2y ago

Cloud services for controlling things inside your house are the worst

MyQ fails with 403 forbidden error after recent cloud changes · Issue #99947 · home-assistant/core

I recently moved away from MyQ to local control of my garage door and I've been loving it. I stumbled across the linked issue where MyQ shit the bed for roughly 3 days and it just confirms to me that the extra effort to move away from a cloud service was worth it. I'm down to just one last cloud service for something inside my house. My mind is pretty much made up that if I can't accomplish it locally, I won't do/use it.

35 comments

I actively avoid and move away from HA type devices that do not work without WAN. There's no reason that me pushing a GUI button to turn off a light needs to do anything more than travel to my AP, to HA and then to the light. Let's not bring the cloud into this.
You don't like being forced to buy a new garage door opener every time the manufacturer's product manager takes a shit?
FWIW i use myQ locally with no issues. I use the myq “homekit bridge” to integrate with home assistant locally.
- That's interesting, I don't think that was an option back when I was using MyQ. I guess that's why Matter would be such a big improvement for things.
  
  First myq was completely open to integrate, then I believe they locked it down then they opened it up to homekit a year or two later.
  I won't buy one out of principle. Any product or company that was a pain to work with during my days as a control4 integrator is blacklisted from my home. I won't do app-based setups, either.
I am still using a DIY/homemade one I made back in 2020ish.
https://xtremeownage.com/2020/07/29/diy-garage-door-opener-home-assistant/
Still works perfectly. Less than 20$ of materials total. 100% local control. Locally compiled, open source firmware.
Would recommend.
- Ditto here. I spent even less - a Wemos D1 mini and a relay, all housed snugly in a 3D printed case.
  Has worked flawlessly for years now.
  All I can say is, thank the gods for esphome and Home Assistant.
  
  And, the best part- Home assistant keeps getting better and better!
Yeah, MyQ is hot steamy garbage. I gave up on it after giving it a chance for way too long. Their app, of course, will continue to work, but they would constantly change the API forcing the integration devs to scramble.
I use sonoff wifi switches with Tasmota now. They're set to turn on then immediately off, simulating a button press. Combined with z-wave door sensors and some template sensor stuff copied from a forum, it's super solid.
- I like Shelly hardware. The devices default to local communication and cloud is optional. Custom firmware can also be used, but not really needed. I wished they made more kinds of IoT stuff.
  Since the device state can be queried with HTTP requests, it's easy to integrate it to my monitoring system (Prometheus/Grafana).
  
  I wish I could get their stuff in Zigbee.
- I just ordered a pair of the ratgdo devices for full, local-only control. Ratgdo also allows control of the lights separaely, so I'm going to automate the light turning on when someone goes into the garage.
local control of my garage door
This is wild. I never imagined I'd even need to control a garage door remotely o.O
- For me it adds some reassurance if my garage door is closed while I'm away
  
  I've definitely forgotten to close mine once or twice, even though my custom (LoRa) integration is just simulating pushing the button on the wall by closing a relay contact and watching for closed status with a reed switch, it means I can do it from anywhere.
- Yeah, my IoT network is segregated from any of my regular network. The control node can be accessed by VPN but otherwise has no access to or from the internet
  
  That's my setup too!
Unfortunately my furnace (Rheem) only works this way which is so disappointing. I wish it could be cracked so that it could work independently with home assistant.
Anyone have some recommendations for a camera system without a cloud component?
- Anything RTSP will do, but I'd recommend VLAN the shit out of it unless you are confortable having it call home every second.
  I use wyze cameras with custom firmware.
  
  Ooo, you can do that with Wyze? That'd be the best of both worlds. I'll go search on it, but if you have any advice, I'm all ears.
- We use Reolink wired with PoE and recently switched from ZoneMinder + ZMNinja to Frigate + Home assistant and are very happy so far.
- Have you checked out Frigate? It's a local service that captures RTSP streams from cameras and uses neural net image recognition to trigger events / recordings. It has good integration with Home Assistant.
- I'm using zoneminder. It might be a high bar to entry, but once set up, it's great.
- Personally I've been pretty happy with Unifi Protect. Reliably records locally but accessible remotely and notifications are quick within a few seconds. Cameras can connect to HA and support RTSP if you want to link them into Frigate.
- I have Blue Iris NVR with Reolink cameras. A bit of tweaking, but it was easy to follow tutorials online and they integrate into HA nicely. Blue Iris isn't free, but I couldn't get Frigate to work and don't have the background to troubleshoot it very well. I'd say it's worth the cost, though.

35 comments