[HN Gopher] Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud
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Freeing a Xiaomi humidifier from the cloud
Author : stv0g
Score : 137 points
Date : 2025-12-12 06:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (0l.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (0l.de)
| piskov wrote:
| On a tangent note: don't use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless
| distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5
| particles.
|
| Use evaporative humidifiers (just disks with myriads of small
| notches for water to cling on and a fan):
| https://us.smartmiglobal.com/pages/smartmi-evaporative-humid...
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Alec from Technology Connections also has a great video
| comparing humidifiers here
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28
| neilv wrote:
| That Smartmi model seems to have toxic IoT in it.
|
| I'm currently using the Vornado EV100 non-IoT evaporative
| humidifier, and my only complaints are relatively minor, as
| humidifiers go (consumable wick, fan noise, insanely bright
| blue LEDs).
| https://www.vornado.com/shop/humidifiers/evaporative/ev100-e...
| piskov wrote:
| You don't need to connect it -- works completely offline.
|
| Also no consumable parts there: just plastic disks which you
| clean with couple of spoons of citric acid dissolved in water
| from time to time.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Couldn't you just use vinegar?
| kccqzy wrote:
| Distilled water isn't strictly necessary. I use mine with
| purified water with a reverse osmosis purifier. I periodically
| test the TDS of the water to confirm it is low. It's fine.
| piskov wrote:
| I've run dyson ultrasonic humidifiers for a few years. The
| whole appartment was in white dust.
|
| Especially evident on some black leather bags in the
| wardrobe.
| kccqzy wrote:
| You can buy a cheap tester for TDS (total dissolved solids)
| for <$20. Test the water before pouring it into any
| ultrasonic humidifier.
| esaym wrote:
| > Use evaporative humidifiers
|
| You don't have to buy one either. A suspended wet towel with a
| fan blowing on it will work very well. If you want to get
| fancy, have the last inch or two of the towel sitting in a tray
| of water.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| But then I have to buy the towel and the fan, the tray,
| something to suspend the towel at the right height ...
| dependency_2x wrote:
| This is cheaper, and the towel and fan can be repurposed.
| Just buy a 3D printer for making the the suspension part
| (/jest)
| jgalt212 wrote:
| That's a permanent bachelor design aesthetic.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Turns out young me was on to something, I wasn't just
| leaving wet towels laying around, I was fixing the air
| humidity problem.
| abraae wrote:
| My brother's house in Perth, Australia has an antique air
| conditioning system in the roof space that works in exactly
| this principle. 4 blankets that wick up water and have air
| drawn through them and into the house by a fan. It's in
| disuse now but I understand they were common and quite
| effective in the day.
| nvch wrote:
| The best solution I've found a few years ago is one Venta LW 45
| for every 30 m2 of space. That's enough to run them on the
| lowest speed while maintaining acceptable humidity and CO2
| levels.
|
| Higher speeds are too noisy. Smaller machines evaporate less.
|
| For sub-zero outside temperatures, it's necessary to add at
| least 5 g of water to each cubic metre of air coming from
| outside.
|
| The recommended ventilation rate of 30 m3/h per person requires
| to evaporate 4 liters of water per day.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Which venta are you referencing here?
| mercnet wrote:
| They are referencing https://www.venta-
| air.com/en_us/product/lw45-original-humidi...
|
| I also have one and love how easy it is to clean.
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| For $500 it better clean itself
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I bought two Ventas well over a decade ago, and they
| still work as well as the day I bought them. They're an
| expensive initial investment, but IMO worth it over the
| long run.
|
| They are also mechanically simple, so I trust that if
| they ever break, I will be able to repair them.
| dalyons wrote:
| That's a lot of refilling. You might want to look into a
| whole house humidifier, I added an aprilaire 700 evaporative
| to my hvac ducts, it costs a few hundred $. Plumbed in,
| automatic. So much less screwing around
| gessha wrote:
| What sort of maintenance do you have to do on it?
| dalyons wrote:
| Once a season / 6 mo of running you replace the
| evaporator panel, which is ~$50 for branded or $10 for
| amazon copies.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| How did we survive the last 3.5 billion years?
| HappyJoy wrote:
| A lot of us didn't
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| Glad to know that's solved now
| gpm wrote:
| We didn't have access to modern technology... like ultrasonic
| speakers?
|
| Also we died at a young age. Everyone dying at 40 isn't
| incompatible with the species surviving but it's what advice
| like that is usually trying to avoid (and even less extreme
| outcomes).
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| The concept of everyone dying at 40 is a
| myth/misunderstanding anyways - the reality was a lot more
| bimodal than that.
| gpm wrote:
| Eh, here it's more of a simplification than a myth as
| used in my comment. There are two effects:
|
| 1. We've reduced infant (and childhood) mortality. My
| comment isn't talking about this effect but it did drag
| down average life expectancy substantially. Including
| this effect life expectancy at birth in the stone age
| might have been as low as 20... but as you say the
| bimodality means this is a deceptive statistic when used
| this way.
|
| 2. We've made it so you on average live longer even if
| you survive childhood, my comment is really just about
| this part of the effect. It's still a simplification
| because saying "on average if you survive childhood you
| die at 40" isn't the same as "everyone dies at 40" but
| closer to "adults die at all ages in a reasonable smooth
| monotonic curve and 40 is about the average age they live
| to but some get lucky and live to 80 or whatever". But
| then "don't use ultrasonic dehumidifiers" is like this
| too, using one won't kill you at some specific age, it
| will just slightly increase your chance of death every
| year for the rest of your life however long that ends up
| being.
|
| The number 40 was picked out of a hat, too. It should be
| right for some areas at some times just by coincidence
| though and since I was non-specific that makes me right
| ;)
| somenameforme wrote:
| The age 40 includes childhood mortality! It's difficult
| to get records from prehistoric humans for obvious
| reasons, but as early as Ancient Greece you had the upper
| class living about as long as we do now a days. A study
| of men of the time found the average life expectancy to
| be 71.3 years. [1]
|
| And while the Bible includes plentiful mythological
| components, it also includes many historical and
| contemporary accounts. And this verse is certainly of the
| latter: "The length of our days is generally seventy
| years, or eighty years if one is strong, yet even the
| best of these years are filled with toil and sorrow, for
| they pass quickly and we fly away." That is part of the
| Old Testament (Psalms 90:10) that is believed to have
| been written somewhere from 1400-1200BC.
|
| If you want more contemporary stuff that's completely
| indisputable you can also take random selections of
| people of renown. For instance the main Founding Fathers
| are a great example because they all were relatively
| young when their names become inexorably etched into
| history, yet their final life expectancy is again well
| into the 70s. The youngest major founding father to die
| was Hamilton, in a duel - at 49. Then Hancock died at 56
| - likely of gout which can be caused by things like
| excessive indulgence. Next up was Washington who died at
| 67, probably more of the cure than the disease - he was
| leeched to the point of being pale as a ghost on his
| death bed. Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Sam Adams, John
| Jay all lived to their 80s. John Adams made it to his
| 90s.
|
| ---
|
| I am not trying to claim these samples are
| representative. These were wealthy individuals who would
| be relatively immune to famine, war, and other such
| factors that could have a catastrophic effect on lower
| classes. But when speaking of life expectancy, I think we
| are implicitly asking the question 'how long could
| somebody reasonably expect to live xxxx years ago without
| access to modern medicine and technology.' And that's
| what this sampling of people answers.
|
| [1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18359748/
| Cpoll wrote:
| > The length of our days is generally seventy years, or
| eighty years if one is strong
|
| Which translation is that? Or are you paraphrasing?
|
| Most translations don't include "generally," and
| therefore read more as an upper bound "if one is strong"
| than an average.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Just a poor memory translation. Yeah, generally is
| incorrect - though I think the correct phrasing also
| implies an average age of natural death, rather than an
| upper bound. There were certainly plenty of people living
| past 80. In the aforementioned study of Ancient Greeks,
| there were at least 3 centurions - Aristarchos,
| Democritos, and Gorgias. Granted 1400BC is a thousand
| years yet prior to that already ancient time, but life
| peaks seem to be relatively unmoving for humans, and so I
| don't see any major reason to think there would have been
| a major difference between 400BC and 1400BC.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| So up until about two or three years ago when everyone
| suddenly became terrified of "particulates", people died at
| 40?
|
| The Victorians called, they want their Night Air Panic
| back.
| wpm wrote:
| Quite poorly in fact
| dangus wrote:
| This is pretty crappy one-size-fits-all advice in itself.
|
| If you're willing to use distilled water, ultrasonic
| humidifiers have their own advantages over evaporative.
|
| I'm personally willing to buy distilled water. It's a dollar
| per gallon, and we only need the humidifier during a short few
| months. You can even buy a small countertop water distiller for
| under $60.
| butvacuum wrote:
| I'm thoroughly unconvinced.
|
| Doing some basic research... hard water is overwhelmingly
| various carbonate and bicarbonates of magnesium, calcium,
| sulfur, iron, maganese, and aluminum. All of which are
| essential nutrients and readily soluable in water.
|
| The other proposed problem was pathogen aerosols- however I
| was unable to access anything but an abstract. So, I don't
| know if they survived being aerosolized, produced more and/or
| worse pathogen count than evaporative humidifiers, Nor the
| size of the pathogens.
|
| It seems to me the known risk is mostly mechanical (Asthma,
| exacerbated COPD, etc) and nonpersistent (particles dissolve
| and are used or excreted via the same pathways as when
| consumed). With an unknown risk on the pathogen side.
| bsder wrote:
| > If you're willing to use distilled water, ultrasonic
| humidifiers have their own advantages over evaporative.
|
| Unless you are anally retentive about cleaning it, ultrasonic
| humidifiers vaporize microbes into the air. There have been
| loads of studies about this.
|
| The only real way to avoid this is to use the humidifiers
| that are boiling the water.
| dangus wrote:
| The real pro tip is to get a whole home humidifier. They
| aren't even that expensive. But I haven't taken the plunge
| yet.
|
| They avoid all these issues and require way less
| maintenance than any other solution.
| dheera wrote:
| I found this too. I wonder why they don't just accept a PUR
| water filter on the input side.
|
| I also wonder why mini-split heating systems drip and pool
| water outdoors instead of pumping that distilled water back
| indoors for humidification.
| somat wrote:
| It's funny in an ironic way because the original purpose of
| air conditioners was to remove humidity from the air, the
| mechanism used was to cool the air down thus forcing some of
| the moisture out. The general public quickly caught on that
| having cool air was nice in it's own right and that is the
| main purpose these days. however the dehumidifying function
| is still sometimes used, people are surprised when their air
| conditioner turns on at the same time as the heater (why are
| they fighting each other?) but that is because the system is
| trying to remove moisture from the air before it is heated.
| Mainly seen in cars so the windows don't fog up.
|
| Probably something wrong with me but I just find it humorous
| trying to add moisture to a system designed to remove it.
| Really a reasonable request however, depending on where you
| live the air can get quite dry.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > I also wonder why mini-split heating systems drip and pool
| water outdoors instead of pumping that distilled water back
| indoors for humidification.
|
| Do you want Legionnaire's Disease? Because that's how you get
| Legionnaire's Disease.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Philadelphia_Legionnaires.
| ..
| Ekaros wrote:
| During summer dehumidification is needed in most areas.
|
| And it is really not distilled water. It gathers dust and so
| on from air. Distilling in more so closed circuit, where as
| those are very much open.
| throwawaysoxjje wrote:
| You'd need a reverse osmosis system, not just he charcoal
| filters like that
|
| And the condensate water from an AC evaporator coil is not
| anything like distilled water, dust/bacteria are also in it.
| wnevets wrote:
| > On a tangent note: don't use ultrasonic humidifiers. Unless
| distilled water is used, they create a shit-ton of pm2.5
| particles.
|
| Not according to my uHoo air quality monitor. I have had one
| running a few feet from the monitor for over a week and there
| hasn't been any notable increase in PM2.5 particles.
| Elucalidavah wrote:
| > any notable increase in PM2.5 particles
|
| What's your PM2.5 baseline, and did you measure TDS in the
| water?
| wnevets wrote:
| Since Nov it's been fluctuating between 5-7 ug/mg, with a
| few spikes hitting 9 and 10. At this moment its a 6.
|
| I haven't checked the TDS but when I used a water test
| strip for an aquarium early this year it was in the hard
| water range.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Thanks to this post, I checked my ultrasonic filled with
| tap water. With it running all night in a bedroom with an
| open door, morning pm2.5 readings are ~30 and the meter is
| in the kitchen.
| piskov wrote:
| Last time I checked (brought my sensor to the office to one
| room with ultrasonic) it showed 101/105 ug/m3 for pm2.5/pm10
|
| In the next room (where there were none) it was 6.
|
| Depends on the water, I guess.
| wnevets wrote:
| How large is the space with the humidifier? My space is
| wide open and that might be the biggest reason for my lack
| of increased PM2.5 readings.
| klatchex_too wrote:
| I think the parent poster is correct that it depends on
| the water.
|
| I have a couple ultrasonic humidifiers, if tap water is
| put in them it immediately sends the AQI on my air
| quality monitor into the "Dangerous" level. I have the
| monitor upstairs and it detected it when my girlfriend
| put tap water in the humidifier downstairs.
|
| Purified or distilled water works fine. I bought a
| counter top water distiller because it was a pain lugging
| 15 gallons of water into the house every week all winter.
| You can see the residue of whatever was in the tap water
| at the bottom of the distiller after it runs and it
| doesn't look like anything I would want to be breathing.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The ones I had for a bit basically fogged out the apartment
| immediately and left white (i'm guessing salt) deposits all
| over everything. I know you are supposed to use distilled but
| it's cost prohibitive at the rate these blow through water
| unless you also have a home distillery.
| marcinpieczka wrote:
| Are pm2.5 particles a problem if they are water soluble? After
| entering the body they will just dissolve.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Don't use evaporative humidifiers(the motorized wet towel). I
| don't know if it actually cause legionellosis, but it's not
| very sanitary, and the sanitizing additives for those are known
| to be actually harmful.
|
| Use boiling type humidifiers (basically just electric tea
| kettles).
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Drying clothes indoors is also effective. When I set up my
| laundry rack rh can surge by 30%. I imagine setting up a tray
| of water under a ceiling fan might be similarly effective.
| N_Lens wrote:
| A humidifier needs network capability incase someone discovers a
| new version of water, or for the manufacturer to be able to patch
| remote exploits.
|
| https://xkcd.com/3109/
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's becuase Xiaomi integrated it just like all of it's other
| smart home products with Mijia - Xiaomi's smart home mesh [0].
|
| In Asia (but arguably the same in the West given the
| proliferation of Ring and smart home hubs), consumers have less
| of an aversion to smart home and connected products in general.
|
| Keeping IoT devices on a separate segmented network with strict
| DMZing, turning off unused features, and not sharing passwords
| would provide enough security for most home users. I recommend
| reading James Micken's essay "The World is Ours" [1] on the
| diminishing returns of certain security features at the expense
| of user experience. I also agree with it as someone who used to
| do edgy stuff with SHODAN as a teenager.
|
| HNers tend to be the minority amongst consumers, which is
| assuming the opposite of the HN herd mentality tends to be a
| fairly successful strategy.
|
| [0] - https://www.mi.com/global/smart-home/
|
| [1] -
| https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf
| nrhrjrjrjtntbt wrote:
| Xkcd for everything as always
| techsystems wrote:
| Hah! How exact
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I'm all for KISS.
|
| But in a rare instance, xkcd is missing the point here. People
| do not live in their rooms 24/7, but they do want to be able
| to, e.g., turn stuff on or off remotely, or based on
| environmental conditions (turn on/off based on outside sensors
| or the current electricity price...) or to get status alerts
| ("tank empty, refill").
|
| Now, I do that via Home Assistant and keep anything "smart" on
| a highly-restricted vnet ... but not everyone is a geek. While
| the standard implementation (some cloud service) comes with a
| bouquet of problems, it basically acts as a simplified Home
| Assistant, and ultimately as a necessary crutch. Preferably
| we'd be in IPv6-land, where ISPs would not NAT everything to
| death and we could talk to our devices remotely without an
| intermediary ... but well ... it cannot be helped.
|
| "You're not going to need it" and "In my time, we just flipped
| a dumb switch" is paternalistic hogwash, not clever social
| commentary. Back in my days, we also didn't need satnav (just
| read a paper map), or cell phones (write them a note, leave it
| on the fridge, nothing is so important to demand imminence), or
| dishwashers (just do your dishes by hand)
| mrweasel wrote:
| Obviously all these smart appliance are about remote
| management, but I have to question how much usage it's
| getting in real life. My parents got a few smart devices for
| their holiday home, as my dad didn't want to drive 45 minutes
| both ways to check up on things during the winter. I think he
| probably ended up spending more time managing the IoT stuff
| that he ever did driving.
|
| It create to have the option to manage something remote, but
| when remote become the only option, the usability takes a
| dive. When I have to go find my phone, unlock it, find the
| app, possible update the app, find the right setting or menu,
| stare at "Failure to connect to device", and whatever else
| might go wrong, it's quicker and easier to just manage the
| device directly. We got rid of our robot vacuum clear,
| because it's literally quicker and better to go get our 20
| year old regular vacuum, and the floor is done in 3 minutes,
| not the 20+ the Roomba needs (and I needed to clear the room
| for it). When we used the Roomba, 99% of the time I pushed
| the "Start" button on the device, because it's way quicker
| than using the app.
|
| There's a place for smart devices, but they need to be much
| better and have local controls.
| somehnguy wrote:
| I still think the value prop is dubious for a device like
| this.
|
| > turn stuff on or off remotely
|
| Why? Nearly all modern humidifiers have a sensor to measure
| humidity and will cycle on and off based on the setpoint.
| Getting to the setpoint also takes time so I don't see any
| reason someone would want to turn it on and off based on
| presence.
|
| > (turn on/off based on outside sensors or the current
| electricity price...)
|
| Not sure why the outside sensors would matter, it's concerned
| with the inside humidity which again it has a sensor to read.
| The amount of electricity these take to run isn't worth even
| mentioning.
|
| > get status alerts ("tank empty, refill")
|
| So you can refill it remotely? You have to be present to fill
| it anyway - just look at the thing and you'll know its water
| level
|
| I say all this as someone who also run Home Assistant and
| automates various things.
| airstrike wrote:
| Can you do HP printers next
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Yup! Step 1: fill your printer with two liters of distilled
| water.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I have an hp envy 5030. It has done nothing dystopian so far.
| Just acts as a dumb wlan printer it seems.
| hs586 wrote:
| Tangential rant: It's becoming hard to buy dumb appliances.
|
| I was looking at robot vacuums, and most need internet connection
| at least for setup - by which point it's already uploaded your
| floor plan and who knows what to the cloud.
| gloxkiqcza wrote:
| https://valetudo.cloud/
|
| The project was recently discussed on HN as well. It has its
| issues but it works.
| einsteinx2 wrote:
| Not sure that's a great example when you can easily buy a
| regular vacuum. Robot vacuums are sort of by definition already
| the "smart appliance" version of the "dumb appliance regular
| vacuum".
| hs586 wrote:
| I understand what you mean, but I disagree. The technology
| allows for robot vacuums to exist and I don't see the cloud
| connection as a mandatory need for it. Similarly, I want my
| car to have say lane assist but we don't expect to have cloud
| connection with it.
| rokoss21 wrote:
| Great project! This resonates with me - been using ESPHome for a
| year now and it's solid. One tip: if you're concerned about
| reliability, pair it with a PoE switch for your ESP devices.
| Makes recovery much easier if something goes wrong.
|
| Also curious about your power consumption - did you measure watts
| before/after switching from Xiaomi's cloud solution?
| roger_ wrote:
| Pretty shocked that Xiaomi publishes the protocol:
| https://iot.mi.com/new/doc/accesses/direct-access/embedded-d...
| aeve890 wrote:
| A whole ass esp32 module in the board? Never seen something like
| that. I mean I've seen esp32 iot devices but with chips directly
| in the board, not as a separated module. It looks like hobbyist
| job.
| skeledrew wrote:
| This got me thinking about how my AC is somewhat ticking me off.
| A couple years ago I bought a smart AC, and when I got around to
| wanting to use the smart feature (via the app), I learned that I
| need to create a Tuya account and connect via that. Today I'm
| still manually pushing the buttons, as I wasn't having any of
| that, and the community Tuya tools I found out there are
| dependent on an account.
|
| A couple weeks ago I took a preliminary look jailbreaking it.
| Main thing holding me back is a fear of bricking it and being
| left with an expensive, oversized paperweight, as the electricity
| here tends to chip at random times and could do so just at a
| critical point of the process. It also bugs me that I can find 0
| information about the device; it's like the "Bluesonik" brand
| doesn't have an internet presence. But perhaps one day I'll just
| throw caution to the wind and attempt a Tasmota flash (without
| even knowing if the board is supported) and hope for the best,
| similar to when I rooted and flashed my first Android phone for
| the first time 15 years ago.
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