A house that needs the internet to function is not a “smart home”, it’s a “dependent home”.
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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Wait does the alarm on Alexa rely on the server side? 💀🤡
There's way too much stuff that relies on internet access. If I'm at home, and my washing machine (which is also at home) wants to tell me when it's done, why does that need to use the internet?
I try to stick to Zigbee or Z-wave devices where possible, since they're guaranteed to be local-only. If I need access when I'm away from home, I connect with a VPN to access Home Assistant.
Matter is also local---provisioning can be a PITA but once done I've been pretty happy with even the cheap Matter WiFi smart bulbs. Home Assistant supports them very well.
Cheap bulbs can be a little buggy, which usually means I need to power cycle some of them now and then.
I mainly use smart switches rather than smart bulbs. Currently I'm using the Inovelli Blue switches which use Zigbee.
I've got a Zigbee power metering plug on our washing machine. Set up an automation for it to notify us when it's done. Just that sold my wife on HA, she's asking for other things like this now.
So, the automation is when the power usage suddenly go way down, It is considered done?
More or less.
A frustrating number of devices rely on cloud connectivity for astoundingly rudimentary tasks.
I was once at a friend’s house for a game night and it was really cold; everyone was under blankets. I asked to turn up the heat and they said, “The internet is down, so the heat doesn’t work.” 🤯
there were reports of roombas not getting up because us-east-1 was down, don't be so surprised
They don’t rely on the server to sound an already scheduled alarm but they do rely on the server to set the next one for a repeating alarm.
Lmao that's dumb
Man, if only there were some way to push a schedule to a device, then it could use its own clock to know when to go off
But that technology is too advanced for Amazon
I am confused about who doesn't use their cell phone alarm to wake up.
Not using my phone, but a dedicated alarm clock on my nightstand. Mainly because I can see the time and what alarm preset is active at a glance.
I have home assistant(no internet needed) turn in the light from off to dim to bright over 5 mins. Such a nicer way to wake up than an alarm.
Me too, it's so much more.natural way to wake up... but it's still tied to the alarm time of my phone (which also fades in slowly)
How do you do that?
Install the HA Companion app on your phone (I use the "minimal" one.from FDroid), and enable the Alarm Sensor - that provides the next alarm time (so, be careful if you have different alarms throughout the day!)
Then, I use that time to trigger the lights to start ramping up about 30mins beforehand.
Also... be careful to check if you're at home... took me a while to realise the lights were coming on whilst we were away.
Oh, and I use Simple Alarm Clock - also from FDroid - because it fades in the alarm sound.
Not sure why you're confused, but alarm clocks still exist too 😉
There have been a few times my phone has had an update and didn't load in, thus not triggering the alarm. I still use my phone, but I have a backup 'dumb alarm'
Sometimes if I want to take a short nap, it's way easier to ask alexa or google to wake me up in 30mins, than set up an alarm.
Oh, I forgot that some use Alexa as an alarm clock