I have recently enforced a better privacy practice for my smart home devices, that includes creating a new access point for those devices and blocking them of internet access with VLAN.

Since then, my yeelight minas celiing lights goes unavailable whenever I physically switch them off and turn them on afterwards.

One really stupid thing is it needs internet access for using LAN control feature. it’s really really dumb.

but at the same time, in this kind of age where everything wants to phone their home, i need to somehow mitigate this in every possible way such as by fooling the devices as if they have access to the internet.

Is this kind of things possible?

thanks!

  • RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyzEnglish
    19·
    11 days ago

    Go zigbee! I was very hesistant running a second wireless network next to wifi, but it’s widely supported and totally cloud-free

    • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      10 days ago

      Yeah really. I keep hearing these tales of issues with poor network and what not…

      I have literally over 120 devices in my network. Ranging from the cheapest Tuya door/windows sensors I could find (cause I needed thirty+!) to innovelli switches and it just works fantastic. HamGeek PoE concentrator. My only complaint it not being able to control the mesh more (tell certain devices not to be routers, force certain routes for end devices so they don’t use routers that go down when the power is out). I will probably remedy that by adding a second concentrator.

      That’s not to say wifi with ESPHome.and Tasmota aren’t great. Far more powerful and flexible, and with a quality AP it can also support a ton of devices, I have easily four dozen devices running with no issues.

    • tiz@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      10 days ago

      I understand the benefits of zigbee. However, its regional availability is poor. In my country acquiring zigbee hub(?) without going for sketchy options is not feasible.

      • petersr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 days ago

        What is a sketchy option?

        I just bought a Sonoff Zigbee Dongle Plus E and use ZHA and it works like a charm. No third party cloud based coordinator. I guess you still have to trust the firmware of the dongle, but that is about it.

        • tiz@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          2·
          10 days ago

          I simply have not access to zigbee dongle except for on sketchy Chinese websites. I usually buy those kinds of devices from Amazon.

          • petersr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            10 days ago

            I mean - the ones you can buy from Amazon are the same you buy from Aliexpress, just more expensive. Of course, one could fear that some of them have failed QA or whatever - but I would not have much reason to suspect malicious firmware - and if you do, you can flash your own. You do that anyway if you want to use the dongle as a Zigbee router (instead of coordinator).