Thankfully I don't use any of their products, but this really pisses me off. They claim that this open source project "causes significant economic harm to their company"
This is ridiculous. It is truly ridiculous. How can something that enables the user to efficiently control their AC cause "significant economic harm"???
Consider forking the repository or mirroring it to another platform like GitLab, Codeberg or your self-hosted Git server, so the project can continue to exist and someone can maybe fork it and maintain it.
The effected repos are: https://github.com/Andre0512/hOn and https://github.com/Andre0512/pyhOn
If you don't know about Home Assistant, check it out. It's an amazing piece of open-source software, that you can run at home on your own server and use it to control your smart home devices. That way, you don't need to connect them to the manufacturer's (probably insecure) cloud. It gives you sovereignty over your smart home instead of some proprietary vendor-locked garbage. Check out their website and the Lemmy community: [email protected]
I also highly recommend Louis Rossmann's video about this: https://youtu.be/RcSnd3cyti0
He makes awesome videos in general, consider subscribing.
As Rossmann said, don't ever buy anything from such a shitty company that doesn't respect their customers. This move by Haier is nothing other than a slap in the face for everyone, who just wants to comfortably control the product they paid for. This company is actively hostile towards their paying customers. Fuck these bastards!
Nearly all window air conditioner units have a built in programmable timer that allows you to do just this, and if your system is central you can spend all of $20 on an electronic programmable thermostat that's a plug-in replacement for your old one and doesn't require being connected to the internet.
Just saying, this functionality already existed and worked just fine before everything had to be on the fucking "cloud."
I mean that's where Home Assistant comes into play. Host it yourself or pay for a managed instance and you get the best of both worlds.
Also you can buy thermostats and air conditioners easily that use with micro controlers and don't rely on any network. It's not like TVs where you have to dig and largely don't get that choice anymore