These devices are home-polling, which means commands/info is managed through WAN and their home servers.
Even if you don’t use their app, it still uses their servers.
FWIW, i also use home assistant. But some of the devices I have were not choices I made, so it’s a slow trudge replacing them all with locally-managed devices.
Couple things:
That said: of course i advocate against these brands. I have several zigbee dimmer switches ready to swap out with leviton already. But that doesn’t mean this information shouldn’t be widely circulated when it surfaces, so that other people know the landscape better when they go to purchase.
It’s any of their products that utilize their app or web servers to work. Here’s their ToS, and below is a snippet:
Automated Processes and Artificial Intelligence This mobile app may use automated processes and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide you with personalized features and recommendations. We collect and process your data, such as your preferences, behavior, and feedback, to improve our app and deliver better services to you. We respect your privacy and we are committed to protecting your personal information. You can review our full privacy policy here: https://my.leviton.com/home/privacy. By using this app, you consent to our use of AI and data processing as described in our privacy policy.
And their privacy policy:
- INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT
Leviton collects information you provide as users who access the App, register for accounts, use the App, or request information as well as data from Leviton Product(s) once it is registered with a valid account on the App. Information is collected on an ongoing basis and when you access information using the App, which then accesses one or more Leviton or third-party servers. Leviton works with third party analytics companies (such as Adobe Analytics) to aid and improve the App’s functionality, and who may use technology to automatically collect the types of data listed below. Such data may be collected, analyzed and used for the following purposes: i) to enable you to access and use the App and connected Leviton Products and services,(i.e. account registration and management) ii) to operate and optimize the App and the user experience, iii) to send administrative information to you (i.e. updates to this policy), iv) to identify usage trends and to evaluate and create improved and more advanced features for the Apps and connected Leviton Products and services, v) to tailor marketing efforts and the like vi) to protect our App, Leviton Products, and Services, and/or vii) to comply with legal or regulatory requirements. Your information may be shared with third parties, such as service providers, in limited circumstances, as described below.
User Data. Set-up information you provide, including email address, name, address or coordinates (the location of your Leviton Products). Biometric data, such as images, may be collected if videos or images are provided to Leviton, i.e. as required for customer service support. Usernames, phone numbers, contact preferences and authentication data. Usage Details. When you access and use the App, certain details of your access to and use of the App, including the resources that you access and use on or through the App may be automatically collected, including: direct adjustments to the Leviton products using the App, technical information from the Leviton products (to improve your experience over time and help troubleshoot issues), electricity usage, capacity, and power information (every time a Leviton Product is turned on or off, the App records the time and duration to offer features in usage history), current status of the Leviton Product, and usage schedules, among other related data necessary for the functionality of the device. Mobile Device Information. We may collect information about the mobile device from which you access the App, including the device’s unique device identifier, IP address, operating system, browser type, mobile network information, the device’s telephone number, in addition to the internet connection. Additionally, as needed from time to time, we may request access to certain features from your mobile device, including the microphone, camera, etc. Location Information. This App does not collect real-time information about the location of your mobile device, but it does collect environmental data (such as user location and Bluetooth-enabled device location) that supports certain Leviton Product features, e.g. Astronomical Clock) from the Leviton Products that are used with the App in real-time. App Usage. We collect the frequency of the App usage, frequency of individual features of the Leviton Products usage, and how features of the App and the related Leviton Products are used. Partner Data. Some of your information or data provided to third-party products and services that interface with the Leviton Products may also be provided to Leviton. We may also obtain information about you from joint partners, public databases and other third-parties. Web Server Logs. When you visit our App, we may track information through web server logs to better administer the App and analyze its usage. Examples of information we may track include but is not limited to your Internet Protocol address, the type of browser or mobile device you use, the number of links you click within the App, the geographical location from which you accessed the App, the date and time of your visit, and the name of your Internet service provider.
and section 3:
Leviton may share data with third party vendors, service providers, contractors, or agents. These may include affiliate marketing programs, cloud computing services, data analytics services, data storage service providers, performance monitoring and testing tools, web hosting service providers, and product engineering and design tools.
I’ve had a proxmox machine running for about a year now, and just set up a standalone Frankenstein NAS running truenas scale (only because I was having trouble with HBA firmware on truenas core)
If you’re new to zfs, truenas is an easier entrypoint because its GUI is easier to understand. Proxmox has been rough for me, and I’m often jumping into the cli to manually do things that I think should be easy to do in the GUI but aren’t.
That said, proxmox is more full-featured and (I think) more stable and lightweight than truenas scale. If you’re comfortable with zfs, or learning how to manage it via cli, then I think proxmox is a better workhorse.
Long-term, though, do you foresee expanding storage? A single 8TB hdd seems unlikely to fit your needs for very long.
There seems to be two types of homelabbers with regards to storage:
I’ve made the mistake of asking the second group what they thought about types and quantities of storage, and I got quite a few “why are you concerned?” type questions. My guess is that they regard obtaining data to be free/trivial, so storing it redundantly is a pointless cost. I’ll just say that I don’t share their cavalier attitude.
This setup is my personal goal, and I think refurbished drives are the best way to go about it (provided they are reasonably taken care of). If you’re working in a redundant setup, the age of the drives matters a lot less.
that’s all true. I’m anxious to get them open and see what they test at; it really seems like some of them are unused, but that could just be because they were refurbished and re-packaged. I’m really curious what the spin times are.
I think this might strike the right balance.
I kinda get where everyone else is coming from, about enterprise grade drives being more performance than needed, but with the reliability of these drives it just doesn’t make sense to me to get rid of them all. The power use difference between these and other NAS drives is pretty negligible, and the parts needed to utilize a SAS array aren’t all that expensive in comparison to buying new drives (even if I sold all of these, I don’t think i could get as much for them as what even a used consumer drive would be).
These are 4TB drives, so an array of 4 in a raid 5 configuration would get me 12 TB. I could go up to a more redundant raid with more disks, so maybe I’ll get a shelf/case that can hold 6 or 8 or even 12, and plan for adding more later. I have a high-efficiency micro-atx sitting on my desk with a couple empty PCIE slots, all i’m missing I think is a SAS controller and a case/PSU.
I’m always hurting for more space, so to me it’s smart even just to have them sitting on a shelf for when I need another.
This is a great observation, and it made me do some math:
If my point of comparison is something like a seagate ironwolf 4T vs a WD Ultrastar 4T:
Seagate Ironwolf:
- 3.7W*24 Hours/day*365 days/year = 32kWh per year * $0.18/kWh = $5.84 per year in power usage * 12 disks in an array = $70.02 per year
*Edit: Looking at this closer, a more reasonable comparison would be an ironwolf PRO disk, since this is a NAS use-case (24-7 run time, large and repeated writes and reads, ect). The power consumption for that is 5.5W, which is a lot closer to the Ultrastar*
WD Ultrastar:
- 7W*24 Hours/day*365 days/year = 61kWh per year * $0.18/kWh = $11.05 per year in power usage * 12 disks in an array = $132.6 per year
Seems like i’d save maybe $70 per year. I feel like that difference might even be justifiable if the enterprise drives are half as likely to fail (seagate ironwolf has an AFR of 0.87%, WD Ultrastar is 0.44%).
Something to think about, at least
I second this. It took me a really long time how to properly mount network storage on proxmox VM’s/LXC’s, so just be prepared and determine the configuration ahead of time. Unprivilaged LXC’s have differen’t root user mappings, and you can’t mount an SMB directly into a container (someone correct me if i’m wrong here), so if you go that route you will need to fuss a bit with user maps.
I personally have a VM running with docker for the arr suite and a separate LXC’s for my sambashare and streaming services. It’s easy to coordinate mount points with the compose.yml files, but still tricky getting the network storage mounted for read/write within the docker containers and LXC’s.
Or if you have other features you don’t want to downgrade. For example, my 2016 Mazda has errors, oil status, and a bunch of other system info accessed through the headunit.
But I’m a little data-obsessed right now, so I acknowledge I might be the weirdo
This is what I want, but they make it very difficult to build something with parity unless you’re willing to sniff CANBUS codes one by one
for anyone following along: I fixed it, at least until the next reboot 🫡
I am still dealing with lxc permission issues on my proxmox container lol
I’ve been starting my first homelab with proxmox and think it’s an excellent choice, but keep in mind even the best hypervisor software has a learning curve. Granted, I was having hardware issues, but it took me a long time to troubleshoot my setup when things were failing just because there’s a lot going on in the background.
I wouldn’t recommend anything else honestly, but just keep in mind you might not get it right the first time and that’s ok.
My only advice is to make sure you have backups of anything valuable, that way if you’re like me and something goes wrong, you don’t lose your media collection when the drive goes bad 🤡
I highly recommend this one.
If all you’re looking for is a way to send files from your phone to your server, this is the simplest way to do it.
Share your server volume as a SMB, mount to phone via Material Files.