I recently bought an EcoFlow Max power station. I liked the fact that it had a Local API that I could use to integrate it with Home Assistant. It allows me to see charge status, solor input, AC output, and more all from my existing Home Automation platform.
Well, exactly 2 days after I got the unit I saw there was a firmware update available. Me being someone mindful about security and making sure things are updated, I went ahead and did it. Come to find out, this update breaks the one thing I liked about the product. WTF, right?
Following some of the GitHub issues that were opened about this, there are alternative methods to pull the same data, however they depend on the internet. This brings up one valid point: "If I use this in a power outage where the internet could potentially be down, how would I see the values in the app?" to which the response is "You are shit out of luck".
Companies that use this "Cloud first" mentality are missing one important detail: Internet providers can suck about connectivity. So if your product DEPENDS on the internet that may or may not go down, how the fuck are we supposed to control the device reliably? Their answer: "Oh well, our data mining is more important than you using a device YOU paid for". It is bullshit.
Anyway, I wanted to share my email to the company so that anyone reading this can have a laugh.
I will preface this email with: I know whomever reads this email probably doesn't have the ability to change anything about the product, however if there is a way to make sure the proper folks see this, please hear me out. If not, enjoy my rant. I recently purchased a Delta Max unit and I loved the fact that it had a local API that allowed me to integrate with my existing home automation platform (Home Assistant).
As I am sure you are already aware, the latest firmware update disabled the local API and made integration with Home Assistant impossible. This was extremely frustrating as I was using Home Assistant to manage things such as when to enable AC charging (for instance, when the battery is lower than 10%, enable AC charging, otherwise keep it off and allow Solar to charge the unit).
Now for folks who are not as aware of local control, sure. The cloud makes sense for them, it is easier to setup and allows them to see the status from anywhere.
I get it, but not everyone is like this. You are alienating a potential audience of Home Assistant users that do not like using cloud infrastructure when the device is on the local network and can be accessed DIRECTLY from Home Assistant rather than having to go over the internet. What if my power goes out, or network and I lose the ability to control my Delta Max? It becomes a useless feature, and this feature was one of the main reasons I bought the unit in the first place. While I know you claim it was for "security" reasons, this is not 100% the case. I am a backend API developer at a popular software company (yes I am pulling that card because too many times IOT companies use the "security" excuse as a reason for disabling local control, and it is simply not true if it is done correctly). I can tell you, there is no need to block this port completely. Perhaps blocking by default, but allowing an option to opt-in in the app would be a better solution.
All the other IOT devices in my house have local API control, which is why I picked those devices. I shouldn't have to reach out to some server over the internet to see what the battery level is on a device that is literally 2 feet away from me, or to turn on a light that is right next to me. It makes 0 sense.
The product itself is amazing and has so much potential, but you are missing out on a potential audience of users who PREFER local control over cloud. Don't believe me? Check Home Assistant and the number of users. Checkout YouTube channels DEDICATED to IOT devices that provide local control. Checkout all the other IOT companies who have implemented local control, because of the great work from the Home Assistant folks. They see the potential, why don't you?
For reference, here is the integration that someone kindly wrote to integrate YOUR device into Home Assistant. You didn't have to do any of this, someone did it for free and the only thing you had to do was not disable the API that was already there and working just fine.
https://github.com/vwt12eh8/hassio-ecoflow
If there are no plans allow the local API control via opt-in, unfortunately I will be returning my unit (I am within Amazon's 30-day return window) and going with a better solution that meets my needs. Yes, I pulled that card too, $1500 (or whatever crazy amount of money I paid for this unit) is not a small amount of money for most people and it is BS that I bought something only to have the one thing I liked about the product taken away within the first week of ownership.
Hope you enjoyed! I will be posting more about Home Assistant/Local control in the future.