I am very new to HA and am working on migrating my smart devices (a few Wi-Fi plugs, some Philips Hue bulbs, and a thermostat) from Google’s ecosystem to HA. How do people generally balance being local-first with firmware updates to smart devices? I would prefer everything be local-first or better yet local-only, and with my OPNsense firewall I can make some granular VLAN/device permissions to cut devices off from the internet. That seems best for security, but eliminates the possibility of software updates from the vendor, so you’ll be running devices with out-of-date firmware. You could argue this is inconsequential for a smart plug barring some massive security vulnerability discovery, but surely some devices would benefit from updates.
For example, I have some Leviton decora plugs that HA picked up natively over Wi-Fi, and also prompted me to log in to my Leviton account with an integration. Even through the integration I cannot update the firmware (unless I’m missing something obvious), so I don’t see a benefit to using it anyway since it requires the internet and Leviton’s servers. But, if I want to update the plugs I would need to keep the Leviton app on my phone and keep the plugs connected to the internet and Leviton’s servers anyway, which partially defeats the local-first idea of HA.
Has anyone also had this dilemma of wanting local, HA-first control while also wanting to keep devices up-to-date? Am I missing something obvious? Any thoughts are appreciated.
While it won’t help you with the devices you have, the most obvious thing you missed is to prefer Zigbee and Z-wave over wifi or thread whenever you can. The first two are air gapped by design. For most zigbee devices firmware updates are possible, for z-wave not all manufacturers supply them for use with HA (E.g. Fibaro does not).
Thread is the hardest to secure because it is possible to have thread devices that communicate with the internet, but Thread is not even well suited for use with VLAN’s.
For some devices you have little choice besides wifi. I am hardly an expert to advise you on that. For Shellies I deny them internet, but I can still update their firmware using HA. You do need to point them to a local NTP server on your network if you want to retain power and energy sensors.
Thanks for the reply. You’re right, the obvious thing is other protocols like Zigbee and Z-wave. I have antennas for those now, and I think for new devices I will definitely be prioritizing those over Wi-Fi (and thanks @orange-assistant for mentioning ESPHome; that’s something I was aware of but haven’t really dug into much).
I guess it makes sense that Wi-Fi devices meant for people without much smarthome infrastructure wouldn’t necessarily transition all functionality seamlessy into HA where people are more invested in their smarthome on average, and would go the extra mile to set up Ethernet, Zigbee, Z-wave, etc, and use Wi-Fi as a last resort. Just growing pains for me I guess.