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The original was posted on /r/homeassistant by /u/CapnKirk666 on 2025-10-01 12:46:29+00:00.

I am completely new to HA. I am also old and retired (don’t judge, you may be old one day!).

Tl;dr - is HA worth trying to use with NO CLOUD ACCOUNTS whatsoever? Cloud accounts - Alexa, Google, TP-link, etc. are in my very biased view an opportunity to be hacked, even if the risk is tiny.

As info, I am technically, very uneven - in the 1980’s I wrote open source stuff and device drivers, in the 90’s complex business systems plus led some big project and then very big projects and on into the “dark side” (management - HUGE mistake). Let my tech skills atrophy to nothing …

I have installed HA running in a VM on an older gaming laptop (fast SSD, lots of memory, I7). I discovered that the Sylvania bulbs I have probably won’t work (oh well, they were discounted at Dollarama for a reason and are worth the price simply as dumb LED bulbs).

I have two older TP-Link HS103 plugs - do these REQUIRE a TP-Link CLOUD account to be used?