Testing my entire Smart Home with NO internet!

I unplugged my internet to see what still works 😬

CODE: SMARTHOMESOLVER

*Links in chronological order (affiliate)*

My smart home shirts!

FOLLOW ME

0:00 Intro
0:26 Office
2:09 Office automations
3:29 Front porch
4:57 Backyard
5:49 Family room
8:52 DeleteMe
10:19 Garage
12:32 Theater room
13:51 Phone dashboard
14:18 Bedroom + bathroom
15:44 Why this matters
16:53 Kid uprising

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MUSIC
All of the music throughout is by Nihilore.

Ending song is The End by EVA.

[SmartHomeSolver]

How much does having a LOCAL smart home matter to you? 🤔

CODE: SMARTHOMESOLVER

[PestOnYT]

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.

[neilbrookins]

Don’t replace your tuya hardware devices. Instead, replace the HA integration with localtuya integration. It uses the same hardware just a different integration.

[ChaneyGoldstein]

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)

[TheHellis]

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

[deonh]

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 😇

[greggblankman]

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.

[circuitdotlt]

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.

[SilentDecode]

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.

[TonyVainosky]

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.

[Dane-ish]

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!

[Carbon_Ziro]

Never seen a guy so excited turning on/off lights haha

Home assistant gets more attractive with every vid

[markkempton]

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.

[sylvainmichaud]

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.

[DanKillam]

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

[TheArmyDr]

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.

[wildreed]

One man army pushing the industry and quality of life at home forward‼️‼️ Heavy lifting 🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️🏋️‍♂️.

[ianrhodes]

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!)

[donaldhoudek]

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!

[EsotericArctos]

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.