Is there any Privacy Respecting/Ethical hardware out there?
I’m a Prepper for lack of a better word and I’m anxious about a 3rd party shutting down or monitoring my Equipment. Like for instance the Government through Operating system back doors or any others that might do so acting in their on their own self interests.
Some of the reasons why I’m concerned are:-
I’ve heard of software licenses expire bricking every device on earth with the same model number.
I’ve seen first hand Microsoft altering things in my laptop needing only my product key.
I’ve watched the Australia Parliament pushing a bill ordering software developers to provide them with back doors and discussing an advanced government surveillance system called the capability.
I’ve heard of BMW and John Deer switching off hardware that people own in order to introduce Subscription based functionality.
I have concerns about geo fenced and internet dependent devices being unable to work when the internet and satellites go offline (I’ve personally had hardware malfunction due to internet drop outs and GPS jamming).
Even my JK BMS needs location services on for some reason.
Someone made a virus that activated when it found the VSDs running Iranian Nuclear centrifuges destroying them by running them at resonant frequencies.
God only knows what AI could do to us.
I want some devices smart enough to do the job without being a security threat and will work in a long term grid down situation.
I was going to ask also for suggestions for devices that isn’t engineered to limit service life or be unrepairable through planned obsolescence, Even though all this existed once it seems it has become a bit of a tall order in 2023.
I’m looking for Solar and UPS/inverter Equipment as well as a BMS with monitoring and a 2A active balancing capabilities.
I have a built 2 Batteries so far an 280Ah S4 Lifepo4 for a UPS/backup and a 30Ah S14 NMC Battery For an Escooter both with JK bmss.
I’m charging them with a Riden 6024 at the moment.
I hope I have started a thread the brings power back to the people. No pun intended.
Thanks in advance to all the open minded answerers out there.
Just search for solar hardware which have software that can be operated locally (which don't force cloud operation only). Like for example, Solar Assistant has a local-only option (to disable cloud connection), or Victron Connect have local-only options. Then also, when setting any IPs on those devices, don't set gateway addresses, put a firewall rule in your router in blocking inbound and outbound on those IPs for any solar equipment (second layer of safety in case the device tries to auto-detect a gateway).
Purchase a public IP from your ISP, set it on one of your WAN interfaces. Get a home router that supports (Open VPN) oVPN or similar. Create your own private/public key pair on your oVPN server, import the client cert file (.ovpn file) on your smartphones into oVPN client.
Now you can remotely (from anywhere in the world) open a VPN connection to your LAN network in your house, and ping any of your LAN IPs and log into any local devices there, to access your local web services or any other app which requires device access. Can even RDP to any local Windows boxes in your house (or VNC for Linux or Mac). There are oVPN client apps for Windows, Linux, Mac OS, iPhone, and Android (I put them on all my devices).
I've done this for years and years, always would have my own home network VPN server. Until this last ISP, silly Starlink, they don't offer public IP addresses, so I am stuck using Victron VRM for now. This is at my off-grid place out here.
In town at my apt, I do still have oVPN server running over the fiber we have there, it works good for me to use a VPN client over the Starlink into that fiber network where I can access stuff in town, but I do not have any solar equipment in town to monitor. That fiber ISP, they only give me a DHCP public IP which changes sometimes, so I use DynDNS feature in my Linksys router to auto-update the IP on the DNS lookup so I don't have to be aware when the public IP changes.
The home VPN server was especially nice when I was in Shanghai, China on business once, and I couldn't check my Gmail or Google anything (since CCP blocks all access to Google services), so I would VPN to my home network from China, so then remotely using that gateway located at my US home, I could check my Gmail, and Google for stuff as normal, just like I was physically at home (specify in setting for oVPN to use remote LAN gateway for internet access).
As far as your JKBMS wanting Location Services, can you try an app like this for example?
Fake GPS Location:
Teleport your phone to any place in the world with one click!
play.google.com
EDIT:
If firmware on such solar inverter units requires internet, one could temporarily set the gateway, unblock the firewall, do the necessary firmware upgrade, then revert back to high security, or in many cases, there would be some method to manually put the new firmware onto a USB thumbdrive and update the firmware using that method.
