The value-proposition of "smart home" has NEVER been convincingly constructed. This goes back to the days of X10 remote control systems, while at the same time

The value-proposition of "smart home" has NEVER been convincingly constructed. This goes back to the days of X10 remote control systems, while at the same time never has the cost been reasonable. I've followed this stuff since the 1970s and honestly it's never been worth it as a consumer. Anything with "Cloud" or "Account" to simply use it an automatic 100% no-go for me. I was looking for a new weather station recently - the "nicest" and most elegant one required both an internet account and cloud connection plus all the data had to be uploaded to the cloud even to just access it in my house. It allowed a BLE access if and only if you were in range but that was unusable based on other BLE range limits I've had. So because of that barrier to entry I noped out completely. If it's cloud, I don't buy! What I actually wanted: a remote weather station with a local internet server capability that could stay off the cloud and operate if (actually WHEN) the internet goes down - we have only 2-9's on power reliability in the boonies - i.e. we lose power for about 3-4 days a year, every year. Instead I'm now looking at "separate components" and "homebrew" instead as well as looking at "professional grade" stuff.