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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree with the grandparent. This is all avoided by using Zigbee or Z-Wave devices. All our smart lights are Hue. If they decide to stop supporting it, they can be controlled with the Samsung/Aeotec SmartThings Hub, Home Assistant, Zigbee2MQTT, or whatever you please. Similarly, our smart plugs are also Zigbee and we use a couple of Aeotec Z-Wave temperature/humidity sensors.

Best of all, less worries about yet another IoT device with probably vulnerable software that we have to put on a VLAN/IoT WiFi network. Zigbee and Z-Wave are also much simpler than WiFi/Bluetooth, so less likely that they are a swiss cheese of vulnerabilities.

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With hue there is still potential risk of a lockin with their hue app. They allow it still, because their sales are not really good. But otherwise they might have restricted it.

Hue Bulbs use Zigbee. If hue stops supporting the hub or older devices, you can reset and pair them to anything.

The Hue bridge is IP based but can be controlled entirely over your local network. It’s a slim possibility of something breaking (the mobile app mostly) and then the bulbs are still fine.

Yeah, I ditched the Hue Hub last year and paired them all directly with Home Assistant via Zigbee

Hue bulbs currently are stock standard Zigbee compatible light bulbs. You can pay them into ZHA/Z2M without any issues and control them without any Hue hub or app.

If Hue were to suddenly switch to something proprietary their existing bulbs will all continue to function without their app or hub.

The bulbs are ok but I tried moving my Hue motion sensors over to my main Zigbee network and they were terrible, constantly dropping offline and needing reset.

Luckily Hue is made by Philips who I'm pretty sure aren't going anywhere.

I moved my Hue sensors to my primary Zigbee network and left the bulbs on the hub, especially since I have some of the gradient strips that don't work unless they are on the Hue hub, and my motion sensors have been rock solid.

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