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Liberated Bread

FAQ

What is Liberated Bread?

Liberated Bread publishes step-by-step guides for liberating abandoned IoT devices from dead cloud services. When a company shuts down its cloud, "smart" devices become paperweights. We show you how to keep them working — offline, local, and free.

Yes. These guides are for hardware you own. The techniques documented here (local network control, BLE direct communication, open firmware) are standard reverse-engineering and interoperability practices. We do not distribute proprietary code, encryption keys, or copyrighted firmware.

Do I need to be technical?

Our guides range from difficulty level 1 (🍞 — basic router config and copy-paste YAML) to level 3 (🍞🍞🍞 — command-line tools, custom firmware, hardware mods). Start with a level-1 guide like the WeMo switch liberation and work up.

What devices are supported?See the device catalogue for currently-documented devices. The Home Assistant integration is driven by our 51 protocol specs covering sensors, switches, lights, climate devices, e-bikes, printers, and more.

My device isn't listed. Can you add it?

Probably! If your device has an Android companion app, we can decompile it to extract the Bluetooth or WiFi protocol. Open a GitHub Discussion with the device name and model number. If you're technical, see the contribution guide.

Another thing you can do is grab a Bluetooth (BTLE) capture of the companion app talking to the device and send it along — often that trace is enough to work out the protocol. You can capture on Android (turn on the Bluetooth HCI snoop log in Developer Options), on iOS (install Apple's Bluetooth logging profile and use PacketLogger), or with a dedicated sniffer like Nordic's nRF Sniffer for Bluetooth LE.

Strip out accounts and private info first. A Bluetooth capture can contain account credentials, tokens, email addresses, location, or other personal data. Scrub anything sensitive before you share it — and if the device or app requires an account, we recommend creating a temporary account with non-private info and pairing with that, so nothing personal ends up in the trace to begin with.

Does this require jailbreaking or rooting?

No. Liberated Bread works entirely through standard protocols — connecting to devices over your local WiFi network or Bluetooth. No device modifications, no custom firmware, no rooting required. For WiFi devices, the only "modification" is a firewall rule on your router to block cloud access — see Keep It Off the Internet for how to write that rule on UniFi, MikroTik, OPNsense, OpenWrt and the rest.

Why block a device from the internet at all?

Because an over-the-air firmware update is the most likely way local control disappears. It has already happened: TP-Link closed port 9999 on newer Kasa hardware, and iRobot's 2025 Roombas ship with no local MQTT broker at all. A device that can't reach the vendor keeps the protocol it shipped with. Keep It Off the Internet walks through doing that without breaking discovery or local control.

Will my device lose features without the cloud?

Sometimes. Cloud-dependent features (voice assistants, remote-from-anywhere access, manufacturer analytics) won't work. But the core functionality — turning switches on/off, reading sensors, changing colors — works locally and usually faster without the cloud round-trip.

How do I access my devices away from home?

Use Home Assistant's remote access (Nabu Casa, VPN, or reverse proxy). Liberated Bread devices are regular Home Assistant entities, so they work with whatever remote access solution you already use.

Can I help?

Absolutely. We need:

Join the #liberated-bread channel on the Pigs Can Fly Labs Discord.

Is Liberated Bread free?

Yes. All guides, protocol specs, and the Home Assistant integration are free and open source (MIT licensed). Liberated Bread is a project of Pigs Can Fly Labs LLC — a small business, not a non-profit. We publish free content because we believe you should own your devices.

What's with the name?

Liberated Bread is an homage to Cory Doctorow's novella Unauthorized Bread, about refugees who jailbreak locked-down appliances. The ethos: you own your devices, not the manufacturer's cloud.