Hubitat makes a strong case for the cloud-less smart home hub

#News(IoTStack) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Hubitat Elevation: A new smart home hub that doesn’t connect to the cloud. Instead, Hubitat keeps all of the device rules, automations and data locally. With all of the recent news about data privacy issues, social media manipulation and the like, I’ve been wondering if we really need cloud-based hubs.

To be sure, a cloud-connected hub brings several advantages over one that runs everything locally. Software updates are easier for the device maker to manage directly, for one thing. With an internet connection, you can access your home devices when you’re not at home as well. And information external to your home — think your weather and your GPS location — can be integral to smart home automations.
there are downsides to cloud-based hubs. One is that your device usage patterns are or can be transmitted through the web to the hub’s service provider. In the worst case scenario, a would-be thief could use that data to determine if your house is occupied or empty, for example. Based on the patterns of your lights power on and off, they might be even be able to guess when there’s no activity in the home because everyone is asleep during certain times; motion sensor info could even confirm that. Yes, these are extreme (and unlikely) situations, but the possibilities exist.

Then there’s the more likely possibility that your internet service goes down. With a completely cloud-based hub, say goodbye to any automations or routines during the outage.

That’s a big part of the reason that Wink, and later to an extent, Samsung, began supporting a hybrid approach where their respective hubs wouldn’t lose some or all of their functionality without a cloud connection.

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