"Alexa, turn on the lights."
Seems like a pretty innocuous command, right?
Problem One: Security, or lack thereof#
Beginning in early 2019 over 50,000 customers of Amazon's Ring camera fell victim to their accounts getting hacked, giving threat actors views into their homes. In some cases they could even see into places like children's bedrooms, as this picture illustrates. Ring claimed that this was due to users utilizing weak passwords and not properly setting up other security features like multi-factor authentication, but recently it became known that Ring's own employees were some of those threat actors, including one male employee who spied on over 80 women.
Even if there wasn't a security issue, ask yourself: do you really want strangers to be able to see this?
Problem Two: Availability#
We've all heard the expression that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, but that phrase also applies here. Cloud-dependent automation tools often becomes expensive paperweights if they lose their connection. Imagine arriving at home during a bad storm only to be locked out because your smart-locks can't validate your access code due to the Internet being down.
What if Mother Nature isn't the problem? Companies often discontinue products or fold up entirely with little to no warning. What if they decide that a free feature should become something you pay extra for, after you just deployed hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of their product? You're at their mercy.
Problem Three: Performance#
When you press a light switch, you expect that light to turn on immediately and without question. Even a locally-controlled switch will have a small delay while it sends a signal to an on-site controller, which will in turn trigger other activities. But when that signal has to potentially travel a couple hundred or even a couple thousand miles to a service provider's datacenter and back again, that lag time will become noticeable. Add in the previous issue of availability and you have a potentially dangerous situation on your hands.
Local automation is the solution. And it's easy to do.#
Companies such as Home Assistant sell turn-key local automation controllers for a few hundred dollars. They are fast, support just about every automation tool and standard under the sun, and don't require a Computer Science degree to deploy and maintain. They offer cloud access so that you can control your home from afar, but do so in a manner that is secure. What's more, their products are subject to constant code review by experts from all over the world who are passionate about keeping the product safe.