It's hard to decide which nickname is better between "the Internet of Things That Don't Work" and "the Internet of Someone Else's Things". I can see a half doz

It's hard to decide which nickname is better between "the Internet of Things That Don't Work" and "the Internet of Someone Else's Things". I can see a half dozen solidly practical uses for a smart home setup, mostly scheduling tasks to be done while I'm sleeping or not at home. Beyond that, I'd have a lot of fun just building silly hobby projects with cheap sensors, wifi-controlled lighting, etc. But I'm not going to touch any of it until I can get a system that's happy to run locally, and only calls out to the rest of the world when it actually needs to. At this point, I'm even going to hold out for adaptable integrations; if some service I'm talking to shuts down, I should be able to substitute another one honoring the same API. Anything less looks like a privacy, security, and ownership nightmare.