Hi, i have been using smart lamps from aliexpress for awhile now. But these lamps force me to connect to an android app that phones-home to Beijing. Without the chinese yeelight app, i cannot change the color of the lamps. I find that kind of creepy.

Is there a good smart lamp system that is privacy respecting and hopefully opensource?

One that is locked to my local lan instead of a chinese trojan horse that spy’s on me 24/7.

I’m an arch linux user and i know some basic python scripting.

Buy a zigbee stick and use zigbee lamps; they are widely available (Ali, Ikea, Philips etc) and this solution doesn’t cost a fortune. It also prevent you from needing to throw the lamps away whenever the app stops working or the manufacturing company goes bankrupt.

Isn’t ZigBee just a standard? What makes it more private?

ZigBee is low-power radio (think Bluetooth but simpler), so there’s no Internet involved at all unless you connect it to an Internet-based device, and there you have many choices including open source or home-grown solutions.

I second zigbee. Fast, local control, with the added benefit of not clogging up your WiFi network.

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

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