Here's what happened to my smart home and all its automations when we recently experienced a complete Internet outage that lasted for 18 long hours! Yep... we were right in the middle of one of those big red blobs shown above.
I published another blog article: Why you should consider local control, discussing why you might want to consider local control for your smart home devices whenever possible. One of those reasons involved reliance on cloud services, and the Internet connection required to talk to those services. What happens when your Internet goes down? Here's what worked (and what didn't) when we lost our Internet service for an extended period.
Some Background Info
Just a little background in case you haven't read any of my other blog articles or followed any of my YouTube videos. First, yes we have Comcast/Xfinity Internet service. This really isn't an article about their services... to be honest, the Internet service has generally been pretty reliable and this is probably the first time in 5+ years that we've had an outage that lasted more than about an hour.
And if you've followed any of my smart home journey, you also know that I use Home Assistant as my smart home "hub". It runs locally on my network and allows different devices from different manufactures work together to create routines or automations. This came about early in my journey, as trying to manage all the different mobile apps from all the different manufacturers via our phones soon made control of these devices more trouble than it was worth. And it wasn't something my wife was going to use on a regular basis. No one wants to unlock their phone, find and launch the right app and then click a button to simply turn on a lamp!
In addition, I had already been burnt a couple of times by cloud vendors... first by implementing a monthly fee for what was advertised as a free service (Wink), and also by forced hardware upgrades for equipment that I had already paid for once (Philips Hue).
All this is to say that I had already moved towards nearly complete local control of my home automation system before the Internet outage occurred.
What Continued to Work
Well... nearly everything. When the Internet went out, almost all my smart home devices continued to function normally. All lights could still be controlled. Door locks, routines, automations and the home theater system all functioned exactly the same way without the Internet as they did with it.
In fact, with the handful of exceptions listed below, the entire house functioned just as it always had.
What Didn't Work
Ring Doorbell - Yeah... this is one of my few devices that is still solely cloud-based. So while the doorbell would still sound the chime in the house, the camera, motion detection and two-way voice were all unavailable without the Internet.
Tailwind Garage Door - Only the auto open/auto close and mobile notification features were impacted. In other words, the door would not auto open as you approached the house. But Tailwind also has a local control option, so the door could be opened/closed via the Home Assistant app.. or through the pre-existing garage door openers either in our vehicles or mounted on the garage wall. So, in effect, the garage door still functioned (along with any automations). It just lost the auto open/close functionality. Even this could be overcome with geofencing and Home Assistant, but I opt not to use that because I like the increased security offered by Tailwind of requiring both the phone and vehicle Bluetooth connection to auto open the door. So I am willing to accept this cloud functionality (for now) in exchange for the greater security.
Lenovo Smart Clocks - Technically, these should fall under the Google devices, as they went offline for the same reason. I just note them because they were devices that went down with the Internet. All of my other "smart clocks" (e.g. LED matrix clocks) continued to function normally.
In the interest of complete openness, there were a handful of other items that 'failed' or were unavailable. My nightly backup of Home Assistant to Google Drive obviously failed. And none of the smart home features were reachable remotely via NabuCasa/Home Assistant cloud for the duration of the outage. But any other cloud devices would have been unreachable as well.
Overall Conclusions
As my first 'real world' test of being disconnected from the Internet for an extended period, I was generally pleased with the state of my smart home. The Ring doorbell remains on the 'short list' of items to replace. But that was already on the list before any outages.
There are local voice systems that could be implemented that would allow some level of voice control in the event of an outage. Almond is one, but others are under various stages of development. But currently, they are a long way from the features and responsiveness of Google or Amazon Alexa. Plus all the other features of an online voice assistant outweigh the advantages of having the system available in the event of an Internet outage... at least for me at this time. This is especially true since I designed all my devices to have at least two or more methods of control that are local.
So think about any smart devices you currently have in your home.... smart bulbs, smart plugs, smart switches, etc. How many of those devices would cease to function in the event of an Internet outage? Could any of those that rely on the cloud or Internet still have some sort of control without the Internet... or would those devices simply be unavailable until the Internet returned? Do these devices that are meant to add convenience become a major inconvenience without a connection to a manufacturer's service?
While there are a lot of other reasons to consider local devices (see the article linked below of a few of these), an extended Internet outage is stressful enough with the loss of all the other features we've become accustomed to without worrying about the loss of functionality of basic features or automations in your home.
Give it some thought... before you experience your own extended Internet outage!
Links and Related Info
More on Local vs. Cloud Smart Devices:
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