I discovered some items on clearance at Home Depot, a Wyze Outdoor duplex plug and a Defiant smart plug. Did a little research on the modules I found inside and was pleased that both used esp32 microcontrollers. I got both disassembled, soldered up, and got to work flashing ESPHome, The Wyze was went well and is now integrated into my HA. Unfortunately the Defiant smart plug was defiant and when hooked up to do the flash I got a “Download mode disabled, reset with GPIO0 high.” Researching that I found that newer esp32 chips have a “Secure boot” fuse that once set disables future firmware updates from the UART. Not sure yet if there is an OTA exploit like the with BK7321 toya chips, but i’m not hopefull. If anyone knows of something let me know.
I really don’t understand why they lock the hardware like this.
Dear manufacturer: are you committed to update your device for at least a decade and use open protocols? The answer is always no, so just allow us to void the warranty and install tasmota or esphome.
Electrical installations should be considered almost permanent, support should last decades. I’m not willing to replace a “smart” relay every few years because the app broken
Sometimes it’s “liability”
If putting bad software on it could possibly start a fire or electrocute someone, they’ll put in measures to kill it
A relay will do what a relay does, turn on and off. No matter what software you put on the smart plug, it can’t really become too dangerous. Unreliable maybe, but most of these smart plugs are just that, a dumb relay controlled via a microcontroller
Fair.