What do you guys think of the idea of smart homes? I could make a basic setup using https://home-assistant.io to control my home temperature and lighting; the tools for doing this are everywhere nowadays and implementation doesn’t seem too horrific anymore.
But setting aside what I “can” do, is this something that I “should” do? How can a person implement this without connecting any devices to the internet?
I know some people with privacy concerns will go out of their way to avoid any “smart” devices that communicate over WiFi. If you stick with Z-Wave/ZigBee/Matter, you don’t have to worry about any sort of external communications. I mean, even with WiFi devices you can isolate them by making a separate local-only network, but that’s a pain.
I wouldn’t trust any closed source WiFi smart devices but IMO ones that run a FOSS firmware and are fully functional with no internet connection are all good