Imagine this. You buy some Philips Hue light bulb. They disconnect consistently. You try Wiz. Very limited feature. Then you try Insteon and you fall in love. The cloud makes it effortless and everything you want is there, working together. Then you buy light switches. Then dimmer. Then smart plug. Before you know it, your whole house is Insteon and working like a charm.
You wake up and your light bulb doesn’t open. Then your smart windows blind won’t respond. The app is loading but not doing anything. Turns on, Insteon declared bankrupcy and shut down all the servers your devices relied on to coordinate together. You fell for the Close Ecosystem trap.
This story is real and happened. Click here. With a twist. “A small group of Insteon users” were able to gather enough money to buy Insteon and revive the servers.
Philips also killed the plug on its Hub V1, which, in comparison, is way less problematic, but still.
Because servers cost money and companies doesn’t charge subscription fees (would you buy a smart bulb that cost money monthly?), the only way to finance is to sell more product, but the more you sell the more expensive the servers become. It’s truly a bad plan. Although some companies understood this: Wyze Cam Plus, IFTTT, Wink …
Level 1: Home Assistant
The first step is to make your own local Home Assistant server. For as long as it’s there, nobody can mess with it.
Home Assistant is a coordinator/hub that grew and grew. It allow you to connect almost every smart home thing you can buy from any brand and connect it together. A GE Wi-Fi light switch that open a Philips Hue Zigbee light bulb, or a Z-Wave motion sensor that sends the ON command to the TV through infrared, whatever your heart can dream of it can do. It looks complex and harsh, but as long as you take small steps, you’ll be fine and learn as you go.
Level 2: Local Push
The second step if to pick your device carefully.
Every Home Assistant integration list local/cloud push/poll. Additionally, it may have cloud features. Let’s dissect it.
Let’s use Nest integration as an example. Click here, you should see this:
- The more it’s used, the more likely it will be fixed fast if something breaks.
- The quality scales show how much the integration is sturdy and works fine.
- Cloud/Local: Indicate whether this integration directly talks to your light bulb over your local network, or if it connects to the manufacturer’s website to send commends. This has two implication. First, local is way faster. Second, it is likely that if the manufacturer close their door, your device will still work.
- Push/Pull: Push means the device will inform Home Assistant of any changes so it can change the status of the light in its user interface. Pull means Home Assistant needs to ask every minute or so “Anything new for me?”, which means there will be a delay if the status change, unless Home Assistant is responsible for this change.
In an ideal world, always use local push. Bonus point for high % usage and quality scale.
Additionally, consider cloud features because it can breaks my promises.
Locally controllable devices may still need the cloud to work. To test this, remove power to the device, keep the Wi-Fi on but break the internet connection, then turn on the device. If it works fine, then good! It will likely survive a bankruptcy. One last thing, if it has cloud enabled features, it has likely cloud over-the-air updates. The manufacturer can introduce issues by a buggy update. My Wiz light bulb used to toggle just fine, but now it goes from Normal/100% ➡ Off ➡ Last effect used. Spotcast was broken for a few day because Spotify changed something. And please don’t get me started on Wyze.
Level 3: Local Cloudless
It is not very common, but there are cloud-less solutions:
Zigbee, Z-Wave, RF: may have issues with stuff like Power-On behaviour and other things. However, if you manage to get it to work directly with Home Assistant to your liking, it will work forever.
ESPHome: if you’re a beginner, just plug in an Athom product. It will work out of the box and does not have any cloud, therefore will work forever. If you’re a bit more advanced, you can flash ESPHome on non-ESPHome devices, make your own devices or edit the ESPHome configuration to change anything you want.
In a home with only local cloudless devices and Home Assistant, the world can burn and your smart home will continue to work just fine. Congratulation, you are now immune to the Close Ecosystem traps.
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