I just went on a little side quest this weekend.

My only IoT device is a motorized chicken door that was acquired on Mac.bid, I think (one of those auction sites for returned goods), and requires some crummy app (SmartLife) that takes up half a gig on my phone.

Long story short, I had to go on a journey that involved creating a Tuya developer account and navigating their terrible website and being panicked at my ability to reconnect the device, but eventually I landed on Homebridge connecting it to Apple Home, and I finally have the control over it that I want. I finally was able to block the device from the Internet in my Deco app.

So...yes! It's finally working without the Internet.

I've always avoided IoT because of terrible software and silos but now that apparently these aren't the barriers they used to be thanks to LLM assistance, I'm more likely to dip my toes in the water.

We've backed ourselves into a fundamentally silly situation: inventions intended to improve convenience and save time don't do either. They work "OK" then there's an update, and then you need to figure out what changed and how. And then it breaks, and you need to go troubleshoot what still works (if anything) and what no longer works. It's not more convenient, just more complex.

This is why I hate the IoT (Internet of Things) it should be CoT (Communication of Things).

That speaker linked to your phone should not need an internet proxy to communicate. It should allow for direct USB communication so it can share one power source. It should allow for Bluetooth communication so it can be in a different close location.

CoT should follow the rule of nature and take the shortest path by default.

What is better for society? The LLM modal running in a local environment or the one running on a data center that can be easily taken out via a power outage, fiber cut, national disaster, or a kinetic weapon?

I rather that LLM modal used at the hospital be ran locally and keep servicing patients even though the original data center was demolished by mother nature.

Back when I first started automating my home, I didn't feel like messing with Home Assistant and finding server-side hardware that was compatible with it, so I got a Hubitat with Zwave (and a few Zigbee) devices. I keep meaning to look at Home Assistant again, I'm sure it's easier to set up, but the Hubitat has been pretty rock solid and pretty much "set it and forget it", with no cloud dependencies for general automation, it works fine when the internet is down.

Though I did run into a roadblock with my Blueair air purifier and hubitat, so I'll probably run a Home Assistant instance so I can control the Blueair with the HomeAssistant->Hubitat integration.

I had a chuckle when I saw “ AI;DR “ nice will use it.

I have always only bought HomeKit compatible smart home devices as those have always worked offline. They also tend to just be much better than the general cheap crap that I see amazon pushing.

AFAIK Shelly devices require internet only if you do require its usage, and are happy with local IPs or bluetooth connections otherwise. I have two, driving the irrigation system, that once configured were locked in a basement with no signal and are still to this day doing their scheduled task.

I wish Insteon had gotten more popular, Back in the day it was easy to get development material to write your own software or build your own devices. I really liked how the stuff all had a decent amount of capability on its own, or you could have a computer attached for more advanced automation. I still use a few Insteon things in my house, Still use a few X10 things for that matter. I really wish they had kept up their local support software.

I totally agree, and if you asked consumers, most would care and prefer for their smart home devices to communicate as little as possible with the outside world. And yet the market keeps offering invasive products, the discrepancy is frustrating.

There should be a system like the nutritional information on food and beverage products, as time went by most people read those and choose accordingly, which then incentivize companies to adapt their offering. We could imagine something similar which would define clearly the capabilities of the hardware or software sold, clearly labelled on the physical package or on the online shop with an easy classification for consumers to understand.

I will take an even simpler version of this

Smart home devices should not freeze up whenever internet is down. A device like Google Nest should have the minimum decency to allow you to interact with it via local Wifi (which continues un-interrupted). It is fine if half the functionality doesn't work. It is fine if the "AI" doesn't work, but at least allow me to fcking change the temperature manually

Same thing with devices like Google Wifi which freezes up or run hot loops like headless chickens when internet is down.