Relying on third-party cloud infrastructure exposes households to broken integrations, unresponsive smart appliances, and server disruptions. Over a decade of testing highlights the importance of retaining manual switches, avoiding black-box hardware lacking logged APIs, and enforcing a minimum one-year battery life. Essential automations like primary lighting and sprinkler controls can remain stable by running central logic on tools such as Node-RED, Raspberry Pi, and Tasmota firmware. Cloud services like Alexa may still be integrated, but only to provide non-essential supplementary functions.
Key points
Local hardware setups ensure essential systems like garage cooling and primary lighting r…: Local hardware setups ensure essential systems like garage cooling and primary lighting remain functional through internet outages.
Black-box smart home products that lack logged APIs should be avoided to preserve long-te…: Black-box smart home products that lack logged APIs should be avoided to preserve long-term system flexibility.
Cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Alexa should only serve supplementary rol…: Cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Alexa should only serve supplementary roles rather than controlling core operations.
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4359 words22 min readSpencer Kittleson
AI;DR: I wrote the first draft, AI helped me edit and rewrite it, and I made the final pass. The rules, setups, and talks are my own.
TLDR; If a light switch in my house needs someone else’s server to work, it doesn’t go in. That has been rule one for ten years of home automation, and the other rules I follow grew out of it. Below are the rules and why I keep them, followed by both talks I’ve given on this, slide by slide.
The cloud is the weak link
Hardware you pay for once shouldn’t stop working because a company changed its plans. It happens anyway. My Nest integration worked until Google broke the API. A Samsung fridge shows a TLS certificate error on its own screen. A Camp Chef grill controller needs Wi-Fi to tell you the temperature.
I still use cloud services where they help, including Alexa and a handful of AWS services. They’re add-ons, though. The logic that runs the house lives on hardware I own: Tasmota firmware on…
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