simple, the fridgdiare app literally does not function on any phone I have ever owned, like it fails to see ANY wifi when connected, or it ALWAYS fails to connect
and I tried multiple phones of multiple brands
these “connect to offline hotspot and type info into app” type setups need to just be actually made a criminal thing to design
I need someone who has understanding of how their app works to rip the raw protocols out of the app and document them so we can run fridgidaire devices appless, meaning home assistant simply sends a packet over wifi(with only an api package to convert commands) that directly polls current status and sets mode
basically I shouldn’t need a special smartphone and a carefully arranged faraday cage just to duplicate the EXACT same features as a remote and the LED display on teh front in home assistant, and my phone should not be required at any step, nor an account that lets the company shut down my IOT setup without me being able to say “no, you have no control over the AC you sold me anymore”
If you reverse engineer the phone app, then you might be extremely lucky and be able to make a cloud integration for HA, but you will not be able to avoid the vendors central servers, so they will still control your appliances.
The reason for this is that you can only get the communication between the app and the server by reverse engineering the app. You are still missing the communication between the server and the appliance.
In order to make it local you would need to change the appliance firmware and if you can do that then you have full control and might do whatever you like, but then the reverse engineering is in a whole other scale and you would need that specific appliance to make it work.
Avoid products with no local access!
And if possible go for appliances which have only local access if possible, then you know that the vendor have no strings attached after the sale.
Anyway, the first step would be to connect your frigidaire to your own wifi, which I understand you’re not able to do, do you?
The “connect to offline hotspot and type info into app” is a standard procedure:
- The device exposes its own wifi network
- you connect your phone to that “private” wifi network
- You enter the details of your own wifi network
- The device connects to your wifi
If you’re not able to do that, HA will never be able to connect to the device in the first place, whatever protocol it might use.
Seems like they now have an official public API
untrue
if it was reverse engineered you COULD run it 100% offline
after all, it runs 100% offline right now since it can’t be set up
so if someone did reverse engineer it, then it WOULDN’T need any non-local servers at all
not sure this helps, I glanced and still see the need to use external servers, which is the very problem I have with it
companies need to be fined/sued every time they force an “always online” IOT device
my window AC has LITERALLY no need for internet connections, IOT is a DECEPTIVE term, it should actually be called NOT as all that is required for a safe and functional “smart home” is a computer running a software suite and a home network
in fact most IOT devices tend to have VERY poor security, it is hard to hide a proper encryption within a cheap microcontroller
and we need to mandate WPS, as that system works and is future-proof, hotspot app setup is broken >50% of the time(both my parents and my old phone failed to set up their robot vacuum despite app support, yet pressing wps has never failed on any device that isn’t too old for a wifi-6/7 network(if you are not using wifi-6/7 devices enabling those features is pointless as it does cause issues with older devices sometimes, hence why I have guest network enabled just to connect my roku+wii, though I have not tested the wii yet on the guest net, which will also be my IOT net someday
So you can control it through the app now?