I’m afraid that until memory and storage prices finally decide to calm down, there’s really no point hoping for any price cuts. Sadly, none of the forecasts suggest otherwise. Quite the opposite - prices will keep climbing, just not as wildly as before.
That’s probably why everything is suspiciously quiet when it comes to the IHost 2nd Generation. I have a feeling the price would be downright brutal. And to make matters worse, the market is running short on memory anyway.
I’m honestly thankful for a lucky twist of fate that I grabbed a GMKtec mini‑PC for peanuts before this whole price‑hike madness kicked off. Now I’ve got HAOS running on a proper Intel platform and don’t have to wrestle with iHost OS anymore. All 28 Sonoff devices behave beautifully in ZHA and Matter, not a single tantrum.
Yes, the prices of SBCs are rocket high and sadly we can do very little about it. Now no industry can compete with the AI industry for RAM and eMMC. So we just have to wait.
In your initial post you claim that iHost is Bluetooth capable, but it is not available to use/ activated. I am not interested in HA, the iHost ecosystem service all my requirements for basic home automations. Why won’t Sonoff give us access to the Bluetooth functionality on the iHost?
I’d say it’s a matter of security! Bluetooth is an attack vector if it’s always open to accepting connections and all that.
I’d say the easiest path for development—if possible—would be for the iHost to also support adding devices via BTHome! I imagine that would solve your problem, right?
Hi @Unnamedi , thanks for the comment, what I understand from online resources is that it could work, but unfortunately I don’t know how Sonoff/ iHost would implement it from a technical point of view.
As iHost mentioned, if possible, you could use the same approach as the ZBUltra Hub, since they share almost everything. So, this implementation should be feasible. We would need to see if someone from Sonoff could answer that.
Hello,
May we ask whether you have a Sonoff Bridge‑U device? This device supports adding BTHome devices, and you can sync the BTHome devices associated with the Bridge‑U to iHost via the Smart Home add‑on.
Hello @mattpanex,
The second product listed above, the Bridge-M, also supports adding BTHome devices to a Matter network. You can simply use a device running CUBE OS as the Matter platform, pair it with the Bridge-M’s Matter network, and then control the BTHome devices directly within CUBE OS.
