My fight for privacy in IoT

I absolutely hate IoT devices 'calling home'. HATE. This also includes devices that solely operate using the 'cloud'. I much prefer my own devices to stay within my network and not calling out, telling whatever corporation what I'm doing within my own home. Simply have a look at the following network logs I found my Tuya bulbs doing on an every 5 minute basis. This is just 1 of the many switches I have located in my house.

EVERY 5 MINUTES. This is insane! That is so much data!

As you may see, I have blocked this traffic from exiting my network, however, there's always a convenience sacrifice you must make if you want privacy. With this blocking policy, I was no longer able to control by bulbs remotely, either from the Tuya app or Google Home app.

I was able to overcome this through my Home Assistant setup, which you can read into in the Home Assistant Setup article. Long story short, it controls everything locally through a custom integration, and I can access my Home Assistant instance remotely securely across my IPsec VPN or CloudFlared tunnel.