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>If a device is Alexa or Google Home compatible, it talks directly to some cloud service This is how some IoT devices work. As far as I can tell. IKEA has no s

>If a device is Alexa or Google Home compatible, it talks directly to some cloud service This is how some IoT devices work. As far as I can tell. IKEA has no servers or infrastructure for their devices. And the Apple/Google hubs manage everything for them.

marcan_42 5y ago
IKEA has to have servers for their devices to integrate with Google Home and Alexa. That's how those systems work. Only Apple offers direct local connectivity as far as I know. These days Google Home has local fulfillment, but that seems to only be offered as an addition to cloud fulfillment. It always has a cloud fallback path. Here's how you hook up Home Assistant to Google cloud. As you can see, turning it into a cloud service from Google's POV is required. You can either use Home Assistant Cloud (see? cloud service) or set up your own single-user cloud integration (which is what I do), turning your "local" server into a cloud service (with public IP and SSL cert and domain and everything) and registering yourself as an IoT vendor in their developer console, pointing at your "cloud" service URL. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant/ There is no way to keep the entire system local and have the Google Home devices only access it locally, without any cloud infrastructure. The commands flow from Google Home devices, to Google's cloud, to the vendor's cloud, to the vendor's devices. There is a bypass path these days for local access, but it is always in addition to the cloud path, and only an optimization.
- psanford 5y ago
  I don't know how the IKEA hardware works. However it is not true that Alexa has to talk to a cloud service to integrate with all IoT devices. I know this because I run some local Raspberry PIs that pretend to be WeMo devices and I'm able to control them without any cloud connections from the PIs. The echo discovers the WeMo devices via upnp. This has been a thing for quite a while[0]. I believe you are correct that Google Home has no local network device control. [0]: https://hackaday.com/2015/07/16/how-to-make-amazon-echo-control-fake-wemo-devices/ https://hackaday.com/2015/07/16/how-to-make-amazon-echo-cont...
vinay427 5y ago
The IoT device can certainly work like that. The comment is specifically talking about Google Assistant support, which as HomeAssistant users have experienced, does require cloud server access even if this seems unnecessary in cases when the devices are only being controlled within a local network.

marcan_42 5y ago

IKEA has to have servers for their devices to integrate with Google Home and Alexa. That's how those systems work. Only Apple offers direct local connectivity as far as I know. These days Google Home has local fulfillment, but that seems to only be offered as an addition to cloud fulfillment. It always has a cloud fallback path. Here's how you hook up Home Assistant to Google cloud. As you can see, turning it into a cloud service from Google's POV is required. You can either use Home Assistant Cloud (see? cloud service) or set up your own single-user cloud integration (which is what I do), turning your "local" server into a cloud service (with public IP and SSL cert and domain and everything) and registering yourself as an IoT vendor in their developer console, pointing at your "cloud" service URL. https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/google_assistant/ There is no way to keep the entire system local and have the Google Home devices only access it locally, without any cloud infrastructure. The commands flow from Google Home devices, to Google's cloud, to the vendor's cloud, to the vendor's devices. There is a bypass path these days for local access, but it is always in addition to the cloud path, and only an optimization.

psanford 5y ago
I don't know how the IKEA hardware works. However it is not true that Alexa has to talk to a cloud service to integrate with all IoT devices. I know this because I run some local Raspberry PIs that pretend to be WeMo devices and I'm able to control them without any cloud connections from the PIs. The echo discovers the WeMo devices via upnp. This has been a thing for quite a while[0]. I believe you are correct that Google Home has no local network device control. [0]: https://hackaday.com/2015/07/16/how-to-make-amazon-echo-control-fake-wemo-devices/ https://hackaday.com/2015/07/16/how-to-make-amazon-echo-cont...

vinay427 5y ago

The IoT device can certainly work like that. The comment is specifically talking about Google Assistant support, which as HomeAssistant users have experienced, does require cloud server access even if this seems unnecessary in cases when the devices are only being controlled within a local network.