this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2024
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homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Just got this email from Haier (US) who seems to be distancing themselves from the EU division's decision to block Home Assistance.

Hello , (I changed this)

Thank you for reaching out with your concern.

The Haier brand in the U.S. is independent of Haier Europe and operates separately. hOn is the connected IOT platform for Haier Europe. In the U.S., consumers can use our open IOT platform, SmartHQ. SmartHQ does not prevent integrations with Home Assistant.

We appreciate you reaching out.

Kindest regards,

Digital Engagement Team Haier Appliances

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[–] Reygle 73 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Independant my aching ass. Haier US is Haier corporate's (Qindao) b*tch and everyone knows it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haier

The only "smart" appliance to own is an offline appliance.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

If an appliance is really smart, it will want to stay off-line.

[–] stoly 11 points 11 months ago

lol someone who doesn't know the disaster that is IoT downvoted you over that

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's still a pretty good sign IMO. Brands won't usually distance themselves from their parent companies unless they have a good reason to.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

@RobotToaster @homeassistant
Parent company is chinese, the european branch is a sister: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haier

[–] cynar 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Some are actually welcoming, and provide a local API. That way your air-conditioning control isn't web dependent.

Unfortunately, most are quite stupid about it, and insist on using their app. This voids any usefulness of having smart appliances. E.g. pulse a light in a room when the tumble dryer finishes or turn it on and off dependent on your rooftop solar's output.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

turn it on and off dependent on your rooftop solar's output

I love stuff like this. Turn on the dryer and put the window shades up when the sun's out.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

or KNX. or Modbus.

Zigbee is actually not that good of a choice.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully it was escalated it up to Haier global or whatever. Brand reputatio issues n in eu can be damaging to their US counterparts

[–] fenynro 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It almost assuredly was not escalated to global. I received the same canned answer from them earlier and asked to be put in contact with a person from the European company.

Their response was to send me here: https://www.haier-europe.com/en_GB/technical-assistance/contact-us/

If you poke around, you'll find that there is no effective way to contact anyone by email unless you've got a specific support question with a model number attached, so I sent an email directly to [email protected]

Will it matter for anything? Probably not. Will at least one guy have to read some stern words about an attack on open source development? Yep, and that's good enough for me I guess :P

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

That doesn't mean the issue wasn't/won't be escalated. It might even mean it's more likely since someone bothered to make a response macro for it, they presumably got more than one or two emails about it. So it's probably more likely to make it on a "list of issues we saw this week/sprint/month/quarter".