[Msurrow]

I agree that yes most just want PnP and basically don’t care about security. But it seemed on the posts above that there was an engineering complexity, and a robot vaccum needs local WiFi, so there will be a setup flow. Whats preventing a password selection just be part of that?

[MarkusQ]

> a robot vaccum needs local WiFi

No, it doesn't. Unless it's supposed to spy on you (or "harvest training data") there's no reason it needs to phone home at all (c.f. Roombas).

[fc417fc802]

Well it needs to talk to either a web frontend (internet) or app (bluetooth or wifi). If you're worried about it spying, well, the app could always relay data for it.

Anyway regardless of wifi, bluetooth, or something else there will be a setup process.

[MarkusQ]

You're begging the question. Why does it need to talk to a web front end or app? Why does any appliance need this? (I know they all claim to need it, but it isn't at all clear why this (supposedly) needs to be the case.)

For that matter, I'm unclear why there needs to be a setup process. I understand that this may be key to the vendor's business model, but that's their need, not something the products needs, and certainly nothing I need.

[fc417fc802]

I'm not begging the question although I am implicitly assuming that the vast majority of consumers will want to control a robot vacuum via their phone. I suppose including a touchscreen on the unit itself is not entirely unreasonable but I expect that would be an uphill battle for various disparate reasons (expense, durability, and ease of use at minimum).

Once you introduce control via phone the most straightforward approach is either wifi or bluetooth which requires a setup process.