Smart devices are turning out to be a poor investment

mesamune@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 241 points –
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Smart devices are only useful if they are open source and everything can be self hosted. Everything else becomes a brick when the manufacturer drops support for it.

Exactly, I have been using some of the same zwave devices for over 10 years. I don't buy anything that needs the Internet unless I don't have a choice and that device is not mission critical. I build many of my devices with esp home also.

But they can't sell you more shit if they didn't have planned obsolescence baked in!
(It's a little sobering realizing that technology is old enough to be, you know, OLD. Nothing about this is novel to anybody anymore. We're way, way past being impressed by two lines batting a dot around.)

Unfortunately self-hosting requires a technical level that the vast majority doesn't have or wish to develop. I totally understand why some people don't want to fuck around with their own digital infrastructure, it's a huge pain in the ass sometimes, and when something goes wrong (at it will at some point) you can quickly get to a place where the skill to get it running is nowhere near enough to fix it.

What’s an open source thermostat? My Nest is shit when it comes to connecting it to home assistant. It’s googles fault