

Hue has this thing called Hue Labs and it’s the shittiest UX ever. It’s an internal browser in the Hue app to add special things like color changing patterns. In Hue Labs it is about 25% useful features you’d want in the app (things like triggering a routine with a Hue button), 25% fun things you’d want in the app (like color gradients), and 50% of the wackiest shit you’ve ever heard of. Seriously there’s a damn officially Star Wars force game in there or something? I just want to make my lights be spooky and change colors.

And I really cannot overstate how shitty the UX is for it. Compare it to Lifx where you just tap the color gradients you want and it’s on. You have to add the thing to your account, then make one for each color combo, it’s insane.

ZC3rr0r ,

Well, look who’s looking like an idiot for setting up my entire house with Hue lights recently after running two bulbs with local control for years… sigh it’s getting mighty frustrating having to deal with companies hoarding your data.

redcalcium ,

Those lights use ZigBee, right? Should’ve work with HomeAssistant and a ZigBee dongle?

AllegedlyInsane ,

They do, that’s how I control mine. They haven’t been connected to a hurricane bridge in over a year at this point

ZC3rr0r ,

Yeah, I’ll look into that. It’s just a shame to have to do extra work and spend extra money because a company decides to screw you over after your purchase.

Auli ,

Know a good ZigBee dongle for home assistant?

DBNinja ,

I just bought the skyconnect. It will also support Thread soon!

MrBusinessMan ,

This is a great innovation by Phillips, and it follows rule 8 from my best selling business book, “12 rules for business”.

Rule 8: The business is always right - never give customers a choice when you can dictate the terms to them instead.

wishthane ,

Sounds more like the Rules of Acquisition to me.

InputZero ,

I don’t think that is an actual rule of acquisition but it damned well should be.

lntl ,

did anyone actually go to the store and put a bunch of these in the cart?

Pat12 ,

isn’t hue a kind of vietnamese soup? bun bo hue?

scutiger ,

Hue is a city in Vietnam. It’s where bun bo hue comes from.

Pat12 ,

Yes, so is this the same Hue as in the cloud?

aquafunk ,
@aquafunk@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

“hue” refers to a color value in how it differes from other colors (red vs blue), but is separate from “lightness” or “saturation.” a “light blue” may have the same hue as a “dark blue.”

have you ever seen the color pickers with a giant rainbow circle, and a separate white/black slider? the rainbow circle is for selecting the hue.

Pat12 ,

ah i see thank you

Pulptastic ,

…wikipedia.org/…/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitali…

ghostinthemachine ,
@ghostinthemachine@programming.dev avatar

Just listened to the audibook version of this not that long ago. This is the kind of shit they should be teaching people about in school now.

RedditReject ,

Lately it is getting more like we are not just the consumers, we are the product. It is very uncomfortable.

TheGreatFox ,

Lately?

GigglyBobble ,

It has been the case for well over a decade but for free web stuff. Philips Hue lights are expensive and still they pull this shit. That's something that just started quite recently.

Rodeo ,

No it’s not.

Phones have costed hundreds of dollars or even over a thousand and have been doing this for over a decade.

Auli ,

No it’s been awhile but people still spread the bullshit remember if your not paying your that product. But that hasn’t been true in awhile there are tons of things you pay for that still spy on you.

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