Anti Cloud! ( I want to control my own Almond+ )

[rldreams]

The Sensors and Rules do not show up in iPhone Browser.

I can't speak for anything Apple. I will say that everything shows up and works perfectly on my old Androids, that are too old to use the app.

[Neel737]

For me it is about control.  I've never signed up for the cloud account or even downloaded the app -- I don't want to depend on an outside resource, and don't want any unnecessary access (security hole) on my system.  At home I use the WebUI on my phone, and when away from home I use the WebUI on my phone via VPN.  I'm sure there are a lot of neat app-ish things I'm not getting, and I totally understand Securifi's point in wanting to develop the app and have cloud support (very customer friendly, etc).  I'm just not that customer.  If the app could connect directly to the A+, that would be great.  Baring that, a good phone/tablet friendly web interface would be nice.  But from a security and control standpoint, I just don't trust "the cloud"

Could not agree more. Securifi should just concentrate on completing the core functionality such as REAL router functions, Vera or ST level sensor support, and functional automation IN THE ROUTER (not in the cloud).

[dave_r]

Simply put, everybody making these knick-knacks believes that they deserve your data.  And that they deserve to make money from selling that data because they made the device that you want to use.

Sure they'll promise "oh, we'll totally anonymize it before selling it.  or it's just aggregate data."

I'd send back my Almond+ if I'd get a refund.

[habeatgenmoint]

Whoa, didn't find out I have to use the cloud for sensor support until now. If I found out earlier I wouldn't have backed the Kickstarter campaign.

I'm under no illusion that my network is completely safe even without a cloud backdoor in my home router, but the smaller the potential attack surface the better. For this very reason I stopped buying anything from D-Link for my family once they started integrating this cloud nonsense. With no disrespect to your abilities, Securifi is a relatively no-name company which I'd be unwise to put any more trust with the data of my entire LAN on than on D-Link (which I have zero trust,) especially considering this cloud service is free.

If due to any resource constraints or other considerations you cannot cut the service from the cloud, please consider giving us the more cautious/paranoid customers the information on how to completely turn off the service on our Almond+, so that we can continue using it as a dumb router with relatively more peace of mind. Thanks!

BTW, since I never bothered to complain to D-Link about this I don't imagine a lot of lost potential customers would let you know about it either... so please, consider it.

[bwainscott]

Whoa, didn't find out I have to use the cloud for sensor support until now. If I found out earlier I wouldn't have backed the Kickstarter campaign.

I don't know that it is as bad as all that.  The HA features have been working fine for me just using the WebUI (locally when at home, and via VPN when away from home).  Of course there is no such thing as notifications, but that is not something I'm that concerned about.  Maybe they could add email notifications at some point.  But the basic automation works just fine without using the cloud or the app.  Just last night I turned my heater on remotely so that the house would be warm when I got home.

If due to any resource constraints or other considerations you cannot cut the service from the cloud, please consider giving us the more cautious/paranoid customers the information on how to completely turn off the service on our Almond+, so that we can continue using it as a dumb router with relatively more peace of mind. Thanks!

I second that!  I would also like to totally disable the cloud services on the A+, but haven't bothered trying yet.  I never signed up for a cloud account, so I figure I'm probably OK for now.  But yes, I'd like to turn off the cloud services completely -- both to close any potential security holes and also just to reduce unnecessary load on the A+.  Instructions from Securifi on how to do this without causing problems would be very welcome.

[matt]

Matt, where can I find the doc on the tcp command to do this? Do you have any example Tasker actions you could share?

I'm sorry I never received an email about this reply. Anyway, you install mochad as per [1]. Then I just do http connections (I added my little web perl script to the package, since tcp isn't native in tasker and requires a plugin), like this [2]. You can see all the different parameters you can give in that same wiki. Anyways, there are lots of things I would like to make better if the SDK allowed it (or if they built an API), but this works well enough for me. You could in theory do this remotely through VPN or by putting up HTTP Basic auth and opening a web port to the world.

[1] http://wiki.securifi.com/index.php?title=X10_Integration#Installation
[2] https://gist.github.com/mattea/ee5bdadf475348ae495c

[LGNilsson]

Simply put, everybody making these knick-knacks believes that they deserve your data.  And that they deserve to make money from selling that data because they made the device that you want to use.

Sure they'll promise "oh, we'll totally anonymize it before selling it.  or it's just aggregate data."

I'd send back my Almond+ if I'd get a refund.

1. We only store sensor states in the cloud.
2. We don't sell any data to anyone.
3. Yes, we look at the data, but it's so we know what's going and we can improve things.

Right now the cloud service is far from where we'd like it to be and I can only apologize on behalf of the company for the issues we've been having as of lately, but we're working on improving things.
I've also put forward the feedback from everyone in this thread to our CEO and VP of software development.

[LGNilsson]

Whoa, didn't find out I have to use the cloud for sensor support until now. If I found out earlier I wouldn't have backed the Kickstarter campaign.

I'm under no illusion that my network is completely safe even without a cloud backdoor in my home router, but the smaller the potential attack surface the better. For this very reason I stopped buying anything from D-Link for my family once they started integrating this cloud nonsense. With no disrespect to your abilities, Securifi is a relatively no-name company which I'd be unwise to put any more trust with the data of my entire LAN on than on D-Link (which I have zero trust,) especially considering this cloud service is free.

If due to any resource constraints or other considerations you cannot cut the service from the cloud, please consider giving us the more cautious/paranoid customers the information on how to completely turn off the service on our Almond+, so that we can continue using it as a dumb router with relatively more peace of mind. Thanks!

BTW, since I never bothered to complain to D-Link about this I don't imagine a lot of lost potential customers would let you know about it either... so please, consider it.

As mentioned in my post above, we only send sensor state data to the cloud. Everything is encrypted using SSH encryption, even the firmware downloads are SSH encrypted. This is also why we've had a few glitchy issues, especially when the time ended up being wrong on the Almond+, as we're checking the validity of the public SSH certificate when we do a lot of things.

If you never signed up to the cloud service, i.e. set up a cloud account, then the only time we get any data is when you're requesting a firmware update via the LCD UI, send logs or request weather information and even in those cases, it's minimal data.

[habeatgenmoint]

As mentioned in my post above, we only send sensor state data to the cloud. Everything is encrypted using SSH encryption, even the firmware downloads are SSH encrypted. This is also why we've had a few glitchy issues, especially when the time ended up being wrong on the Almond+, as we're checking the validity of the public SSH certificate when we do a lot of things.

If you never signed up to the cloud service, i.e. set up a cloud account, then the only time we get any data is when you're requesting a firmware update via the LCD UI, send logs or request weather information and even in those cases, it's minimal data.

Hi Lars,

Thanks for the reply. I'm not doubting that you don't intentionally send my LAN traffic to your servers in any way, and I'm glad that you are taking necessary precautions to protect the data in transit. However, the point is to minimize exposure of proprietary services on the router to the internet, so that if your cloud service were to be compromised, it does not bring the attackers into my LAN.

From how you are stating it, it sounds to me the home automation services on the Almond+ phones home but does not listen to an outside port. Could you confirm this?

[LGNilsson]

Not quite, we do have a daemon that listens, but it's part of the cloud service, so if you didn't sign up for an Almond account, it's not running.

[bwainscott]

Not quite, we do have a daemon that listens, but it's part of the cloud service, so if you didn't sign up for an Almond account, it's not running.

But I think there are still things running.  I've never signed up for the cloud, but have seen something like "cloudha" running on my A+ (can't check right now as I'm not at home).  It would be nice to know which daemons could be disabled (and how to do so cleanly) without breaking anything.  If you want I can send you the output of ps, but it won't be before the weekend.

[MrBishop]

1. We only store sensor states in the cloud.
2. We don't sell any data to anyone.
3. Yes, we look at the data, but it's so we know what's going and we can improve things.

Right now the cloud service is far from where we'd like it to be and I can only apologize on behalf of the company for the issues we've been having as of lately, but we're working on improving things.
I've also put forward the feedback from everyone in this thread to our CEO and VP of software development.

Thank you very much! All I want is the option to disable the cloud and run my own local software/open a port and use a DNS service. Willing to pay or something to help.

[mr23]

In the short term, if you only need to control lights, give this a try http://forum.securifi.com/index.php?topic=2527.0

[MrBishop]

Just checking in with the Securifi Staff to see if anyone has bothered to shoot off an email about the idea for alternatives to the cloud and funding methods. I mean I'm even willing to pay again for a feature that was implied in the video ({local control not cloud dependent). Because I'm seriously about to take my Almond+ and shoot it then upload the video warning others not to buy one. I can't ever connect to the dang thing at home or away, you're cloud services are worthless in Ky. Every now and then I manage to send a control/command but it takes way longer (10+ seconds sometimes, less the a second others) then using the web interface. But I bought this router because it promised a working android. So far i've yet to see that in my state. Maybe it's my ISP maybe it's some strange thing with my settings (I really doubt it but maybe) I just know i've not gotten anywhere near what I feel like it's supposedly to be worth.

All I want is to safely be able to use the product I paid for. Is there a return policy on Almond+ bought during the beta email signup?
I really don't want to have to get rid of my Almond+ but frankly it's not worth the money and if I can't return it for a full refund then I might as well destroy it so others know just how incredibly frustrating this has been. I get your CEO's or whoever has this idea about cloud service noensinne well you're customers are yelling at you in this thread for an alternative. Generally speaking if a company wants to survive more then a few release lines they know to listen to major complaints. Also because of section 215 any and all information sent out of my country can and is recorded. So unless you have local cloud servers in my country that don't need to connect then you're cloud product design is intentionally letting the NSA and potentially others record our keys and commands.

All i'm asking for is someone to respond to a simple request for an alternative, but you guys have clearly been instructed to skate around this issue and it's outrageous. I'm even considering contacting the BBB, I don't know if I'm the only one who's having this level of rage with the cloud system but I know it's taken a wonderful product and created much stress in my life. This is not the product I was promised, and i'm willing to meet you guys half way to make it the one I was. But thus far it's been months I don't care how busy you are i've been answered on other questions and this is clearly intentionally not being answered because the company has zero interest in removing the cloud crapware.

So can we please get a letter sent off before I feel the need to do something rash? Seriously, you guys never once mentioned jack about the cloud before you got my money, this feels like a bait and switch. I don't like being rude, and honestly I feel I am being; but I am so incredibly offended at how your company is actively ignoring this thread because it's inconvenient. I went form a guy wait almost a year to get my beloved Almond+ the promised machine, t being another furious customer who got what they didn't pay for. I don't want your cloud, we all are aware we don't need the cloud for the app to work. This is clearly the company deciding what's best for the consumer because it's best for the company's.

I don't blame the person who has to read this of course, and i'm sorry for any undue stress you might feel as a result of this. But please let you boss know just how big of an issue this is, it's the most insulting experience i've ever had dealing with a company and i've bought at Walmart. before.  If I don't get response in a few days in destroying this POS and letting everyone I know not to buy any product form this company because bait+switch. Give us a cloud free alternative, or let us know you're not going to do it. Not "not at this time" we all know that's a diplomatic way to say no so just say it or lets try to work together and make this thing I already spent good money on and LOTS of time trying to get working correctly to work correctly. Without and middlemen. I don't mind to buy my own domain, I already did. on that note I can't use it because the open-wrt build is non-standard and it won't work with my domain. (I actually broke DNS trying to do this, but that's another thread). All I want is to use my router..

[Fire69]

Weird... I've had my share of frustration with the A+ (and still have unfortunately...  ), but the cloud is not one of them.
Except for the occasional glitches when they were having some problems, it has been working as intended.

This is of course no answer to your question about eliminating the cloud, but I do think you should check your setup or ISP if you are having this much problems with it...