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Don't throw out these 7 old smart home devices, the open-source community found a way to rescue them

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Don't throw out these 7 old smart home devices, the open-source community found a way to rescue them

Buying smart home devices that rely on cloud-based services is always a risk. If the cloud service goes down, or worse, is discontinued completely, then your smart home devices can become nothing but expensive paperweights. Thankfully, there are plenty of open-source projects that can rescue smart home devices that have been abandoned by their manufacturers.

The original Nest Learning Thermostat was a genuine game changer, showing exactly how useful a smart thermostat could be. It looked great, too. Sadly, Google ended support for first- and second-generation models in 2025, removing their cloud connectivity and remote features. You can control them locally, but many of the smart capabilities are gone.

The awesomely named No Longer Evil project is open-source firmware you can flash to these abandoned models, letting you self-host a replacement service, including through Home Assistant. This brings back many of the most useful features, such as remote temperature control, operating modes, and more, making your smart thermostat smart once again.

Neato's range of robot vacuum cleaners offered useful features such as app control, cleaning schedules, and LiDAR navigation. When Neato ended its cloud service, many models lost some of the most useful connected features.

OpenNeato is an open-source project that uses an ESP32 to connect to the robot vacuum's debug port. The ESP32 then hosts its own local web interface that you can use to control the robot vacuum without the need for a Neato account, Neato app, or cloud connection. You can access the standard controls, set schedules, see battery information, and even access a representation of the vacuum's LiDAR data.


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