Hacker News Reader

Comment by nerflad | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I've been passively interested in getting a GoPro camera for a long time, but knowing their remote control requires a cloud service (I thought it was local wifi) is a total dealbreaker. Same with Hue lights. It is absolutely ridiculous for the customer to be locked out of their own hardware.

View on HN

Now I'm confused,I thought the hue lights and Ikea knockoffs are one of the few smart lights that don't need internet and they never leave the wlan?

Most of the others are cloud enabled without a firmware upgrade, I'll give you that

I agree. And I have the hue lights.

I can't remember having to sign in to any online account to use it.

You definitely do not need a user account to use your hue lights.

IIRC, they create an ad hoc mesh network and don’t actually need WAN to operate.

The hue lights work fine over a standardized LAN protocol. I control them with both Google Home and F.lux on my desktop.

Hue lights do not require a cloud service. It is an optional way to control your lights from outside your local network (only the base station talks to the internet).

> only the base station talks to the internet

Exactly any part talking to the internet is a deal breaker. Why would I need my home to have that amount of attack vectors open?

Again, it's optional. It does not have to talk to the internet, but the option is there for people that want features requiring it.

To be fair to hue, the REST JSON API to the local hub is well documented by Philips and you can disable it contacting its cloud infrastructure via this API (and many apps) if you wish - all without hacks.

In your self-righteous rush, you neglected to consider whether or not the base station would function without being able to talk to the web.

It does so.

Try LIFX.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com