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Comment by gordon_freeman | Hacker News Reader

I have Wemo smart plugs that I have plugged in all sorts of stuff like Heater, Lamps, and TV, etc connected to my Google Home and Home Mini. And I'd advise anyone to think twice before buying smart plugs or smart devices. There are so many bugs creating so many complications that I feel they are not worth using. You'd need to reconnect them with WEMO app time and again, restart these frequently if they just stop working and even you would not know what to do with them when a failed firmware upgrade will make your smart plug useless!

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The sad thing is it's not rocket science.

It's just terrible, barely working, shoehorned in buggy drivers, "shipped as soon as it can appear functional" code.

You could take a microcontroller, write something simple, and have something that worked to a few 9s.

Instead, IoT vendors spend their time optimizing their data collection and monetization platforms.

"You had one job..." would be a good epitaph for the entire industry.

s/a few nines/more nines than the cloud/

Not really, my power from PG&E in the Bay Area has fewer nines than even the cheapest cloud providers.

> And I'd advise anyone to think twice before buying smart plugs or smart devices.

Not all smart devices are created alike. Research your purchases.

So far the one I’ve been most happy with is IKEA Trådfri.

It costs roughly half of the comparable Phillips hue offering, but still delivers on any aspect I care about.

Works 100% locally, uses standard Zigbee (non-WiFi) networking. No cloud required.

Supports HomeKit, Alexa, google assistant, not to mention Home Assistant.

More importantly, it supports other vendor’s Zigbee devices (like Hue) and supports working with other Zigbee controllers than IKEA’s own.

Also certified non-shit by kernel-hacker Matthew Garret[1].

Nobody can shut me out of this purchase. This is actually my hardware.

[1] https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/47803.html

I have also voted with my money for IKEA Trådfri and am quite happy with it. Light bulbs, motion sensors, remote controls. Everything connected to zigbee coordinator and controlled with simple node red flows. And good thing is that list of supported devices is longer than any other single vendor with option to expand it by your self.

Baby starts moving in bedroom, light bulb flashes in kitchen.

Sonos stopped supporting remote control, no problem, map IKEA remote controller to start/stop Sonos playback.

https://nodered.org

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/supported_devices.htm...

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/products/lighting/smart-lighting/

i’m also pretty happy with my ikea trådfri bulbs and outlets. works with homekit via the trådfri hub (which i got for half price in the as-is section) so i can create scenes and automations easily. it’s still early and limited, and new features are slow to come by, but i’m not trying to do anything fancy yet anyway.

I have Trådfri and Philips Hue. Trådfri is good, but I prefer my Hue devices. They are even better quality.

All I can say is if like me you'd bought Energenie MiHomes, you'd have spent half as much working out that you need to think twice becase there are so many bugs that make them not worth using... I seldom hear success stories from us early adopters with smarthome things.

I also have two Nests. Stringify has now shut down (and was buggy/difficult to use), and IFTTT is now losing access to Nest it seems, so I guess that's a real knockback of at least several years for smarthome.

Even when it was all in theory working, the most simple thing was not actually possible - Nest shows you humidity, so when humidity is over 60%, turn on the dehumidifier (I have one upstairs, one downstairs). Such a simple task coudln't be achieved because of about individual problems, and this to me puts the date of solving it back quite a way.

If I'm reading this right, the Wemo plugs should still work? The part of the program that's ending is that Nest devices can no longer be controlled by third party apps. Devices that are controlled by Nest should still be controlled by Nest. At least, unless I have vastly misunderstood the FAQ?

I bought a WeMo plug and was quite shocked to discover that there is no form of security or authentication. Anyone using the same network that your WeMo devices are using can control them using the WeMo mobile app and crucially keep controlling them once they have left your network via the Belkin cloud. They are effectively proving an open door to your network that requires you to trust Belkin to keep secure.

Edit: They do support UPnP, but still they are wide open to attack.

Wemo’s plugs support other protocols too, don’t they? Could you bridge one of those to what you need?

I have Wemo smart plugs connected to AppleHome and have no issues.

Adding to this, I have them setup with Google Assistant, and Alexa. No issues with Assistant, and rare issues with Alexa.

Not saying the OP isn't having issues, but there might be a sample bias when reading the comments.

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