Just after midnight this morning, my internet/cable company decided to do "maintenance" in my neighborhood and cut off both cable and internet. (The company will remain nameless because I don't want this to devolve into cable company bashing.)
All of my rules and animations kept running, of course, because most of it runs locally. But I had no way to communicate with HE because I had no way to reach the router.
Here were the problems that caused that I'm wondering how others handle.
I have two lamps that have Hue bulbs in them that do not have any other button that controls them. I ended up turning them off manually and making a note to myself to turn them back on this morning. I maybe need a button or something for just those two lamps.
I had no way to change the Mode. I went to bed with the house thinking it was still Evening instead of Asleep. I usually use an Alexa routine to trigger that mode change. But Alexa, of course, was also down. ("I'm having trouble right now. I'll keep trying.") My bedside lamp wouldn't stay on (it's controlled via motion in all modes except Asleep). And all lights came on at 100% when I got up in the middle of the night. (They usually come on at 20%.) Not fatal... but very annoying. I have no thoughts about how to switch modes when I can't reach the hub.
This doesn't happen very often. But we're heading into the bad weather and it's bound to happen again some time.
I use a dashboard with a local URL for things like this. Since it's a local URL it doesn't require internet service to be available - only my local area network (wired and WiFi) needs to be up.
You can use a dashboard as @Eric.C.Miller suggested, or a device with buttons that is connected to one of the radios. I use Inovelli switches throughout my home, as an example, but any wired or battery powered device with buttons can be used.
I don't quite get that? If the power was on and only the WAN/Internet was down, you still should've been able to connect to your Hub ( assuming you're home). Unless you have an all in one 'Hub' and loss of the internet connection disables the local network and WiFi.
why would your wifi be down is it integrated into your modem and if the internet is down the wifi is.. doesnt make sense.. if so use your own wifi router behind the modem instead
We both had that thought simultaneously! Definitely always best to put an all in one Hub in Modem mode and use your own router. My ISP in the UK (Virgin Media) have a habit of factory resetting the router remotely if you report an issue...but they fail to tell you they have
So your internet provider turned off your WiFi Router? And all your internet is on WiFi?
That seems very unfriendly. I can't say I have ever heard of that.
My internet provider is not friendly. Although this was the middle of the night so most people probably didn't notice. Yes, wifi was out. I could have probably tried to reboot the router, but I mostly wanted to go to bed.
I don't know about that specific device but your thinking is good. You could setup a button controller for those "emergency" functions. I am just not familiar with that specific device.
Have you considered buying a personal Wifi router and then hook it up to your cable company (ISP) provided router. I have never trusted my ISP's provided router plus they are often very limited in what you can and cannot do for simple things like static IP address's.
This setup has many benefits:
If your internet goes out, you can still communicate within your home network from say a tablet to your HE hub
Your Wifi SSID and settings remain the same if you had a hardware issue with your ISP provided equipment gets changed or you decide to change to another vendor
Wifi coverage is often much better than ISP provided equipment
