You know everyone has their own accounts of this. @ogiewon probably had one of the best test cases. But it’s kind of cool when you experience it for yourself. I’m on LTE right now for this post, but the house has no internet.
We’re getting a cold evening with -18.2 degrees C temp right now (-0.8 Fahrenheit). First time it’s been this cold since the new Fiber Optic lines started to be installed into our neighborhood these last two summers. Guess it’s causing an unforeseen issue, because we uncharacteristicly have no internet access right now.
Hubitat is humming along and as long as I switch my phone back to local WiFi, I have HomeKit control of devices (including Siri control), just as I would with Hubitat Dashboard too. Pico switches all continue to work, and as long as we don’t lose power for longer than my UPS could sustain while the internet is out, I know the Hue Bridge will continue to function as well. WAF is high right now. Maybe a good time to order more stuff
Things are blowing over that I didn't even know existed. Bought a bunch of wool socks for the Arctic blast, kinda working. Guess I need wool pants too though.
While you guys out in the "boonies" may have had "your lines cut", those of us who live closer to the Metropolis, have never had a power failure! I'm sure that I live no more than 50 miles from you, yet, the last time we didn't have internet must have been years (and years) ago!
Maybe that's why I never justified a move to HE from ST based on internet outage!
In central Jersey if you have Comcast it goes out at least once a month.
I'm sitting here on Verizon with one short outage in 10 years...
Good job Comcast...
I live in Connecticut (US) and have Cox cable for many years. I've had very few internet connect issues do to the Cox system, I have had a few instances of loss due to my modem and or router issues.
My reason for staying as local as possible has more to do with my comfort level of the companies providing some internet service. Right now my HE is relatively new and I am in the "playing" phase. At some point I will move on to something else and at that point I want my automation to just work, without any upkeep.
My history is: X-10 ---> VeraPlus ---> HE
The X-10 system was rock solid (except for some periodically missed actions). It was controlled by an Ocelot controller (basicly a Z80 single board computer) would literally run for years without any attention.
The VeraPlus was still in its infancy. However it required an internet connection to their server for time of day. So if it could not connect to their server (for any of a number of reasons) time based events would not be triggered
So far, HE has stayed true to its goal of local processing. All my lighting, temperature etc automation is independent of the internet or Hubitat servers. I have chosen to augment my automation with Alexa and realize these features require the internet.
But what allows me to sleep an night is knowing my system will work if I loose internet and even if HE is no longer in business.
Just my opinion and what works for me. Fortunately not all folks are the same (the world would be boring) and have different opinions.
It’s not just about the reliability of the power grid or internet service. What drove me to Hubitat. was the random cloud disconnects that the v3 hub was prone to as well all of the goofy cloud outages that would leave the system in weird states, cause other unexplained behavior, or leave doors unlocked when nobody was home.
I also have trust issues with Samsung and wasn’t too keen on the possibility of Samsung collecting data on our lifestyle either.
Just this morning I temporarily lost FiOS internet and voice service (oddly TV continued without a burp). This is my second internet/phone outage since Verizon installed it about 7 years ago. Stuff happens; the first incident a couple of years ago was a real bear since it occurred intermittently, with data/voice going out for about 2-3 minutes a couple of times an hour and persisted for days. At that time I was on SmartThings and no automations could be relied upon. The downside of cloud based home automation became really obvious so when I got wind of HE last February I jumped on it.
Today's outage was brief, lasting only about an hour and resolved itself before I got around to calling it in; it was just long enough for me to appreciate being able to control everything except the stuff I still haven't migrated to HE (my aquarium pumps and lights are still on a smart strip run by ST. Having to crawl around on the floor this morning to manually plug stuff will finally motivate me to migrate that too now that HE supports the Zooz smartstrip I have still sitting in its box ) .
I also have a new appreciation for a few strategically placed buttons-- when voice control is offline it's a lot easier to push a button in the dark than fish out the phone to turn on the lights.
This is why 
