Can smart things go local if they wanted to? From their end

Say a company like kasa that uses cloud. If smart things wanted can they make it local? Not tp link but smart things itself. Like smart things itself takes away the cloud?

No. If the vendor of the physical device requires their cloud to be used, there is no way for ST to magically change that. ST could, in theory, remove the ST Cloud from the equation, and choose to have their hub connect directly to the Kasa cloud... But I doubt they will ever do that.

Some vendors, like Philips Hue, allow there devices to be accessed either via their Cloud, or over the LAN. Hubitat chooses to always use local connections with devices like these.

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Got it, thx. I big company like Samsung should make a cloudless wifi platform and take back the market. Make it so for a company to be “smart things certified” the have to make a non public local api. This would work out for all parties. Cheap wifi devices like kasa would be local but only if you had smart things

You do realize that there’s zero value for them in doing this, right?

The reason SmartThings branded WiFi products were so cheap is because the end-user’s usage pattern is the data that Samsung wants.

Samsung’s getting out of the hardware business but not the SmartThings platform is also revealing. It’s the cloud data that they’re monetizing.

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Apple HomeKit requires all local connectivity. It works very well, actually... :wink:

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I understand...

Apple still gets a ton of data out of it though.

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Well, of all of the really Big companies, I trust Apple with respect to user data privacy much more than Amazon, Samsung, or Google... :wink:

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The thing is Apple charges such a big fee, the cheaper devices aren’t HomeKit compatible. I was looking to do led strips for my deck, wifi was like $80, HomeKit was like $400

Why not use Zigbee LED strips? All local direct to the Hubitat hub.

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Same, if HomeKit was affordable and had everything, I’d abandon all other platforms

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I been looking into it. They’re still 3x the $ of wifi ones

Also, how do I “disable” the companies cloud and only use HomeKit local? Delete the app after I connect it to HomeKit?

Thank you

To me this feels like saying..."If I have to choose between dying by falling out of an airplane, or getting run over by a car, or drowning, I think I like drowning the best."

:wink:

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It’s more like choosing between a car crash and a airplane crash, imo

Devices that are homekit certified I believe use Thread protocol (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Homekit automatically chooses this if it's available. It can connect with other wifi devices but usually through the devices cloud app. Now they will be adding Matter to their setup and if that happens, any matter based hub theoretically could use the device directly. As to when it's all gonna happen, who knows. Next year or 10 years from now maybe.

Thread support is very new to HomeKit. Again, all Apple HomeKit certified devices are REQUIRED to work locally per the specification. My Ecobee Thermostats, for example, work fine with HomeKit over my LAN. However, Hubitat is forced to use the Ecobee Cloud connection.

HomeBridge is obviously one way to work around this requirement to allow non-HomeKit certified devices to be added to HomeKit.

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Also, how do I “disable” the companies cloud and only use HomeKit local? Delete the app after I connect it to HomeKit?
@ogiewon
Thank you

Not sure that you really can, to be honest. You might need to block the traffic on your home network firewall...but who knows what might break when you do that?

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Check out meross. They offer lower priced devices that work with homekit but not with hubitat though (sort of… I have seen a developer post an app but I could not get it to work for me)