Indicate more clearly if an device will work without the Cloud/Internet

Feature Requests
,
#1

Problem: If I look at the documentation for any integration I can see its IoT class. If that class is “Local Polling” or “Local Push” I would assume that the device works fine even without the cloud. However, this is not the case. HA can still talk to these devices even if the cloud is down but the device may not work at all. This confusion is further amplified by cloud icon on the HA frontend. As a user I would assume any integration and device that does not have that cloud icon to still work even if there is no internet available.

Example: If you block the Nuki bridge (Nuki - Home Assistant) from the internet it works fine for a couple of hours but if you restart home assistant after a given time period and it tries to re-authenticate with the bridge the bridge rejects any authentication until cloud access is restored. Meaning you would be unable to unlock the door which could lead to serious problems.

Proposed Solution: Add an additional indicator and/or a list of devices for each integration that communicates clearly if a device will work in an internet free environment.

#2

Many smaller devices does not work without internet access because they need to retrieve a timestamp to set their internal clock.
There is no room for a RTC module with battery backup in many of those devices.
If the time is too much off then encryption will often fail.
You might be able to provide an internal NTP service för these devices, but some of them have that hardcoded in.

#3

That might be true but my point still stands. I want an indication per integration/device whether or not it will work without internet/cloud access. I still believe that calling an integration “local” and then it stops working when the internet is down is misleading. And the GUI is even worse - it shows a cloud icon next to the integration with the caption “depends on cloud”. A lot of people (me included) will take that to mean that the others will work without cloud/internet access (I ran a quick and dirty poll at my university).

#4

It sounds like there is a misunderstanding of the viewpoint here.
The local/cloud indication in the integration page is telling whether HA gets its data from a local or cloud source.
It does not tell if the device might require some access still.

So what you are actually looking for is not available in any form today, because the indicators you have found actually tell something different.

#5

Yes and the problem is that the “local/cloud” indication can easily be confused with what I want it so say. That is why I would like an additional indicator to clear up this confusion and give us as users more information about the integration/products that can be used with HA.
So one indicator for how HA communicates with the device and an additional indicator to show if the device retains its functionality without the cloud/internet.

1 Like