Their latest round of stupidity pops up a new EULA and forces you to take it or, again, you can’t access your stuff. But that’s just more unenforceable garbage, so who cares, right? Well, it’s getting worse.
It seems they are planning on dropping an update which will force you to log in. Yep, no longer will your stuff Just Work across the local network. Now it will have yet another garbage “cloud” “integration” involved, and they certainly will find a way to make things suck even worse for you.
If you ever saw the South Park episode where they try to get the cable company to do something on their behalf and the cable company people just touch themselves inappropriately upon hearing the lamentations of their customers, well, I suspect that’s what’s going on here. The management of these places are fundamentally sadists, and they are going to auger all of these things into the ground to make their short-term money before flying the coop for the next big thing they can destroy.
I want a lamp that fades on as an alarm in the morning, and doesn’t require an internet connection. What options do I have?
Before you dive into a complicated diy smart home solution, I recommend looking at an off-the-shelf sunrise alarm clock.
If you’re not going to spend 20 hrs on a diy solution that costs 3x what an off-the-shelf solution costs then why even bother .
Well that personal attack was uncalled for.
I somehow didn’t even consider that as an option. I’ll look into that. Thank you.
I have used this one every day for 4 years, it is really nice and simple (no internet/bluetooth etc just an old school clock with a light). Great min brightness, great max brightness, and has a good 40+min gradual fade from min to max. I’ve tried other ones as well but they didn’t work quite as well as this one.
https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Wake-Up-Simulation-HF3500-60/dp/B00F0W1RIW
The only downside is the beeping, which can be fixed in 5 min by drilling a tiny bit right in the center of the speaker hole on the back. So many people do this, there’s a youtube tutorial for it somewhere.
Easiest > hardest
Hubitat > homeassistant > esphome
If you’re willing to go the DIY route, ESPHome might be what you’re looking for.
A Sonoff controller on the lamp, linked to a small Home Assistant server (a cheap Raspberry Pi could do) wouldn’t be too expensive and would run locally.
Do people really just have bare PCBs all over their house?
There’s plenty of small cases or even 3D printable stuff available to put them in a nice enclosure. You could also buy something with an enclosure included, like the atom lite which I got some time ago as a cheap bluetooth proxy; https://shop.m5stack.com/products/atom-lite-esp32-development-kit
I have a lot of ESPs around the house but they are all in enclosures.
Use a Zigbee controller or Zigbee USB stick on a controller, and Zigbee lights. I’m planning to switch to that myself
Use a smart bulb that increases in brightness or color at an specific hour until it is bright enough for you to wake up.