Ah yes to make your lights work, we need all your data. Stuff like this is why I don’t have “smart” anything.
It’s perfectly possible to have a smart home that does not call home. Home Assistant is an amazing piece of software that can allow smart devices from different manufacturers talk to each other without connecting to a cloud service — all done locally.
This is the only way I would go about it. Maybe in the future if I really want it but really, the more tech, the more vulnerabilities. I’m fine with manually turning things on and off even if it’s self hosted.
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How
Put home assistant on a raspberry pi, plug a Zigbee dongle to it, and start connecting smart gadgets to it. Or better yet buy a home assistant Green. You can check the home assistant docs to see if a smart device requires cloud connectivity to work — in general if it connects through Zigbee (or ZWave or Matter) then you’re good, but if it connects through WiFi then it probably is cloud based.
https://www.home-assistant.io/
https://www.seeedstudio.com/Home-Assistant-Green-p-5792.html
Why do I need a RaspberryPi? I can’t use my regular Linux PC? What is a Zigbee dongle and why is it mandatory? What do I do if he device is cloud based?
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Many years ago i bought an RGB LED and naively thought the remote signal must have some standard protocol, because it is so simple commands that would allow for some cool shit if automated. Oh boy was i wrong. Proprietary smart home software is the most insane. How on earth should your home become “smart” when it is locked into some ideology (manufacturer) or worse yet you have multiple “parties” fighting over the government causing a shutdown.