Oh no!

[matt@mastodon.knight.fyi]

@JCBlubaugh I did quite a lot of research to find a TV that wouldn’t mind being dumb but that I could control via Home Assistant. It’s surprisingly hard!

[mcr314@todon.nl]

@matt What does/can your Home Assistant do with it?

[brouhaha@mastodon.social]

@matt
The last Samsung TV I purchased for my mother nagged her constantly about wanting to be connected, so she insisted that I let it connect.

[jrconlin@mindof.jrconlin.com]

@matt @JCBlubaugh

FWIW, I have an LG with a device attached to the HDMI ARC port. There are times I notice the "Please connect me to the internet", but mostly it just blows right past that.

I don't have it connected to my network, at all, mostly because I don't care if it's connected to my HomeAssistant, so probably different use cases.

[me_valentijn@m.ai6yr.org]

@matt
It's definitely necessary to keep the Samsungs isolated. In the process of scanning our IOT network WHILE TURNED OFF, it started fully turning itself on intermittently in the middle of the night. Which is how we discovered the scanning.

It's now plugged into a switch in the wall so we can turn off its power supply when not in use. Also controlled via Home Assistant

[michddev@mastodon.social]

@matt Frankly depressing that it's become hard to find a "dumb" TV and it requires this much work to stop it phoning home. That said, nice work!

[matt@mastodon.knight.fyi]

@mcr314 at the moment just see the status of the TV (on / off), turn it on / off, adjust the volume. Once I plug in some HDMI sources, it might be able to switch between them, not sure.

Honestly, on / off status and switching is all I really need - I mean, it's about all the TV can actually do!

[matt@mastodon.knight.fyi]

@brouhaha I'm really hoping that won't be the case. From the research I did, it shouldn't happen, but if it does I'll strongly consider returning the TV. Although I'm not sure I have many other options....

[matt@mastodon.knight.fyi]

@jrconlin @JCBlubaugh I do hope it won't do that. If it does, I'll have a look to see if I can do anything to stop it (e.g. spoofing some of its endpoints, or maybe giving it very restricted access), or perhaps even return the TV.

[matt@mastodon.knight.fyi]

@me_valentijn woah, that's insane! When you say it was scanning, what was it doing exactly? I should double check that my IoT network has device isolation on to stop it scanning even its own VLAN, although it's not going to find much (or be able to do anything with that information) if it does scan!

[brouhaha@mastodon.social]

@matt
Given that my mother's experience was some years back, it's possible that Samsung may since have caught enough flack about that misbehavior to fix it.

[matt@mastodon.knight.fyi]

@MichDdev I feel like "it shouldn't be this hard" is a sentiment I've run into often during this house build. We want high quality appliances, and as much as possible we want them integrated into Home Assistant. But local access only - no cloud access.

My only "failure" so far is my F-150 Lightning which uses its own cellular connection for the app. Although I did manage to get a spare key fob and hack it into an ESP32 to give me local-only lock, unlock and remote starting.

[matt@mastodon.knight.fyi]

@brouhaha or more worryingly, they decided that the technique worked (she allowed hers to connect eventually!) so they rolled it out more broadly.

I really feel like a nag message like that should be grounds for a warranty claim or return.