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Does Alexa et al work without internet as well? We need a local closed-circuit voice recognition equivalent to be the brains

• sjwright 7y ago
  Voice recognition isn’t automation, it’s an elaborate remote control. Real automation is having the room lights react to stuff like motion, presence, time of day, ambient brightness, and whether you’re watching TV. Telling Alexa to turn the lights on is more of a Rube Goldberg hack.
  • thinkloop 7y ago
    Does home automation require internet for anything?
    • sjwright 7y ago
      Not inherently, no. I'm building out my home automation with mostly ESP8266 based sensors, relays, modules etc. About half of those are NodeMCU, the other half are commercial devices flashed with custom firmware. My biggest "win" so far is taking over thermostat control of the whole house ducted AC. I now have it automatically change which room it prioritises temperature stability based on presence and time of day (when the child goes to bed). My system "relies" on an internet connection for just one thing right now: iPhone push notifications, which are merely informational and mostly for debugging. It also uses the internet to keep my local NTP server in sync. When I'm away from home I can manually check on stuff with a VPN. In future I plan to expose a minimalist HTTPS api for triggering certain actions remotely, like the garage door. But even that's not a big deal right now because I've got a outdoor AP that covers a wide area outside my house—my phone is generally already on wifi as I approach home by foot.