See this post and the whole Weather underground story as well as to why we should avoid relaying on the cloud as much as we can.
[quote=“prophead, post:39, topic:200362”][quote=“Catman, post:36, topic:200362”]Indeed. What does the cloud add to these solutions? …
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Monthly Recurring Revenue
|-<:)[/quote]
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[quote=“rafale77, post:41, topic:200362”]See this post and the whole Weather underground story as well as to why we should avoid relaying on the cloud as much as we can.
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,32479.28.html[/quote]
Wow… That email from PlantLink is hilarious in a sad kind of way…
Catman/prophead, I don’t get your monthly recurring fee? I do not like a cloud depended solution but many cloud services are free to consumers while suppliers of product have to pay to get their product in that cloud. Whether you like it or not, many mainstream solutions are cloud depended, just think of Google Home, Alexa, ITTT.
I took it as a joke…
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But the question is whether the cloud is needed for home automation (logic/scene handling and almost everything else done with it) and the question is a clear no. The only area I think I would want the cloud is to check the weather, notifications and for geofencing. On the weather, it is because I do not have a weather station, if I did… For the rest, there are alternatives. I have a Skybell and I am replacing it with a local solution with only notification relying on the cloud. the nest/ecobee thermostats have local alternatives. TTS for me has become local. Voice recognition (amazon echo) could also be localized. Look at the wrath logitech harmony has seen when they shut down their local API and ended up reverting. The cloud gives a lot of risks in terms of security, performance and reliability with an absolute zero benefit. Look at SmartThing, Wink etc… It is not pretty. It’s always been the major differentiator for the vera even though it has become only partial since UI7 still needs an internet connection. Hubitat exists because of smartthing failure to go local. On the other hand, homeseer and home assistant community seem to be blossoming. I have asked many times now, The vera needs to have an offline mode. Everything needs to be focused on local processing and go to the cloud only for things that you have to as optional features. You will realize it isn’t too many.
Surely geofencing can be done without cloud as well? The mobile device knows it’s absolute position and the geofence location and can simply communicate that back to the base station? OK you might need some kind of DNS (which I guess is proto-cloud ) or possibly a portal to point the mobile device at the correct controller, but other than that?
I’m no coder, but I work web apps a lot so happy to be proven wrong.
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I ABSOLUTELY agree that the device should NOT be cloud dependent. Cloud accessible for certain functions sure, but absolutely not dependent on it. Geofencing is nice but I’d give that up to be in total control of who has access to unlock my front door and/or view my cameras. If I get so much as a hint that my system, or any of the cloud based systems I’m utilizing, are compromised then I’m disconnected completely immediately.
Do not compromise your security for options, promises, or ease of setup.
Cloud = City Centric
Local = Rural & Country, Isolated locations.
I know which I want to see our clients using…
[quote=“zedrally, post:49, topic:200362”]Cloud = City Centric
Local = Rural & Country, Isolated locations.
I know which I want to see our clients using…[/quote]
Not sure what you mean by making a difference between city and rural. The same problems apply in both cases. Cloud for Home automation is just bad.
[quote=“rafale77, post:50, topic:200362”][quote=“zedrally, post:49, topic:200362”]Cloud = City Centric
Local = Rural & Country, Isolated locations.
I know which I want to see our clients using…[/quote]
Not sure what you mean by making a difference between city and rural. The same problems apply in both cases. Cloud for Home automation is just bad.[/quote]
Have to agree
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We have clients who do not have Internet.
No internet = No Cloud
[quote=“zedrally, post:52, topic:200362”]We have clients who do not have Internet.
No internet = No Cloud[/quote]
Doh! That makes some kind of sense, thanks!
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Not really. If you think about it, cloud is just short for “a server on the internet you don’t control”.
Unless you have a fixed IP address and a decent firewall and hardened dmz system at home, you will need a “cloud” service like DynDNS or a data relay like IFTT (or the vera cloud) that the home device checks on a regular basis.
Cloud enabled is ok (we all like weather and having remote control) but cloud dependent is bad.
Edit: noticed the timestamps. I forgot it had been a while when I hit the “new since last visit” list. Apologies for thread necromancy.
Not really. If you think about it, cloud is just short for “a server on the internet you don’t control”.
Unless you have a fixed IP address and a decent firewall and hardened dmz system at home, you will need a “cloud” service like DynDNS or a data relay like IFTT (or the vera cloud) that the home device checks on a regular basis.[/quote]
DynDNS is about all you need. And having an app completely unrelated to vera occasionally contact another server on line to report its IP address is hardly what I would call ‘cloud’ It’s been around since long before the word cloud was coined in this context. By your definition the entire internet is a cloud (after all, DNS itself is pretty much a cloud service. As is BGP) The difference is that these services are properly resilient and fault tolerant unlike, for example, bad implementations of Azure or AWS.
Once you have the IP of your server and a decent authentication mechanism you’re good to go.
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