alt Hacker NewsFreeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud
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Pretty shocked that Xiaomi publishes the protocol: https://iot.mi.com/new/doc/accesses/direct-access/embedded-d...
Great project! This resonates with me - been using ESPHome for a year now and it's solid. One tip: if you're concerned about reliability, pair it with a PoE switch for your ESP devices. Makes recovery much easier if something goes wrong.
Also curious about your power consumption - did you measure watts before/after switching from Xiaomi's cloud solution?
Tangential rant: It’s becoming hard to buy dumb appliances.
I was looking at robot vacuums, and most need internet connection at least for setup - by which point it’s already uploaded your floor plan and who knows what to the cloud.
A humidifier needs network capability incase someone discovers a new version of water, or for the manufacturer to be able to patch remote exploits.
A whole ass esp32 module in the board? Never seen something like that. I mean I've seen esp32 iot devices but with chips directly in the board, not as a separated module. It looks like hobbyist job.
On a tangent note: don’t use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5 particles.
Use evaporative humidifiers (just disks with myriads of small notches for water to cling on and a fan): https://us.smartmiglobal.com/pages/smartmi-evaporative-humid...