Mainstream tech advice treats cheap Wi-Fi smart plugs as harmless convenience, totally glossing over how much telemetry leaks out to overseas cloud servers by default.

Expecting casual users to set up VLANs and firewall drop rules just to stop a £10 light bulb from phoning home is a bit of a joke.

True privacy means local control without corporate middlemen.


Original content by The Unknown Universe, written by a human and not AI generated!

  • grue@lemmy.world
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    24 hours ago

    Sonoff S31 (and I think this might have been the guide I used to flash them), but I think they’ve been discontinued and the replacement model might be more locked-down.

    • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      That was the same guide I used! Bought like 20 of these plugs to integrate with HomeAssistant and espHome, added bonus was the energy monitoring.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        I’ve got eight of them and am not using them all, but sometimes I worry I should’ve gotten more when I had the chance, just in case.

        I miss the '90s, when you could count on new tech to get better instead of worse.