After discontinuing its security products, British Gas is now pulling the plug on their connectivity
  • thehatfox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    This is the danger in building a smart home with proprietary, cloud based based platforms. The users have no control over the platform, and and it can be pulled from under your feet at any moment.

    To avoid this, it’s better to choose an open, cloud free home automation platform such as Home Assistant. It’s open source and can’t be shut down or remotely disabled, and works with smart devices from almost any vendor, meaning you aren’t locked into a single ecosystem. There is even an active Lemmy community at !homeassistant@lemmy.world to get advice and inspiration.

    • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      A lot of the time you’re still utilising those proprietary products though. I’m not aware of a home thermostat that isn’t both easy to use (for the family) and non-proprietry. Sure home assistant can act as a coordinator, but in a lot of the cases it’s doing it via the cloud service.

      • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukMEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Most modern boilers can be activated by a simple relay (it’s how the thermostat calls for heat).

        A basic switch plumbed into hass can be set up as a thermostat entity, that isn’t too horrible to use.
        And you can add a physical thermostat capable of sending values locally to hass if people want to be able to spin a dial on the wall.

        To be honest, I do a lot of my automation invisibly: The target temperature is automated, the only physical button is a “30 minutes heat” one I installed.

      • rmuk@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        It’d not an off-the shelf solution as such, but I have a relay with an ESP32 that fires up the heating and it’s directly controlled by HA. HA uses thermometers around the house - mostly ZigBee - to work out when to run it.

        Given that Hive is ZigBee based and will continue to work locally, I wonder if it can be directly linked to HA?

  • Hayden@feddit.ukEnglish
    111·
    1 year ago

    so their solution for customers with the first hub is to buy the new hub? the one which will be shutdown anyway in two years? what a stupid system.

    • waz@feddit.ukEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I happened to be on the Homecare service, and I started an online chat with them to improve the discount and got sent the new hub for free. So it means I get a couple of years to plan my connected lights and heating system away from them without it being a today problem. Glad I never went beyond a smart lightbulb that was on special offer at the time with them.

      • Hayden@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        just seems a little insulting if anything else. i haven’t had a hive product thankfully but the whole “give us more money to use the products you already bought but only for another two years” thing makes me never want to buy anything from british gas again. i would’ve hoped for some basic function at the least.

    • TheNumberOfGeese@feddit.ukEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I was so annoyed to get that email. Never using them again. Going to install a non-smart wireless thermostat, or maybe a HA install if I’m feeling brave.