The documentation link you provided for Hub 3 makes it clear that the device (at the time of that documentation) is NOT the local only hub we are looking for. The following is an expect quote from the manual:
A continuous internet connection is essential for the Hub 3, achievable through WiFi, Ethernet, or a Cellular SIM card (4G LTE, 3G, or 2G)
While this dosent meant they won’t offer a future firmware release that adds Matter support or even locally hosted MQTT services (that MAY or may not ) require an outbound connection to their servers…. It just means that any SHORT term expectations of the 3 year dangled solution are not likely.
The bottom line as a long time product manager for a for a TECHNOLOGY most of you certainly use is this; there is no TECHNICAL reason a purely local device can’t be produced, and additional services added on top of that. The reality is it’s NOT their BUSINESS model.
And as much as I wish it were not the case, if I were in their place I WOULD’T do it either (though I wouldn’t string folks along). Frankly from a biz perspective the market opportunity is relatively small and RELATIVELY fixed. They are NOT going to SUBSTANTIALLY grow the number of customers (and thus revenue) by delivering a local only product. The market of folks who want this is small (let’s say all 1100 of us). What happens after we buy them? Sure we will “keep buying” new Lo cost sensors for those rare cases where our environment changes. And perhaps the same percentage of all NEW Home Assistant install users choose to buy Yolink products but that ALONE becomes you revenue source to sustain continuing engineering as well as FUTURE R&D. I just don’t see it….Not given that they ALREADY have a viable biz model (with their lock in) unfortunately, so why would the risk it. They clearly have everything to lose with little real upside. Perhaps they might be able to consolidate some market share from other competitors but this will never be a mass market product that can be supported by an expectation of almost endless new users coming to the platform or replacing defective/obsolete products.
After spending some time thinking about how one could compromise the encryption keys during enrollment (using a potentially competmized hub or proxy) at best you end up with a device that would be permanently sandboxed from the public Internet and thus unable to interact using any Yolink apps or functionality. Not a horrible solution as if it ever sees the real net it could be bricked or less changed, firmware rewritten etc). Of course that also mean no Yolink app functionality. Just sensors on MQTT, and a lot of work to get there. I would do it if I could because I just don’t see anyone producing a the long range battery powered sensors I want using open standards. Given these are being used for security, the temptation to exploit the REQUIRED security/encryption for their own business purposes is far to great. In the end I don’t see anyone closing to do the work and then leave what they see as money or market control on the table.
Apologies for the rant…. Net net I just don’t se is getting what we want short of building our own sensors…. Like was done with the everything sensor and others)
And hopefully offer a greater degree of transparency then what have thus far seen from YoLink (to date). Again that’s not a dig just a recognition that as a corporate entity their constituent responsibilities are very different then what an open source solution would be and there is clearly a place for both to thrive.
, Are you saying I have to use and pay the Nabu Casa subscription service? It is extremely possible I missed a step in creating Home Assistant from scratch, since I have never used Nabu Casa before, I wouldn’t know what steps I was missing. Since January I have killed HA and started over about twice daily trying quite the variety of methods, steps, and anything suggested by my cries for help in the community. YoLink is extremely necessary for me, as it provides me my much needed medical communication as well as the other benefits of being the only “so called compatible” devices I know that use Lora (?) for distance.
