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!
My smart plugs were carefully chosen so that I could immediately flash them with ESPHome, but that’s because I am not normal. It shouldn’t have to be that way.
What brand/model do you use?
Another good option if you dont wanna flash the S31 plugs yourself is getting your smart home plugs and things from Athom (athom.tech). They have a bunch of devices that come with ESPHome and Tasmota and other firmware preflashed.
Not affiliated at all, just someone who wanted some private and local smart plugs and didnt wanna have to open up smart plugs and flash them manually or fight these manufacturers who lock down the devices more and more.
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.
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.
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.