Cloudfree hardware

Hardware
1

Hello there,
i tried to look around but found nothing similar. It seems to be quite difficult to find information about cloudfree hardware without reading masses of stuff.
I would love to have a list of stuff that is or can be made cloudfree (flashing needed is ok), while working with homeassistant.
So: no forced talking to a manufacturer, google, amazon, whatever might take control over something in my house.
But still smart enough to talk to homeassistant and/or accept commands

Of course nearly anything can be accomplished with an ESP or arduino and a bit of soldering, but is there more ā€œconvenienceā€ stuff?

for now i know about/own these:

switches:

  • sonoff (tasmota possible but not needed, via mqtt)
  • shelly (tasmota possible, but not needed)

sensors:

  • xiaomi plant sensor (via bluetooth)

vacuum:

  • xiaomi rockrobo/anything able to be flashed with valetudo

cameras:

  • some 7link models speak onvif, so can be accessed directly, but need to be disciplined with a firewall

Happy about any ideas (especially lighting) or hints.
Greetings

Blubbel

2

I have a xiaomi dafang with the hack that works locally

But if you want a list for cloudfree hardware, it kinda implies that they are on wifi/lan to begin with? I kinda expect all my zigbee, zwave, bluetooth sensors to be cloud freeā€¦

When it comes to cloudfree, voice assistants are a hot topic, so I kinda wanna give a shoutout to rhasspy which runs on your own hardware though

3

You can convert (close to) any Tuya product with Tuya-Convert.

Youā€™ll be surprised at how many things are just Tuya devices rebranded.

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4

Careful with the Tuya-Convert recommendation. Unless things have recently changed, a lot of currently sold items have updated / patched Tuya firmwares that Tuya-Convert no longer works with. Iā€™m sure some things still work with it (especially pre-summer manufactured stock); however, most popular Tuya based items have long since been updated, and will likely need to be serially flashed until a new work around is found.

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5

Yes, I stopped Tuya branded Wifi devices for that reason.

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6

The new ones can be serial flashed? Sure they can, but as far as i know, not that easy. The new ones have realtek- instead of esp chips inside, sou you canā€™t use tasmota or espHome as far as I know.

7

Yes, that is another problem with Tuya devices : more and more devices donā€™t contain an esp, but some other chip. Sometimes you can replace the ā€˜otherā€™ chip with an esp, but that means even more soldering, and extra costs.

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8

Thanks, I wasnā€™t aware of that!

9

There is also the multitude of Zigbee devices working with sticks and coordinators not related to their vendor. See z2m example of such a list: https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/supported_devices.html

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10

Pretty much anything Zwave, Zigbee or 433Mhz.

For cameras, anything that has native RTSP and/or ONVIF support will work. You will still have to block them at the firewall or even better, put them on their own separate LAN/VLAN.

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11

Hey I never said it was easy, just that itā€™s quickly becoming the only way. Heck some are practically impossible, or at the very least need to be nearly destroyed just to get to the proper pins!

And thereā€™s the other issue weā€™re starting to see. Honestly a chipset change was probably inevitable, so weā€™ll have to:
a) move on to other manufacturers that still use ESP chips;
b) hope the Tuya chip change is temporary (perhaps a manufacturing / supply issue in China? It is 2020 after allā€¦ :stuck_out_tongue:); or
c) hope for evolved / ported (if even feasible - probably not though) Tasmota or ESPHome firmwares that can work on the replacement chips, or outright new custom firmwares to replace these beloved favorites.

12

yes, you are right. Considering that there is already wifi around the house, which is working perfectly, i prefer solutions based on wifi. z-wave or zigbee needs additional hardware which needs to be installed, eats power, etcā€¦
I do not need or wish for voice assistants personally, as it would not fit our household.

13

For lighting I am using a deConz zigbee stick. No cloud needed (not even available I believe). Supports almost all zigbee devices (lamps, switches, sensors etc) and has a build in integration, so no need to run MQTT

14

Well, MQTT is running here anywhere, we use it for our homebrew/selfsoldered projects like making the 30-year old central-heating smart, or similar things for battery and solar controls.

Also I find mqtt to be quite easy to setup and grow it to my needs.

15

The interesting part is that Dresden Elektronik officially got involved in Zigbee2mqtt to have their Conbee adapters (deCONZ) supported https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman/issues/72 and many people are interested or have switched for stability :slight_smile:

16

Sorry, was just confused as to why you add a bluetooth device to the cloud free list?

Are you asking for input for personal reasons or in the general sense? Kinda thought itā€™s the latter

17

Hey there,
sorry, english is not my first language, so sometimes my thoughts do not translate correctlyā€¦
About bluetooth: wellā€¦ Iā€™m not the one on the hardware side in our household. So I was writing this, an my partner mentioned that it was bluetooth, so my hands wrote it down :wink:

And also regarding reasons: I would love a general list for anybody. If it sounded otherwise, sorry about that. These were just the thoughts in my head.
As far as i unterstand about voicecontrol almond should be able to be made totally local without a cloud.

18

Amond is just Text to action if I understand it right.
I was looking at Rhasspy as it is very configurable but my current system hasnā€™t enough ram.

19

Why not ? My LYWSD03MMC Bluetooth temperature and humidity sensors perform very well through openmqttgateway.

20

Never said anything differently. All my bluetooth and zigbee sensors are also performing very well. But I am assuming that this implies cloudfree as they do not connect to the internet.