Freeing a Xiaomi Humidifier from the Cloud

24 points by stv0g

jlarocco

I hope "dumb" products stay around for a long time.

I honeslty don't want my humidifier, my dryer, my fridge, etc. online. A solution to a problem that I don't have.

nonagoninf

I don't want them online, I want them to be Zigbee devices (ok, not the fridge), so that I can control them in a fully local way.
- algesten
  
  No love for Matter/Thread?
  
  I'm hacking away at my own such stack right this moment.
  - nonagoninf
    
    I typed a long reply, but somehow managed to refresh my browser, so I'll do a short summary. Little love for Thread + Matter from my side:
    
    Apple/Google inserted themselves into the ecosystem with the convoluted QR-code + Bluetooth to Thread border router handover procedure.
    
    Pairing very often fails for me and I have to do it multiple times (tried with different border routers: Apple TV, Homey, and HA). Zigbee is as simple as: allow join and activate pairing on the device.
    
    Matter devices are restricted to what the Matter standard supports. E.g. currently they do not support separate movement and presence entities (for e.g. PIR + mmWave sensors).
    
    Some border routers already support NAT64 for giving internet access to Thread devices. I would not be surprised if some devices will start to require this in the future and will then use it for analytics. The lesson is: if there is an avenue for tech companies can get their hands on behavioral data, they will do it. Zigbee does not have this issue, it is fully local and does not use IP.
    
    Matter is a closed ecosystem, requiring device attestation. Zigbee requires certification for the logo, but you can totally buy an ESP32-C6 and make your own Zigbee device. You can give your device to your friends and they can use it with their Zigbee coordinator. From the Nordic docs:
    
    The Device Attestation verification process takes place during commissioning. Before the commissioner can provision the new device to the Matter fabric (network), it must check the certificates of the device and obtain information about it. To do this, the commissioner first establishes an encrypted session with the commissionee using Passcode-Authenticated Session Establishment (PASE) to ensure confidentiality of the communication. It then proceeds to verify the device certificates.
    
    Thread itself is more ok and closely related to Zigbee through IEEE 802.15.4, since it is agnostic to the communication protocol you can do cool things like ESPHome over Thread.
    
    I do have a thread radio hooked up to my HA, because realistically Matter over Thread is going to be popular, perhaps more popular than Zigbee in a few years (e.g. with IKEA switching to Matter), but it does make me slightly sad.
    
    algesten
    
    Thank you for that reply! Does give me some perspective.
    
    As I'm hacking away at this is actually had the exact thoughts you're outlining. The device attestation stuff seems like an unnecessary control mechanism to get you to shell out at least $7000 per year to be part of the club. I bet their levels of device compatibility QA are minimal at best.
    
    I'm totally uninterested in border routers (and other weird abstractions like TCP over Thread). For me, the whole point of Matter over Thread is to be a closed system for my home – no internet connection, period.
    
    I don't know where this hack attempt is going. Most likely not Matter compliance, just Matter adjacent :)