It's not 100% a must for me but after I connected my took the time to remove and re add my hue hub to smartthings vs matter instead of using the cloud. Then after seeing how many of my automation/routines changed to being listed at local on the hub I kind of was like now I want to see how many of my other routines I can make local. I was just like 😁 look at all those runs local on the hus icons. But still it's not a must but if it is local then that's definitely a big+ for me.
in my system everything is local, except the weather info (i don't have a weather station) and remote control using the companion app. sounds like that tempest weather station NEEDS an internet connection, right? so that one is not an option for me.
Depends on what it is. For most devices, yes, offline is a must. I use HA exclusively and that''s the real dealbreaker, it must work with HA. I have a few things like a water meter sensor and some other things that are cloud-based, but anything that is a direct interaction like lights and switches must be all 100% local for me.
It would be really great if all electronic products would carry a label indicating: a) registration required; b) fully functional without internet; c) limitations when not registered; d) limitations when not connected to the internet; e) fully functional if service provider (or their servers) are out of business.
The Home Assistant integration documentation says if the devices can be controlled locally or not. I use that to select devices. But I agree. It'd be nice if the manufacturers would state whether they support open standards for local connectivity.
don't expect manufacturers to do it without any being forced to explicitly mention it by law. till then I think OpenSource community need to do it. Home Assistant has a list of devices that are 100% functional offline. I hope more people contribute somehow to that list to make it better. I currently do not have Smart Home. But any next 5 years, am planning to build a new house and aim is for it to be fully automated and also 100% offline. So only when I want remote access, I activate their ability to connect to internet, else internet will be turned off by default. Last thing I want is security footage from my cameras being watched by people. For cameras, I have decided to go with "DUMB" cameras and have motion sensors to detect presence instead of having internet connected "SMART CAMERA"
One of the requirements of the Matter protocol is the device **must** be able to run locally - probably why a lot of older devices are just not added with support without a hub. So, with a mix of local Matter devices & home assistant - if you are brave enough to go down that rabbit hole. This idea of a mostly local smart home for the basics should become more common.
@@MarcSpctrWith the cameras, that is fine if you are always in the same place as your cameras. I maintain a residence in two different countries. I wouldn't be able to monitor my cameras if they weren't hooked to the internet. That also applies to controlling a few other things when I am away from that resident.
Don’t replace your tuya hardware devices. Instead, replace the HA integration with localtuya integration. It uses the same hardware just a different integration.
Didn't know about Tuya-Local I'll have to try that one and see if it has better support for a few of my Tuya devices but you can also with a lot OTA firmware to Tasmota or ESPHome. I personally have done this and working on moving as many as I can. Sadly a few devices required to modify required a direct contact like bulbs and are made to not be open up or near impossible without causing damage which sucks.
I have flashed all my Feit (Tuya) smart plugs with libretiny firmware 100% local control now. Still have some in wall dimmer switches, led strip, and bulbs to flash, though they are setup with localtuya so I am not rushing. Save a good amount of money on not having to buy more devices.
Some of the older ones had software "issues" (features) if not updated that allowed you to flash custom firmware. I flashed mine with Tasmota, saved them from becoming e-waste. I was not able to save all, so some are waiting on a drawer for an exploit that might not come. At least it made me conscious of only buying devices that work offline in home assistant before I bought anything too expensive or core to the automation. I started to notice I needed local control since I lived in a place with spotty internet and the lag to turn off and on some lights became very apparent vs local compatible devices. Also, Google sucks at local control, even devices they say support it lag horribly when the internet is spotty. Never buying Google devices either. From this video, it looks like I should avoid amazon devices for the same reason.
For the ecobee thermostat, you can set up the HomeKit integration in Home Assistant to communicate with it through that protocol rather than the cloud-based integration. If you still want to use the Apple Home app on your devices, you can also set up a HomeKit bridge through Home Assistant and choose to only have the thermostat to go through (or any device of your choosing)
Came here to say this. The homekit integration is slightly different and worth comparing. IIRC the polling/reporting frequency is slightly different, and the temperature it reports is an average of the thermostat and it's remote sensors (as opposed to reporting those values individually). Easy enough to compare and adjust for, but at least it's local 👍
This sounds like a good idea for a future video, show devices that he was able to correct without necessarily buying something else. I feel with the current e-waste pattern of selling new items, it would be a breath of fresh air for a video. From the comments, it looks like at least the thermostat and potentially local-tuya ones would be candidates instead of items to replace. Bonus points for devices that support multiple ways to control them vs having to replace the manufacturer's firmware.
I was about to say the same, but one word of warning, make sure you set a DHCP reservation for the thermostat so it always gets the same IP. I had mine get disconnected from HA after a power outage and it did not recover, it turned out it was because its IP changed.. This isn't an issue for all homekit devices but in general when using the HA homekit emulation it is a good idea to use reservations.
It's a good idea to enable both the Ecobee and the HomeKit integration. The Ecobee integration has more features, but the HomeKit one works while offline.
2:49 make sure the automation in Home Assistant has continue_on_error: true or any device it can't speak to will halt all of the automation. That needs to be added on every single service call in the automation
This is very encouraging how much continued to work considering more thieves have been wifi jamming before they go in. You'd still need a hard connection, though, which is difficult for me to do as a renter
This video has nothing to do with wifi jamming though. He didn't demonstrate a wifi jammer. Wifi jamming will still kick wifi devices off the network regardless of your internet connectivity.
@@markkempton4579 Depends on the frequency it uses for wireless communications, but it's probably OK. It's still recommended to hard-wire any devices used for security purposes.
We shouldn't have to rely on some YT influencer to know if a product advertised functionality requires an internet connection or work on such and such platform. Manufacturers should be required, through some consumer support law, to easily provide the information. I am fed up to be deceived by manufacturers AND reviewers avoiding to be explicit in their product reviews either because of laziness, incompetency or bad faith to avoid losing access to manufacturers and affiliated link revenues.
@@lisandroCT Obvious that it can't work without it. Another one who's afraid of the government while riding daily on public roads and, among other things, drinking and 💩ing thanks to public infrastructures. Yes, it works.
@@sylvainmichaud2262 Why would I trust a huge corporation that was only able to grow out of proportion due to government regulations, government subsides and programs, lobbying and special treatment from their politics friends?
True but, if you ALREADY have an older setup installed upgrading those devices (which in my case is MANY) for compatibility to work with HA can get REALLY outrageously expensive to "upgrade". Correct me if I'm wrong but HA does NOT play nice-nice with older SmartThings devices and are not supported! HUGE COST factor there to replace all those devices!
I block most of my smart devices from the internet with my Unifi dream machine and control them via home assistant. The only smart devices I allow to access the internet are my ecovacs vacuums and Nest thermostats. One day they will be replaced with locally controlled options.
Same. My whole lot network is blocked from the internet aside from devices like Google Assistant that are on a allow list. I also don't really buy wifi devices as home is mainly zigbee and connect directly to a hue hub or smartthings
Great video as always! When I designed my new smarthome a few months ago - I had 2 requirements to keep the spouse approval factor high: 1) Everything needed to work locally without internet and all the lights had to have actual switch as well as App control. I also use Home Assistant and everything works great with NO support issues from the rest of the family 😇
My golden rule for smart-home equipment is only one thing: Local only, so no cloud-bullshit for it to work. My HA is in a seperate VLAN, and HA only has internet access for certain things. The rest of the network is denied internet or inter-VLAN access.
Yeah frankly there should be more regulations in place in countries that say you cannot sell a product that could conceivably turn into a brick in a year or two if the company stops supporting the servers. That's without even getting into the privacy concerns but just the sustainability and consumer protection perspective
Your Ring panel should have connected via the cellular backup. I would call support and find out what happened. I am able to view my system from outside the home even in a full power and internet outage. I am surprised that the Kasa devices work. I thought they relied on the Kasa service. Ours don't run when the internet is down, but maybe they connect directly to Home Assistant w/o the service? If so, I'm sold on trying HA.
On home assistant, for the 2 Kasa devices I own, they connect via IP, so for me the hassle was setting up static IPs for them to make sure if I transfer my HomeAssistant install, I could just restore it into the new instance. But they work fine locally if you set them up that way in HomeAssistant and drive your automations there as well instead of their app (I didn't bother trying their app offline since HA worked great).
So one of the first things I did, when I was financially able to, was to put anything relating to home internet (the modem, router & satellites for router) on battery backups. Even if the power is only out for a moment or two, with no interruption to the main router/wifi setup I'm not having to wait to reboot everything - which is something I loathe having to do. Using an advanced Netgear Orbi mesh wifi system and lately, after a firmware update, if the power gets interrupted the satellites have a terrible time reconnecting.
Unless you have a "WHOLE HOME" power backup solution keeping you modem and router powered up serves NO purpose for remotely located WiFi cameras and other devices using AC power! MOST of us are in this boat but, strictly talking about an internet connection failure there are "fail over" options. I mentioned in my post that the Ring Alarm Pro hub allows you to keep devices or YOUR choosing connected over it's cellular backup connection and if you are home you can use the HOT-SPOT on yr phone as a internet connection and have used this Ring "feature" too many times to count as my internet goes out quite frequently for up to an hour or more and it's PEACE of mind knowing your "critical" devices are STILL connected and provide feedback even when NOT at home! As soon as the ISP internet is restored the Ring Alarm Pro hub switches automatically with NO worries and provides a "stable" connection to the outside world!
Tried this on my setup after your video, and everything works without internet, every light, motion & contact sensor, all my zigbee devices, air purifiers, even the vacuum worked. The only missing things were some integration that rely on internet for my dashboard, such as spotify, or the weather. Other than that, my entire floorplan dashboard was working. I'm so glad to see that I have a resilient setup !
What Vaccum do you use ? I couldn't seem to find any smart robot vaccum that works without Internet. I have seen them work on AUTO mode if schedule are set but manually triggering them to start/pause/stop, etc is what I cannot find anywhere.
@@MarcSpctr I’m using an iRobot Roomba i7+ and I’m controlling it through Home Assistant. I can start cleani’g, pause, go back to the dock without internet. Sadly the HA automation doesn’t allow to select a specific room to clean, but I think you can if you configure ha rest980
@@MarcSpctrI’m not the OP, but I’m using a dumb robot vacuum that is controlled locally via IR blasters connected to Home Assistant. It would also be good to know which wifi vacs work locally for when I eventually upgrade.
@@MarcSpctrI use a Roomba i7+, and I'm controlling it through Home Assistant. It can start, pause, go home without a connection. Sadly the HA integration doesn't allow cleaning of a specific room, but I think this is something you can do via rest980 if you are willing to go that route.
This was a really interesting experiment. One that everyone should do at their home when they start their home automation journey. Then replace those automations that live on other platforms and don't work without internet.
Watched this on Monday and woke up on Tuesday with no internet! OMG! Never realised how much we use the internet these days. Internet was down from 130am till 8pm! Couldn’t use my smart speakers which meant no music as I use spotify (other brands available). Couldn’t use my smart stick for the TV as that requires internet. Couldn’t do my coursework as that is all online. Smart home major fail was with my hive heating and hot water system as I couldn’t use the app, left it completely dumb. Biggest winner was all the zigbee stuff (I can hear Paul going oo the zigbee right now!)
Месяц назад
@8:34 Try flashing Valetudo, it removes the need to use the cloud for controlling the vacuum, you go fully local, and get some great features in the process.
13:52 Just a note, just because something works offline, doesn't mean that it's not sending data to companies when it's online. I'm not sure which system you're using for the specific automation, so I can't say one way or the other, but just as a general rule. It'd probably be wise to block everything from the internet that works fine without, unless you're going to do traffic inspection and make sure it's just checking for updates or something
The interesting thing about the system I use home is that, if the Internet is down, nothing stops working, but I don't have access to change anything. I can see everything, I just can't alter or control any automation , only manually using switches/power buttons 🤔.
The government should make it mandatory to offer local APIs for all the smart devices. This would prevent e-waste when companies go under or discontinue the products, also this would protect the consumer.
Because it's tuya. Since they more and more started making it harder for us to take control over their devices meant they lost me. Then the replaced the chip, "helped" destroy the integration in HA. No way.. no more tuya for me ever. Most of my new devices are ESP based or ZigBee based
Paul Hibbert has done this with a lot of his smart home stuff too. It's good to test every so often though to see how much goes to the cloud when new things are added. I like to use local when I can, be it matter, zigbee, z-wave, or local tuya. When I add a new item, I do a "local only" test to confirm it's okay. With your smart life products, which I guess is the flood lights and the fan, you could use tuya- local to keep smart life stuff local. It's in the HACS if I recall, not an official plug in. Those jungle routines can really cause an issue. In Home Assistant, you can tell an automation to continue on error, in which case if your cloud based routines fail, the rest will still run.
I'm at the point these days were I just don't want to buy anything that will be useless if the company goes out of business or shuts the servers down. I had made a few purchase for products that will probably be complete bricks in the future and I reg. Have a pair of nest audio speakers that don't have any headphone jack or anything. Hell even the echo dots don't have a headphone jack anymore although I guess they probably have Bluetooth chips so they will have a little value.
Great video Reed! It would have been handy to see a summary at the end of which brands passed and which failed. Cheers for pushing the locally controlled smart home forward!
There is local Tuya for Tuya stuff (I haven’t installed it yet because I only have two WiFi Tuya switches in the house left by the previous owners). Also there are two ecobee integrations. I use both. The local one (via HomeKit) is more responsive and worked when I accidentally unplugged my internet, and the cloud one has more accurate temperature logging and can handle more states than the default. I actually label the latter “my ecobee - cloud” to distinguish them. Suggest you do similar. I learned the lesson early on since many of my dimmers are Leviton WiFi instead of Lutron Zigbee like you. It was weird to think everything was working fine, and then realizing nothing worked when the internet went down. The simple fix was to remove the Leviton cloud hack from HA and use either HomeKit or Matter (depending on if the switches were updated). That plus wanting a Bluetooth speaker in the shower light led me down the zigbee path for stuff like Tuya etc. once you get a good Zigbee coordinator local control is pretty easy to achieve (had to get an SMLiight because I got a HA green and you can’t use the advertised USB dongle for both Thread and Zigbee simultaneously).
My Ecowitt weather station and my DIY sprinkler controller work without internet. The sprinkler controller is just an ESP32 and a relay board using ESPHome and cost me about $20.00.
That's good to know about your weather station. I've been looking to try something else. Also it's crazy how much you can do with an inexpensive ESP32! That's awesome!
Ecobee works locally if you use the HA HomeKit Bridge setup instead of the Ecobee integration. It has slightly less features but all the main ones AND the remote sensors work without internet.
If I remember correctly, the roborock integration in HA should still be working without Internet and you would still be able to controll it from HA. Just the app doesn't work anymore, just like with the Tesla solar station
Local based smart home is the way forward. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you should plan if building a new home that you want to make smart. What cables/hubs should I plan for?
Those ring contact sensors can be added directly to HA via z-wave and they work great offline. Not sure if you need them for your alarm or not but it's a possibility.
As you have Unifi, have you considered to add a Ubiquiti U-LTE-US UniFi Redundant WAN Router? Works great and I figured out, that my fiber connection is down more often, that I thougt 🙂 Switching is seamless, without any manual intervention and I can recommend it.
If your vacuum supports Valetudo, it can be controlled without the internet. Switching to the HomeKit interface for the Ecobee thermostat works as well.
To be honest, I'm starting to use a local voice assistant with Ollama. I have a way for Ollama to control Home Assistant and not just a word assistant; it can control devices.
Ecobee with HomeKit connection doesn't go through internet so should work. I have a couple of them connected to Home Assistant and they work fine when offline.
The Ring products not working when the WAN connection is down makes sense but also is a big flaw to their products. At least with my home in AZ, incoming cable/fiber into homes is terminated on the side of homes it would be pretty easy to be malicious to cut that line and get into the home without anything alerting the owner. I wonder if SimpliSafe would work
Convert the ecobees to home kit and you'll be happier. You'll loose the VOC sensors but you can use the HomeKit and Cloud integrations at the same time.
Surprised the Tempest stopped, it's supposed to be local push to Home Assistant. Was it only the Weatherflow app that stopped? Did the Tempest still send data to HA?
My guess is that the tempest app didn't work as expected. I would have to test it, but I thought even from their app you could stil click on your station to get the local info, but I could be mistaken.
Great Video. How about making a video about improving some of the routines by using local integration of the now cloud only devices you found. Maybe there are some ideas you can share with us.
Hey Reed, two questions. The first is about the Tuya Powerstrip you have. Isn't there a way to get local Tuya in home assistant using the Tuya developer platform to get the local keys for those devices? The second is about the Kasa powerstrip used that ran locally. Which model is that one? I have one of the older 5 outlet strips, and as far as I have been able to figure out it is not local, so I was surprised to see one that is local. Thanks for the help!
The robo vacuum needs a switch-bot button on it for back up. Maybe move the Rachio sprinkler operation to a Pico W, that would be a fun video project. I am trying to convince my wife that we need a Starlink Mini for hurricane season here in Florida so she can stream her videos (and of course other HA things). Maybe a T-Mobil $20 a month cell account which has unlimited data for backup (at least for your alarm system). So many options. I have my Cloud services down to 2 services, one is the alarm so that is not going anywhere. Great video! Leggo's OUCH!
The first smart devices that I bought were GE Cync smart bulbs. These connect to home assistant through the cloud, so if my internet goes down a bunch of my automations are useless. We will be building a new house next year, and I'll be much more careful to choose hardware that has local connections.
I enjoy your content and have been using it ever since I installed myself several years ago. I've not been brave enough to start with home assistant just yet. I plan on doing that when you release your guides ☺️ I do wish you would have put a table at the end that showed what devices did and what devices didn't require internet as a summary.
I would love to see a video on using home assistant with its built in smart assistant, maybe a local large language model (using a coral TPU on the pi), to be on par with alexa or siri.
I went with TP-Link Meross stuff specifically because it works locally when the internet fails. One of these days I'll explore Home Assistant, i just am lazy 😂
M’y biggest concern is not Internet, it is power! When we have a power outage, all my zig bee bulb are coming back on even if they were off before the outage and same with the LIFX ;(
Tempest most definitely should still work without internet. Not sure about their app, but the HA integration should use the UDP broadcasts to gather information and not depend on the cloud (forecasting requires cloud, but not the other sensors)
This might be because I'm using the WeatherFlow to MQTT add on to get my Tempest data. It monitors the UDP broadcasts. I have a separate integration for the forecast which is dependent on the internet.
I’ve spoken to Kasa about why their WiFi equipment still work when the internet is down and they told me that although they work, it’s only temporary. That they will stop functioning after a few hours or a day. Also, I’ve never been able to run my home assistant app on my phone when the internet is down. How did you do that?
Can you make a video on how to run (most) everything locally, please 🙏 I'm a total newbie at this. My house is being built in October with cat 6 wiring on each room. I want as many devices as possible off of wifi. What I'm understanding is that you use home assistant, internet switch, and hubs to control devices locally. But i don't know exactly how to start.
Hey! There is a local Tuya integration in home assistant for Tuya smart. it’s kinda annoying to setup but mine still works after a few years of setting it up
You could add conditions to your automations to skip parts which are likely not going to work if the connection to the internet goes down. If you use the Nabu Casa cloud you can use binary_sensor.remote_ui equals 'on' to check if you are connected. Alternatively you can create a ping sensor to check external servers / your own external IP. Not too often though otherwise you might find yourself banned.
I would recommend you to update some of your automations and as you said, if possible use HA only, but if not (e.g. turn everything off and that thing is cloud only), use "Run in parallel" building block in HA Automation editor.
Had a power outage the other day and I was still getting lightning strike and rain notifications from Tempest app. The bridge was off, so I was either getting it directly from the Tempest or from Tempest servers via LTE. Not sure, but it thought it was cool.
Does the doorbell still work because youre phone still in the local network? Otherwise not possible? Im trying to figure how to get a unify setup so glad you did this because i know ill get grilled on what works and doesnt with all this
Just as a warning: TP-Link is replacing the Kasa brand with the Tapo brand and it has no local control. They went the wrong direction. Buy Kasa while it lasts.
Do you use the z wave radio in your nortek stick? I can get zigbee to work but I’ve had sooooooo many problems with zwave I’ve just resigned at this point. I can’t even see devices. I have the same usb stick.
I have that same stick as well. My Zwave portion of it failed pretty quickly. I ended up having get a separate stick for Zwave, but I still use that one for Zigbee.
I don't see how you have so many wifi products. I recently started switching things to zigbee because there was too much on my wifi. Things kept disconnecting and the family complained about the connection all the time. Since I started moving everything to zigbee, it's gotten a lot better. I have the Deco AXE5400 with 2 extenders.
Maybe I’m missing something, but you must have some device(s) that is designed to turn something on/off at a specific time of day. With no internet connection, how does the system know the time of day?
It would be interesting to see if you can rejig those automations using Amazon so that they work without it. Is it doing something home assistant can't do natively?
How much does having a LOCAL smart home matter to you? 🤔
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Its a deal breaker for me.
Great test by the way!
It's not 100% a must for me but after I connected my took the time to remove and re add my hue hub to smartthings vs matter instead of using the cloud. Then after seeing how many of my automation/routines changed to being listed at local on the hub I kind of was like now I want to see how many of my other routines I can make local. I was just like 😁 look at all those runs local on the hus icons. But still it's not a must but if it is local then that's definitely a big+ for me.
in my system everything is local, except the weather info (i don't have a weather station) and remote control using the companion app.
sounds like that tempest weather station NEEDS an internet connection, right? so that one is not an option for me.
Depends on what it is. For most devices, yes, offline is a must. I use HA exclusively and that''s the real dealbreaker, it must work with HA.
I have a few things like a water meter sensor and some other things that are cloud-based, but anything that is a direct interaction like lights and switches must be all 100% local for me.
It would be really great if all electronic products would carry a label indicating: a) registration required; b) fully functional without internet; c) limitations when not registered; d) limitations when not connected to the internet; e) fully functional if service provider (or their servers) are out of business.
The Home Assistant integration documentation says if the devices can be controlled locally or not. I use that to select devices.
But I agree. It'd be nice if the manufacturers would state whether they support open standards for local connectivity.
don't expect manufacturers to do it without any being forced to explicitly mention it by law.
till then I think OpenSource community need to do it.
Home Assistant has a list of devices that are 100% functional offline.
I hope more people contribute somehow to that list to make it better.
I currently do not have Smart Home.
But any next 5 years, am planning to build a new house and aim is for it to be fully automated and also 100% offline.
So only when I want remote access, I activate their ability to connect to internet, else internet will be turned off by default.
Last thing I want is security footage from my cameras being watched by people.
For cameras, I have decided to go with "DUMB" cameras and have motion sensors to detect presence instead of having internet connected "SMART CAMERA"
One of the requirements of the Matter protocol is the device **must** be able to run locally - probably why a lot of older devices are just not added with support without a hub. So, with a mix of local Matter devices & home assistant - if you are brave enough to go down that rabbit hole. This idea of a mostly local smart home for the basics should become more common.
@@MarcSpctrWith the cameras, that is fine if you are always in the same place as your cameras. I maintain a residence in two different countries. I wouldn't be able to monitor my cameras if they weren't hooked to the internet. That also applies to controlling a few other things when I am away from that resident.
@@ericesev the Works With Home Assistant label that some device manufacturers include on their boxes includes local/cloud/protocol info.
Don’t replace your tuya hardware devices. Instead, replace the HA integration with localtuya integration. It uses the same hardware just a different integration.
or better Tuya-Local with better device support, easier setup and especially way more reliable than local Tuya.
Didn't know about Tuya-Local I'll have to try that one and see if it has better support for a few of my Tuya devices but you can also with a lot OTA firmware to Tasmota or ESPHome. I personally have done this and working on moving as many as I can.
Sadly a few devices required to modify required a direct contact like bulbs and are made to not be open up or near impossible without causing damage which sucks.
@@StilkdogIt still seems like a pain in the ass to setup still
I have flashed all my Feit (Tuya) smart plugs with libretiny firmware 100% local control now. Still have some in wall dimmer switches, led strip, and bulbs to flash, though they are setup with localtuya so I am not rushing. Save a good amount of money on not having to buy more devices.
Some of the older ones had software "issues" (features) if not updated that allowed you to flash custom firmware. I flashed mine with Tasmota, saved them from becoming e-waste. I was not able to save all, so some are waiting on a drawer for an exploit that might not come. At least it made me conscious of only buying devices that work offline in home assistant before I bought anything too expensive or core to the automation.
I started to notice I needed local control since I lived in a place with spotty internet and the lag to turn off and on some lights became very apparent vs local compatible devices. Also, Google sucks at local control, even devices they say support it lag horribly when the internet is spotty. Never buying Google devices either. From this video, it looks like I should avoid amazon devices for the same reason.
For the ecobee thermostat, you can set up the HomeKit integration in Home Assistant to communicate with it through that protocol rather than the cloud-based integration. If you still want to use the Apple Home app on your devices, you can also set up a HomeKit bridge through Home Assistant and choose to only have the thermostat to go through (or any device of your choosing)
Came here to say this.
The homekit integration is slightly different and worth comparing. IIRC the polling/reporting frequency is slightly different, and the temperature it reports is an average of the thermostat and it's remote sensors (as opposed to reporting those values individually).
Easy enough to compare and adjust for, but at least it's local 👍
This sounds like a good idea for a future video, show devices that he was able to correct without necessarily buying something else. I feel with the current e-waste pattern of selling new items, it would be a breath of fresh air for a video. From the comments, it looks like at least the thermostat and potentially local-tuya ones would be candidates instead of items to replace. Bonus points for devices that support multiple ways to control them vs having to replace the manufacturer's firmware.
I was about to say the same, but one word of warning, make sure you set a DHCP reservation for the thermostat so it always gets the same IP. I had mine get disconnected from HA after a power outage and it did not recover, it turned out it was because its IP changed.. This isn't an issue for all homekit devices but in general when using the HA homekit emulation it is a good idea to use reservations.
It's a good idea to enable both the Ecobee and the HomeKit integration. The Ecobee integration has more features, but the HomeKit one works while offline.
2:49 make sure the automation in Home Assistant has continue_on_error: true or any device it can't speak to will halt all of the automation.
That needs to be added on every single service call in the automation
How do I enable that?
@@gingermcferren just as I wrote above.
It's not part of the GUI, it's yaml only.
Just open the yaml editor on the service calls and add the above.
This is very encouraging how much continued to work considering more thieves have been wifi jamming before they go in. You'd still need a hard connection, though, which is difficult for me to do as a renter
How are they wifi jamming? My security system uses proprietary wireless communications and cellular backup. Would their jammers impact that as well?
@@markkempton4579 They have been doing that in Los Angeles. So much so that LAPD has warned residents to hardwire their alarm systems.
This video has nothing to do with wifi jamming though. He didn't demonstrate a wifi jammer. Wifi jamming will still kick wifi devices off the network regardless of your internet connectivity.
@@markkempton4579 Depends on the frequency it uses for wireless communications, but it's probably OK. It's still recommended to hard-wire any devices used for security purposes.
We shouldn't have to rely on some YT influencer to know if a product advertised functionality requires an internet connection or work on such and such platform.
Manufacturers should be required, through some consumer support law, to easily provide the information.
I am fed up to be deceived by manufacturers AND reviewers avoiding to be explicit in their product reviews either because of laziness, incompetency or bad faith to avoid losing access to manufacturers and affiliated link revenues.
Oh, yeah, government regulations work very well.
@@lisandroCT
Obvious that it can't work without it.
Another one who's afraid of the government while riding daily on public roads and, among other things, drinking and 💩ing thanks to public infrastructures. Yes, it works.
@@lisandroCT
You should trust Boeing, not the government, the next time you take a plane.
@@lisandroCT
I love the irony of your comment while using an avatar where you proudly stand in front of a public bridge.
@@sylvainmichaud2262 Why would I trust a huge corporation that was only able to grow out of proportion due to government regulations, government subsides and programs, lobbying and special treatment from their politics friends?
Never seen a guy so excited turning on/off lights haha
Home assistant gets more attractive with every vid
True but, if you ALREADY have an older setup installed upgrading those devices (which in my case is MANY) for compatibility to work with HA can get REALLY outrageously expensive to "upgrade". Correct me if I'm wrong but HA does NOT play nice-nice with older SmartThings devices and are not supported! HUGE COST factor there to replace all those devices!
One man army pushing the industry and quality of life at home forward‼️‼️ Heavy lifting 🏋️♂️🏋️♂️🏋️♂️.
Ooh the zigbee!
I block most of my smart devices from the internet with my Unifi dream machine and control them via home assistant. The only smart devices I allow to access the internet are my ecovacs vacuums and Nest thermostats. One day they will be replaced with locally controlled options.
Smart!
Same. My whole lot network is blocked from the internet aside from devices like Google Assistant that are on a allow list. I also don't really buy wifi devices as home is mainly zigbee and connect directly to a hue hub or smartthings
Ok we need a body bag count and survivor tally ... 😂
Great video as always! When I designed my new smarthome a few months ago - I had 2 requirements to keep the spouse approval factor high: 1) Everything needed to work locally without internet and all the lights had to have actual switch as well as App control. I also use Home Assistant and everything works great with NO support issues from the rest of the family 😇
My golden rule for smart-home equipment is only one thing:
Local only, so no cloud-bullshit for it to work. My HA is in a seperate VLAN, and HA only has internet access for certain things. The rest of the network is denied internet or inter-VLAN access.
Yeah frankly there should be more regulations in place in countries that say you cannot sell a product that could conceivably turn into a brick in a year or two if the company stops supporting the servers.
That's without even getting into the privacy concerns but just the sustainability and consumer protection perspective
In that case you won't be able to remote access your HA, will you?
Your Ring panel should have connected via the cellular backup. I would call support and find out what happened. I am able to view my system from outside the home even in a full power and internet outage.
I am surprised that the Kasa devices work. I thought they relied on the Kasa service. Ours don't run when the internet is down, but maybe they connect directly to Home Assistant w/o the service? If so, I'm sold on trying HA.
On home assistant, for the 2 Kasa devices I own, they connect via IP, so for me the hassle was setting up static IPs for them to make sure if I transfer my HomeAssistant install, I could just restore it into the new instance. But they work fine locally if you set them up that way in HomeAssistant and drive your automations there as well instead of their app (I didn't bother trying their app offline since HA worked great).
@@TechDogeth thank you. I'm looking forward to Reed's HA tutorial!
Cell backup only works if you subscribe to a protection plan I think.
@@bakonjarser5869 I assumed anyone with a security system had the monitoring.
So one of the first things I did, when I was financially able to, was to put anything relating to home internet (the modem, router & satellites for router) on battery backups. Even if the power is only out for a moment or two, with no interruption to the main router/wifi setup I'm not having to wait to reboot everything - which is something I loathe having to do. Using an advanced Netgear Orbi mesh wifi system and lately, after a firmware update, if the power gets interrupted the satellites have a terrible time reconnecting.
Unless you have a "WHOLE HOME" power backup solution keeping you modem and router powered up serves NO purpose for remotely located WiFi cameras and other devices using AC power! MOST of us are in this boat but, strictly talking about an internet connection failure there are "fail over" options. I mentioned in my post that the Ring Alarm Pro hub allows you to keep devices or YOUR choosing connected over it's cellular backup connection and if you are home you can use the HOT-SPOT on yr phone as a internet connection and have used this Ring "feature" too many times to count as my internet goes out quite frequently for up to an hour or more and it's PEACE of mind knowing your "critical" devices are STILL connected and provide feedback even when NOT at home! As soon as the ISP internet is restored the Ring Alarm Pro hub switches automatically with NO worries and provides a "stable" connection to the outside world!
new video means a good day!
And thats a yes
Tried this on my setup after your video, and everything works without internet, every light, motion & contact sensor, all my zigbee devices, air purifiers, even the vacuum worked.
The only missing things were some integration that rely on internet for my dashboard, such as spotify, or the weather. Other than that, my entire floorplan dashboard was working.
I'm so glad to see that I have a resilient setup !
What Vaccum do you use ?
I couldn't seem to find any smart robot vaccum that works without Internet.
I have seen them work on AUTO mode if schedule are set but manually triggering them to start/pause/stop, etc is what I cannot find anywhere.
@@MarcSpctr I’m using an iRobot Roomba i7+ and I’m controlling it through Home Assistant. I can start cleani’g, pause, go back to the dock without internet. Sadly the HA automation doesn’t allow to select a specific room to clean, but I think you can if you configure ha rest980
@@MarcSpctrI’m not the OP, but I’m using a dumb robot vacuum that is controlled locally via IR blasters connected to Home Assistant. It would also be good to know which wifi vacs work locally for when I eventually upgrade.
@@MarcSpctrI use a Roomba i7+, and I'm controlling it through Home Assistant. It can start, pause, go home without a connection. Sadly the HA integration doesn't allow cleaning of a specific room, but I think this is something you can do via rest980 if you are willing to go that route.
When you talked to Alexa my iPad was listening and told me I could make a schedule or something for lights lol
Ecobee thermostats can be controlled locally with apple homekit
This was a really interesting experiment. One that everyone should do at their home when they start their home automation journey. Then replace those automations that live on other platforms and don't work without internet.
Watched this on Monday and woke up on Tuesday with no internet! OMG! Never realised how much we use the internet these days. Internet was down from 130am till 8pm! Couldn’t use my smart speakers which meant no music as I use spotify (other brands available). Couldn’t use my smart stick for the TV as that requires internet. Couldn’t do my coursework as that is all online.
Smart home major fail was with my hive heating and hot water system as I couldn’t use the app, left it completely dumb.
Biggest winner was all the zigbee stuff (I can hear Paul going oo the zigbee right now!)
@8:34 Try flashing Valetudo, it removes the need to use the cloud for controlling the vacuum, you go fully local, and get some great features in the process.
13:52 Just a note, just because something works offline, doesn't mean that it's not sending data to companies when it's online.
I'm not sure which system you're using for the specific automation, so I can't say one way or the other, but just as a general rule.
It'd probably be wise to block everything from the internet that works fine without, unless you're going to do traffic inspection and make sure it's just checking for updates or something
I was amazed how many devices still worked. Now I need to try mine out!
The interesting thing about the system I use home is that, if the Internet is down, nothing stops working, but I don't have access to change anything. I can see everything, I just can't alter or control any automation , only manually using switches/power buttons 🤔.
A huge and nice place you've got there. Thank you for the 'no internet'' scenario.
The government should make it mandatory to offer local APIs for all the smart devices. This would prevent e-waste when companies go under or discontinue the products, also this would protect the consumer.
Smart life/ tuya can be controlled locally using an integration in Home Assistant.
You should get that.
Yeah, I switched to this because of that feature.
Now trying to find time and get it setup.
@@RichardErkens I'm trying to switch away from tuya as much as possible but for those that I still have then local tuya is the best option
@@TheHellis can I know why you decided to switch away and what are you switching to now.
Because it's tuya.
Since they more and more started making it harder for us to take control over their devices meant they lost me.
Then the replaced the chip, "helped" destroy the integration in HA.
No way.. no more tuya for me ever.
Most of my new devices are ESP based or ZigBee based
@@TheHellis thank you for your answer. Looks like some reading time
didn't check the comments before, but for Tuya you can definitely go for the Local Tuya integration in home assistant
Paul Hibbert has done this with a lot of his smart home stuff too. It's good to test every so often though to see how much goes to the cloud when new things are added. I like to use local when I can, be it matter, zigbee, z-wave, or local tuya. When I add a new item, I do a "local only" test to confirm it's okay.
With your smart life products, which I guess is the flood lights and the fan, you could use tuya- local to keep smart life stuff local. It's in the HACS if I recall, not an official plug in. Those jungle routines can really cause an issue. In Home Assistant, you can tell an automation to continue on error, in which case if your cloud based routines fail, the rest will still run.
I'm at the point these days were I just don't want to buy anything that will be useless if the company goes out of business or shuts the servers down.
I had made a few purchase for products that will probably be complete bricks in the future and I reg. Have a pair of nest audio speakers that don't have any headphone jack or anything.
Hell even the echo dots don't have a headphone jack anymore although I guess they probably have Bluetooth chips so they will have a little value.
Great video Reed! It would have been handy to see a summary at the end of which brands passed and which failed. Cheers for pushing the locally controlled smart home forward!
The Tempest weather station will work fine provided you used the local configuration. You are using their cloud config.
There is local Tuya for Tuya stuff (I haven’t installed it yet because I only have two WiFi Tuya switches in the house left by the previous owners).
Also there are two ecobee integrations. I use both. The local one (via HomeKit) is more responsive and worked when I accidentally unplugged my internet, and the cloud one has more accurate temperature logging and can handle more states than the default. I actually label the latter “my ecobee - cloud” to distinguish them. Suggest you do similar.
I learned the lesson early on since many of my dimmers are Leviton WiFi instead of Lutron Zigbee like you. It was weird to think everything was working fine, and then realizing nothing worked when the internet went down. The simple fix was to remove the Leviton cloud hack from HA and use either HomeKit or Matter (depending on if the switches were updated). That plus wanting a Bluetooth speaker in the shower light led me down the zigbee path for stuff like Tuya etc. once you get a good Zigbee coordinator local control is pretty easy to achieve (had to get an SMLiight because I got a HA green and you can’t use the advertised USB dongle for both Thread and Zigbee simultaneously).
The fact that you have HA, gave me some hope that some thing would be working, but still too many things that are not working.
Reed, you can adopt the Ecobee as a homekit device inside home assistant, then it can be controlled locally.
I love how you are genuinely surprised haha
My Ecowitt weather station and my DIY sprinkler controller work without internet. The sprinkler controller is just an ESP32 and a relay board using ESPHome and cost me about $20.00.
That's good to know about your weather station. I've been looking to try something else. Also it's crazy how much you can do with an inexpensive ESP32! That's awesome!
Ecobee works locally if you use the HA HomeKit Bridge setup instead of the Ecobee integration. It has slightly less features but all the main ones AND the remote sensors work without internet.
If I remember correctly, the roborock integration in HA should still be working without Internet and you would still be able to controll it from HA. Just the app doesn't work anymore, just like with the Tesla solar station
Local based smart home is the way forward. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you should plan if building a new home that you want to make smart. What cables/hubs should I plan for?
I believe there is an integration for the Tempest weather station to work using local UDP (you can use the cloud, if you want).
Those ring contact sensors can be added directly to HA via z-wave and they work great offline. Not sure if you need them for your alarm or not but it's a possibility.
As you have Unifi, have you considered to add a Ubiquiti U-LTE-US UniFi Redundant WAN Router? Works great and I figured out, that my fiber connection is down more often, that I thougt 🙂 Switching is seamless, without any manual intervention and I can recommend it.
If you swap the Weatherflow integration for the local MQTT-based one, your Tempest will work locally just fine.
If your vacuum supports Valetudo, it can be controlled without the internet. Switching to the HomeKit interface for the Ecobee thermostat works as well.
It's a dry heat. Try 97 with 50% plus humidity like we have in SE Georgia on a regular basis.
To be honest, I'm starting to use a local voice assistant with Ollama. I have a way for Ollama to control Home Assistant and not just a word assistant; it can control devices.
Ecobee with HomeKit connection doesn't go through internet so should work. I have a couple of them connected to Home Assistant and they work fine when offline.
Could you do only about the ring alarm system video and what new cameras are around your house? I love that so much!!!
The Ring products not working when the WAN connection is down makes sense but also is a big flaw to their products. At least with my home in AZ, incoming cable/fiber into homes is terminated on the side of homes it would be pretty easy to be malicious to cut that line and get into the home without anything alerting the owner.
I wonder if SimpliSafe would work
Convert the ecobees to home kit and you'll be happier. You'll loose the VOC sensors but you can use the HomeKit and Cloud integrations at the same time.
Surprised the Tempest stopped, it's supposed to be local push to Home Assistant. Was it only the Weatherflow app that stopped? Did the Tempest still send data to HA?
My guess is that the tempest app didn't work as expected. I would have to test it, but I thought even from their app you could stil click on your station to get the local info, but I could be mistaken.
Nice video Reed. Definitely Home Assistant for the win once again here!
Definitely a great test on what you need to upgrade and improve in case of internet outage
Great Video. How about making a video about improving some of the routines by using local integration of the now cloud only devices you found. Maybe there are some ideas you can share with us.
I'm fairly confident Ecobee is HomeKit compatible, must not have it set up.
There's a difference between Wifi based and Cloud Based hardware they can use both for remote access.
You have to replace the tempest weather station to use the local-only integration then that will work
Hunter Hydrawise has a screen on the controller and can be programmed locally if needed.
Hey Reed, two questions. The first is about the Tuya Powerstrip you have. Isn't there a way to get local Tuya in home assistant using the Tuya developer platform to get the local keys for those devices?
The second is about the Kasa powerstrip used that ran locally. Which model is that one? I have one of the older 5 outlet strips, and as far as I have been able to figure out it is not local, so I was surprised to see one that is local.
Thanks for the help!
The robo vacuum needs a switch-bot button on it for back up. Maybe move the Rachio sprinkler operation to a Pico W, that would be a fun video project. I am trying to convince my wife that we need a Starlink Mini for hurricane season here in Florida so she can stream her videos (and of course other HA things). Maybe a T-Mobil $20 a month cell account which has unlimited data for backup (at least for your alarm system). So many options. I have my Cloud services down to 2 services, one is the alarm so that is not going anywhere. Great video! Leggo's OUCH!
If my internet is down I ain't gonna be home to see my smart home
Pretty cool to see how much having local connections works even without wifi!
TuyaSmart CAN be used without internet, but needs a Tuya WiFi Hub in your network . Same for the Tuya Zigbee network.
Fascinating video. Was surprised about the video cameras. Are the video cameras hardwired?
The first smart devices that I bought were GE Cync smart bulbs. These connect to home assistant through the cloud, so if my internet goes down a bunch of my automations are useless. We will be building a new house next year, and I'll be much more careful to choose hardware that has local connections.
I like this. I’m curious how many of those things would work with just Apple Home or at most homebridge, I.e. no home assistant help.
try tuyalan
its a bit of a pain to set up but turned out to be a massive upgrade for what were previously considered “mistakes”
This is a great video with a good bit of info to always keep in mind when building your stuff.
I enjoy your content and have been using it ever since I installed myself several years ago. I've not been brave enough to start with home assistant just yet. I plan on doing that when you release your guides ☺️ I do wish you would have put a table at the end that showed what devices did and what devices didn't require internet as a summary.
Thanks Reed. I have a fair number of the KASA plugs/switches and they are great.
I would love to see a video on using home assistant with its built in smart assistant, maybe a local large language model (using a coral TPU on the pi), to be on par with alexa or siri.
I went with TP-Link Meross stuff specifically because it works locally when the internet fails.
One of these days I'll explore Home Assistant, i just am lazy 😂
M’y biggest concern is not Internet, it is power! When we have a power outage, all my zig bee bulb are coming back on even if they were off before the outage and same with the LIFX ;(
Tempest most definitely should still work without internet. Not sure about their app, but the HA integration should use the UDP broadcasts to gather information and not depend on the cloud (forecasting requires cloud, but not the other sensors)
This might be because I'm using the WeatherFlow to MQTT add on to get my Tempest data. It monitors the UDP broadcasts.
I have a separate integration for the forecast which is dependent on the internet.
It might not be worth the hassle, but with a spare raspberry pi, you can convert your tuya devices to esphome ones with tuya cloud-cutter
How can I do this?
If my internet goes down my home assistant doesn't work.
Can you teach us?
Super nice home setup!
Noticed the CO2 reading on your display in the office / desk. Could you tell me what your using as a detector?
If you have fiber as primary internet and it cuts off, a mobile broadband is a good backup with automatic fail over
You're right that could be good for a backup.
@@SmartHomeSolver And your UDM supports it out of the box!
I wonder if the internet was down and you were away from home, would you still get doorbell notifications
I’ve spoken to Kasa about why their WiFi equipment still work when the internet is down and they told me that although they work, it’s only temporary. That they will stop functioning after a few hours or a day. Also, I’ve never been able to run my home assistant app on my phone when the internet is down. How did you do that?
@@Luisp_1024 connect to the local IP of the HA installation from the phone
Make sure you add the local Home Assistant IP address under Settings / Companion App / Servers / Internal Connection URL.
@@patrickhitthaler3030I’ve tried that and when I try to save, it just stays “saving” but just times out
Now do a video where you pull the ethernet cable on your HA server. See just how many devices are WiFi versus ZWave/Zigbee/Bluetooth.
what a fab idea. it would be not ideal if they use WiFi as it's taking up precious bandwith.
Can you make a video on how to run (most) everything locally, please 🙏
I'm a total newbie at this. My house is being built in October with cat 6 wiring on each room. I want as many devices as possible off of wifi.
What I'm understanding is that you use home assistant, internet switch, and hubs to control devices locally. But i don't know exactly how to start.
Hey! There is a local Tuya integration in home assistant for Tuya smart. it’s kinda annoying to setup but mine still works after a few years of setting it up
You could add conditions to your automations to skip parts which are likely not going to work if the connection to the internet goes down. If you use the Nabu Casa cloud you can use binary_sensor.remote_ui equals 'on' to check if you are connected. Alternatively you can create a ping sensor to check external servers / your own external IP. Not too often though otherwise you might find yourself banned.
I would recommend you to update some of your automations and as you said, if possible use HA only, but if not (e.g. turn everything off and that thing is cloud only), use "Run in parallel" building block in HA Automation editor.
@@MiChAeLoKGB continue_on_error: true is a much better option
Had a power outage the other day and I was still getting lightning strike and rain notifications from Tempest app. The bridge was off, so I was either getting it directly from the Tempest or from Tempest servers via LTE. Not sure, but it thought it was cool.
Reid get your ecobee brought into HA via homekit and it will work local. Thats how I get mine running flawlessly even if the internet goes down
4:19 via what protocol is your door footage going to your phone? your phone must be connected in some way? does it work if you are away from home?
Does the doorbell still work because youre phone still in the local network?
Otherwise not possible?
Im trying to figure how to get a unify setup so glad you did this because i know ill get grilled on what works and doesnt with all this
I have unreliable and slow internet. I would love to see products that would work without internet .
Just as a warning: TP-Link is replacing the Kasa brand with the Tapo brand and it has no local control. They went the wrong direction. Buy Kasa while it lasts.
P.S. You should also add to reviews whether devices can be SET UP (even if they have local control post-setup) without internet.
Do you use the z wave radio in your nortek stick? I can get zigbee to work but I’ve had sooooooo many problems with zwave I’ve just resigned at this point. I can’t even see devices.
I have the same usb stick.
I have that same stick as well. My Zwave portion of it failed pretty quickly. I ended up having get a separate stick for Zwave, but I still use that one for Zigbee.
I don't see how you have so many wifi products. I recently started switching things to zigbee because there was too much on my wifi. Things kept disconnecting and the family complained about the connection all the time. Since I started moving everything to zigbee, it's gotten a lot better. I have the Deco AXE5400 with 2 extenders.
Please make a video on how you connected your Tesla to Home Assistant locally
Maybe I’m missing something, but you must have some device(s) that is designed to turn something on/off at a specific time of day. With no internet connection, how does the system know the time of day?
It would be interesting to see if you can rejig those automations using Amazon so that they work without it. Is it doing something home assistant can't do natively?
Do you have a video that is "What I would get if I were to start over" kinda vibe?