Pitfalls of relying on the "cloud".

[bkenobi]

Yeah, I read it was a major server outage with Amazon.  I wonder if there will be/have been a flood of tweets to Bezos about how people couldn't unlock their smart doorlocks because of him.  Who's the 3rd richest man in the world and what server does he run that could lock people out next?  Maybe it's a conspiracy!   

[brobin]

My Lutron lighting bridge wouldn't respond to Alexa and the app just went to a Cloudflare error.  I just waited it out and by 8pm it was working again.  I had to use the keypad to turn on the kitchen lights - oh the horror! 

[petera]

My Lutron lighting bridge wouldn't respond to Alexa and the app just went to a Cloudflare error.  I just waited it out and by 8pm it was working again.  I had to use the keypad to turn on the kitchen lights - oh the horror!

And where is their backup located. On that server no doubt. Heaven help those with free cloud services. Can’t exactly complain about something supplied for nothing. Well the real cost is when you can’t access those services but the bleating sheep will keep bailing in. Guess what, I didn’t even notice they had an outage. How’s that for real concern all things Amazon. Alexa........pi$$ off. Does that command work I wonder.

[brobin]

Well the rest of the system worked fine as always and lights came on at their scheduled times.  Nothing I have relies on Alexa for anything other than additional convenience.

[bkenobi]

That's really the best approach IMO.  Use the AI capabilities of AWS or whoever to enhance features that you can't accomplish locally and that won't really affect anything if they don't work.  I haven't seen a whole lot that can't be done locally so it's amazing to me that there are so many products that require their servers to function.  I like the devices that come configured that way but make it easy to switch it up.

I picked up a Wyze camera from HD last year on clearance to play with.  I haven't done anything with it really, but it came with a setup to do some things locally and others on the Wyze server side (storage of remote access videos I think).  There's a really simple modification that is 100% reversible by simply removing the uSD card which makes all functions local and enhanced.  It can still utilize any of the Wyze remote capabilities should they be needed, but basically everything can be done locally too.  I vote no to Alexa but I'm just one person so maybe automation democracy is dead.   

[HA Dave]

........ I had to use the keypad to turn on the kitchen lights - oh the horror!

Biggest network collapse.... in several years. AND it was specifically worse for Amazon/Alexa related features. Yet it was next-to-nothing. Sorta-maybe like the fears of a robot takeover.... you have to set aside the practical knowledge that everything has manual switching.   

[petera]

That's really the best approach IMO.  Use the AI capabilities of AWS or whoever to enhance features that you can't accomplish locally and that won't really affect anything if they don't work.  I haven't seen a whole lot that can't be done locally so it's amazing to me that there are so many products that require their servers to function.  I like the devices that come configured that way but make it easy to switch it up.

I picked up a Wyze camera from HD last year on clearance to play with.  I haven't done anything with it really, but it came with a setup to do some things locally and others on the Wyze server side (storage of remote access videos I think).  There's a really simple modification that is 100% reversible by simply removing the uSD card which makes all functions local and enhanced.  It can still utilize any of the Wyze remote capabilities should they be needed, but basically everything can be done locally too.  I vote no to Alexa but I'm just one person so maybe automation democracy is dead.   

Make that 2