This may be too simple to be of interest to you Home Assistant gurus. I want to control devices, specifically programmable light switches, designed for the Alexis, Google, Tuya and etc. apps without using, or interfacing with, those apps. Is this feasible with HA? I see several posts on these devices controlled by Home Assistant, but HA interfaces with the apps with which the devices are compatible or with an associated account. I do not want any of these highly invasive data thieves running on any of my devices, or to have an account associated with them. Read Tuya’s privacy policy, even if you have no intention of ever using it. It is a scary revelation. Thanks for your help.
BTW, I installed openHAB on my Linux server, accessed its forum site, and my systems threw a tantrum over all the trackers and etc. it deployed when I logged in. It logged me out when I removed /blocked them. That says "Let us spy on you, or get lost. I opted for the later. Purged openHAB. Home Assistant is refreshingly disinterested in my activities.
THere are some devices that require the cloud to work if you are using their firmware. Other devices are “locally controlled” but are compatible with, and automatically discovered by, Alexa and Google. The “controlled by…” is just marketing to people who want “smart” devices but don’t care if their stuff is cloud connected ot not.
Many of those devices can be reconfigured to use your own local firmware but that obviously will take some effort and knowledge on your part.
I see that you mentioned Tuya. I don’t use those but I have seen many posts about reflashing those devices with third-party firmware that disconnects them from the cloud and allows fully local control.
You haven’t said which other device platforms you are using so it’s impossible to tell you if there are non-cloud alternatives available for those.
If you want local only, you’re far better off going with a local only protocol - Zigbee or Z-Wave.
Some Tuya compatible devices, and others, can be reflashed (there’s a tool called Tuya Convert) with alternative firmware, but there’s no guarantees that’ll work. Manufacturers change their hardware, and their firmware, all the time - something that used to work may not work any more because the required features were changed, or were removed.
Basically, you get to roll the dice and see if you’re going to be lucky this time, where if you’d bought, say, a Zigbee device you could have connected it to your Zigbee controller and be done already
Thanks, finity, that’s very helpful info. I have installed a few Linux home automation programs, purged all but Home Assistant, and I’m still in the evaluation stage. I’m not concerned about the cloud if it’s accessed by an app I trust. Apple IOS App is not so intrusive, but is very limited in what it controls. I wasn’t looking for a phone app, but that seems to be where the technology is going. There are many “smart home” devices available. Most say they are “compatible with” Amazon, Google and Tuya. I find that almost all, if not all, phone apps are actually Tuya. I would prefer a Linux program to run on my system, on a virtual box or, if necessary, something like the Raspberry which, at bottom, is native Linux.
My first application is that I have two ceiling fixtures with 4 sockets each that are on one wall switch, but could easily be split to two. I want to on/off time control the sockets to come on at least 4 different times in the morning. I can’t use programmable bulbs for 4 of the sockets that need to have separate on times because I am using the high intensity LED “bulbs” that are called “corn,” or “corn cob,” lights, none of which are programmable. I find no sockets adapters (between the fixture socket and the bulb) mechanically programmable for anything but on at dusk and off x hours later, but I find many smart home type adapters that would work. I can control the fixtures at the wall with either WiFi programmable or mechanical timer wall switch(es).
Any suggestions on making this weird scenario actually work?
For the starting point described above I would definitely look into running those off of a zwave or zigbee based wall switch as recommended by tinkerer above.
the controller USB sticks themselves aren’t too expensive and they are completely locally controlled and are very easily incorporated into HA so you can do the automations that you want to do.
The only thing to be aware of is that most of those switches are going to require a neutral wire at the switch to power the smart electronics of the switch itself. But since you say you can already control them over wifi then that should already be available since all wifi switches also need neutrals at the switch.
Or an even cheaper solution that is wifi and so you don’t need to buy an additional controller is simething Shelly based.
Ultimately it really depends on your needs and availability of funds. Not to mention the comfort level of you digging into firmware updates for devices. The zwave and zigbee stuff works pretty much out of the box which is why they are recommend for beginners even tho the devices are a bit more expensive
I personally use pretty much every popular protocol there is (except Tuya) so I can “diversify”. I use zwave, zigbee, shelly, sonoff and NodeMCU’s (the latter three are wifi ESP8266 based and are flashed with a combination of ESPHome, Tasmota or ArduinoIDE as needed/available to meet my needs).
