Joke's on them, mine hasn't been connected since about 2018. Works very well as just a thermostat
this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025
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Might as well just go to rent a center instead of buying smart shit.
This is yet another example of businesspeople taking laypeople for a ride. They want a lifeline to your wallets.
If you want fancy IoT that's quick to set up, look for Matter devices with full offline support
While the Matter spec requires offline control support, it doesn't require full OEM independence, so you have to look up the individual devices first to check if they're independent. The main difference being that some OEMs have a lot of extra features outside the Matter spec and other extras which require an account and device registration, etc, so check that the specific features you want works FULLY offline and with 3rd party apps. (I've seen Matter controller devices with screens and whatnot which are only configurable with the OEM app)
You can use Home Assistant with its Matter module (open source) as your home controller, together with necessary radios (specifically Thread/Zigbee), and firewall off your devices if you want full control.
And Home Assistant of course also has support for a little bit of everything, like MQTT and custom HTTP commands and more, so you can still control random devices even if they don't support Matter
I'm imagining some poor rube who bought fully into the IoT. Like every appliance they own is smart. Then one day they wake up to their entire house no longer functioning because the smart devices can't connect to whatever services they need. Can't even work the smart locks on their doors.
IoT isn't exactly reliable and many, including the rich are trying to reverse the IoT trend: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/real-estate/tech-free-homes-luxury-trend-1236177909/
also
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/23/analog-bag-screen-free-wellness
I was never able to really make all that stuff work in the first place so I've got three "smart" bulbs I bought in maybe 2018 that still (mostly) work, and am generally switching my smart plugs to mechanical timers because I only really use them for grow lights.
I do feel better about being away from home overnight in winter with my weather station (which includes a sensor inside the house) but everything adds nothing to my life at all.
Calm down, Francis, the thermostat can still be used and programmed manually. The only features lost are remote settings which we never used once.
Not the user you were responding to, and you're correct about these thermostats, but not all devices retain functionality without internet connectivity. For example, these $2000 dollar 'smart' beds.
Some reported on Reddit that they were woken up by their bed suddenly readjusting their preferred sleeping temperatures -- some soaring as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Others say their bed became stuck at an extreme incline. According to The Washington Post, some beds also blinked flashing lights and sounded wake-up alarms.
These things became contorted, overheating (or freezing) bricks when AWS went down last week and the owners had no control over them without the app.
Which may suck for people who needed it for vacation homes, or worse, to help their old parents or something like it
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I dipped my toes into "smart" thermostats with a Wyze. Meh. I don't really need to set the temp from my phone, or any of the other features, beyond having a simple schedule. I'm seriously considering reverting all the way back to an old-school bimetal strip, dial on the wall type, in private protest of all this crap.
(Don't get a Wyze. I think they've been discontinued anyway. The damn thing loses connection to the wifi three or four times per year, then I need to go through the ENTIRE setup process again, from the very beginning. The wifi antenna is in the closet not three feet away. POS.)
Those things should be zwave or matter or something sensible, not WiFi anyway.
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We adopt new tech simply because it exists, not because it is wise to do so.
Once we were manipulated into believing that our desires were needs it was quite easy for them to get us to buy whatever they wanted us to.
Tech feudalism needs to be made 100% illegal.
Laissez-faire means it's up to the (stupid) customers to stop buying this crap just because businesspeople told them to.
Unfortunately, customers just aren't that smart despite how much excess wealth they may have.
Sort of, but we don't have laissez-faire capitalism.
I bought a $500 dollar video security system and they pulled this shit on me. Not Google, but Arlo. Not even a 'hey we will just disable some of the cloud benefits' just straight up disabled my shit and gave me a shitty 'heres 10 percent off a new system!' email. I don't buy into smart always connected tech much as is, but that was def a reason for me to not buy anything further.
The biggest mistake I made in my home was installing $3k in Nest gear, right before they were purchased by Google and the forthcoming Homekit support was abandoned. I cannot wait to get my Ubiquiti camera drops wired so I can stop paying the whopping $20/mo for cloud storage that was $8/mo when I started.
Tl;dr: Fuck Google
Buy something based on open standards and you won't need to worry about this.
Problem is, 99% of people don't even know what open standards are.
It’s me. I have no fucking idea and the time to research it makes me quit before I start.
Couple that with the fact that asking questions from ignorance will most likely get two responses, both of which suck.
First, I’d probably get an info dump of terminology I don’t recognize and have to research each one before understanding what’s being said. That would take me back to my original stance of quitting before I started.
Secondly, I’d encounter loads of derisive assholes that scoff at my lack of knowledge.
EDIT: I’m one of the unlucky bastards targeted by this google fuckery. Obligatory link because fuck google. www.killedbygoogle.com
Someone should publish a guide or something similar.
I can sum it up for you. You won't go wrong with anything Zwave. Zigbee is also pretty good and cheaper. Matter is an up and coming standard so less fully formed but also good. Stick to those 3 and you should be good. There are some other niche ones like esp32 or KNX but generally those are more advanced or for specific use cases.
Man, thanks for trying to help. I really mean it, no snark.
This is me right now: “Hey Siri, what are Zigbee, Zwave, Matter, esp32 and KNX?”
Matter is more of a higher level IoT coordination protocol.
Zigbee and Zwave are radio protocols (relatively long range, low energy).
The neat thing here is you can bridge a lot of shit into Matter, and then use almost anything you want to control all the different devices. Everything becomes visible in the same control panel regardless of connection type and manufacturer. Everything becomes available for automation tools too!
If you run the software Home Assistant on a computer at home then it can act as your IoT control server, and giving it radio antennas for Zwave and Zigbee will let it act as a bridge to relay commands to devices that use those protocols (like a ton of small lights and sensors and more).
Unfortunately, with smart home stuff, you need to choose between ease of use and control. Google provides ease of use because their stuff all works together out of the box, but there's also a whole ecosystem of stuff that works together that takes a bit more effort to connect.
The barrier to actually controlling your smart home isn't super high, but there are some things you need to learn about to pick devices. Another user mentioned a few things to research, but I'll point you another direction that's a bit like throwing you in the deep end.
HomeAssistant is a self-hostable hub for various smart things. Basically, you'll install it on your computer and figure out which of your current devices work with it. Your setup will only be available at home until you get a way to access it from outside your home, but don't worry about that to start, there are services you can use to simplify that later (or ask on !selfhosted@lemmy.world). Once it's setup, you need to decide what things you can't connect that you'd like to replace and look at your options (most likely you'll pick ZigBee or ZWave devices, maybe Matter). HomeAssistant's website has a bunch of documentation about various devices, like which will work, so you can use that to help shop too.
If you can manage that, you'll get a lot more control over your smart home and eliminate whatever monthly fee you pay. Some devices won't be available, but the ones you pick will continue to work as long as the hardware isn't broken (even if the manufacturer discontinues support).
I'd like to add that accessing your things from outside the home is relatively simple if you have a static IP and you setup a VPN to your home with Wireguard.
Some advanced routers even have native support for Wireguard, like the Freebox in France or the Iliadbox in Italy.
And if you don't, it's also not that hard with something like Tailscale, and a reverse proxy with a DIY VPN isn't that hard either.
This helps. Thank you.
Don't hesitate to ask, that community I linked is especially excited to help people take ownership of their stuff.
Simply, check for cloud dependency; can you set it up without the thing’s app, without internet? Does it keep working when the internet is down?
- zigbee
- zwave
- onvif/rtsp
- matter
- if it supports HomeKit, there’s a good chance you can use a bridge to bring it into Homeassistant
Thread and matter can have “unique” implementations but it’s better than proprietary.
Also, if it works on multiple, competing platforms, it's likely following an open standard. Can you use a mix of devices from competing companies on a third, competing platform? If so, you'll probably be fine.
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Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Source Hardware (OSH) for the win!!!!
Release the specs so users can maintain them themselves.
On the other hand, one can understand why Google doesn't want to continue to pour resources into an ancient platform just to keep it on life support.
Bullshit. “Pour” my ass. Issue a legacy build of the app that controls them and walk away. What horseshit. This is shameful. The only reason it won’t blow up into a huge debacle is that these products targeted wealthy early-adopters in the first place and those folks can afford to upgrade, and most probably already have.
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There is a ~~class action~~ "mass arbitration" against Google for this: https://www.classaction.org/nest-thermostat-support-arbitration
Additionally, the Fulu Foundation has a bounty reward out for anyone who is able to get these working with something like Home Assistant.
The pot is currently at $12,856.00 https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/nest-learning-thermostat-gen-1-2
In the U.S., since doing so would circumvent measures put in place on these devices, publishing how to do this would go against sec. 1201 of the DMCA. This has a risk of a maximum sentence of 3-5 years in a Federal Prison. You can still privately show the Fulu Foundation how it is done, and they will be able to use this information to help their case in their attempt to reform this law.
If you live in the U.S., you can also help by letting your representatives know about this. Here's an ActionNetwork page that Fulu set up so that you can easily do so: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/right-to-repair-reform-section-1201-of-the-dmca
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