A decade of home automation wisdom: why your smart devices shouldn't rely on the cloud

A longtime home automation enthusiast shares ten years of hard-earned rules for building a resilient smart home, centered on a core principle: anything essential must work without an internet connection. He explains that this philosophy grew from watching cloud-dependent devices fail—like Nest integrations broken by API changes, or a grill that needs Wi-Fi just to display temperature—and realizing the cloud is the system's weakest link.

The author's setup keeps core logic on local hardware like Raspberry Pis running Node-RED and Tasmota firmware on ESP boards, using MQTT for communication. He details practical rules like 'don't remove the old way while introducing the new,' ensuring multiple access methods, and avoiding batteries that die too quickly. The key takeaway is that true home automation should serve the homeowner, not make them dependent on a vendor's servers for basic functionality.