At least there's still a physical key to work in offline mode.
My Nest thermostats on the other hand require Google connectivity to change the temperature even when I'm connected to the home wifi..
My Nest thermostats on the other hand require Google connectivity to change the temperature even when I'm connected to the home wifi..
When I lose internet access, or the server is not reachable (and this is super frequent), my floor heating (my only source of heat) stops running, and ventilation starts.
Have to wait for someone to reboot the networked server, but they work only Mon-Fri, 10am to 5pm.
Unfortunately it makes buying this stuff a pain because you have to research who owns what and what kind of control you have.
I ended up buying one which can be operated without an app, which there seems to be fewer and fewer.
This is essentially the Google philosophy, and it stands in contrast to the Apple philosophy. Yes, Nest is ex-Apple people and followed this bad pattern before their acquisition by Google, but still.
Apple HomeKit-certified devices don't communicate with Apple. They establish secure local connections and operate locally. For home devices, this makes good sense to me. It means, however, that HomeKit-certified devices have to be powerful enough to establish secure local connections, which the first couple of generations of IoT devices were not.
I'm willing to wait longer and pay extra to get devices that don't require a third-party corporate intermediary. Anything else seems unreasonable to me.