Did your smart home devices suddenly stop responding? There’s a good chance that the cloud is to blame. But, what do you do when that happens?
Here are the steps I take personally when the cloud goes down to get my smart home back up and running as soon as possible—and how I mitigate potential downtime of critical items in my smart home.
Most smart homes rely on the cloud
Once seen as a staple of reliability, the cloud is notoriously unreliable these days. With outages happening more frequently, it’s time to realize that relying on the cloud to run a smart home might not be the best thing.
Recently, AWS went down—hard. In 2023, Amazon stated that over 270 million IoT devices relied on AWS. Now, over two years later, I’m sure that number has increased significantly. In fact, just a few weeks ago, during the AWS outage, people were left unable to use their smart beds at all—even with local controls on the beds themselves.
Smart devices are increasingly more reliant on the cloud, which means that problems will continue to arise when the cloud goes down.
Smart home devices not working? Check for an outage
The first thing to do when your smart home devices stop working would be to check if there’s a major outage like AWS, Azure, Cloudflare, or something else. This can be done pretty easily with a quick Google search.
If there’s no major outage, then it’s time to verify a few other things. For starters, can you access the internet from your local network? If not, then there’s likely a problem with your local network to resolve.
The next thing to do is try using device-specific apps instead of voice assistants and hubs. Sometimes there are issues with voice processing, and native apps will work. In my Apple smart home, there are times when my HomePods (and thus HomeKit) won’t work to control a device. But, when that happens, I find that often the native app for the smart device works just fine.
If you’re able to access the internet just fine and your smart device’s app isn’t working, then the next thing to check would be the status pages for the platform you’re having trouble with. For instance, Samsung SmartThings, TP-Link, and Nest have status pages that are easy to check. Many other platforms also have status pages if you simply search for them on Google.
Revert to dumb controls until the cloud is back up
While it defeats the purpose of having smart, voice-activated devices in our home, if the cloud isn’t controlling your devices, then it might be time to use dumb controls. Use switches to turn lights on manually and remove smart plugs from the equation if there’s no physical controls (though most lamps and other devices do have a physical toggle).
If all you have is smart lights, then those should still turn on when you toggle the power off and on at the switch, meaning you can leave the smart bulbs installed and use them as if they were non-smart.
Another option would be to add your devices to Home Assistant, which handles most of its functions locally without reaching out to cloud servers. This can work well if you already have it set up, or if your devices support offline pairing. However, some smart devices require the cloud to authenticate, even within Home Assistant.
Even so, migrating a cloud-reliant smart home to Home Assistant is absolutely worth considering, especially once you’ve been burned by connectivity issues.
Swap out cloud-controlled necessities with simple alternatives
If you have smart devices that you rely on for things like waking up in the morning or brewing your coffee, it might be best to swap them out for traditional alternatives. Temporarily replace your coffee maker with one that has a built-in scheduler or your Alexa alarm for a traditional alarm on your phone or dedicated clock.
Really, you just want to make sure that mission-critical items in your home will still work when you expect them to if the cloud goes down. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t rely on those devices when they’re working well, but if there’s a known outage, it’s good to have a backup plan in place.
Also, now’s a great time to take note of just what part of your core necessities are cloud-based. Does your bed require an active connection to the cloud to function? What about your alarm? Your evening routine?
It’s good to know what does—and doesn’t—require the cloud in your life. Knowing what has the potential to fail helps you to prepare for that failure. Plus, if you know what could go down if the cloud breaks, then you can have a backup unit on hand and ready to go should the inevitable happen.
T best way to prevent your smart home from going down due to cloud problems is to ensure you have local control of your devices. Home Assistant is designed just for that.
When your network and the cloud are both fully functional, be sure to set up Home Assistant ASAP. It’s pretty simple and also gives you a lot more control over your devices with greater flexibility and more integrations.
