[masraum]

Originally Posted by stealthn

Reminds me of a European Smart home component manufacturer, they sold systems for years and I think were taken over or something, then told all their customers they need to signup for a subscription or they would shutdown their services. An online guy put up a bounty to hack their system to break the control and the company is suing him.

I guess these days, everyone wants an app on their phone that works from anywhere in the world. For that sort of setup, things need to be managed from a central location for the app to target.

For me, if I've got a smart home, I'd rather have everything only locally networked in the home with no external access. If I want external access, I'll setup some sort of VPN whether it's IPSec or SSL, but then that's outside of the capabilities of most folks.

I used to have a smart thermostat years ago. It had an API of some sort that a guy wrote a simple GUI for. It's what I used to control the AC, and was only accessible on our home network.