Your Smarthome Setup Might Break, and There’s Nothing You Can Do About It

Your smarthome devices might be running smoothly now, but at any time, a forced update or a change by the manufacturer could potentially break your device, either temporarily or permanently. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Most mainstream smarthome devices on the market rely on cloud connectivity, which means they need to be connected to the Internet and maintain contact with the manufacturer’s servers to receive updates and support. This is both a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse.

It Starts with the Occasional Server Hiccups

You go to adjust your smart thermostat from your phone and get shown a nice little “server is down” message in place of all the controls that you’d normally see. This gives you a little taste into what I’m talking about.

You tell yourself that you’re connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your smart thermostat, so you should be able to communicate locally with the thermostat from your phone. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works, and it’s a great example of why cloud-based smarthome products can be frustrating.

Even if you could communicate locally with your device and the hardware and software is there for it, you still have to have an outside connection to the manufacturer’s servers. And if that connection is broken for whatever reason, then wave goodbye to remote access.

Updates & Patches Could Brick Your Devices

While some devices let you download updates on your own time, other devices do it automatically whether you’re okay with it or not. And it’s not uncommon for a forced update to cause unexpected issues, either for a select few or for every user of the service.

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