peszko wrote:I just can't resist commenting on this. This is exactly the reason that I stay away from cloud based automation. With indigo and modules that directly talk to indigo, I can just not upgrade (or even roll back) if a new release brakes something, but with cloud based devices and services if the company decides to change something or deprecate it, my whole setup can stop. With non cloud automation as long as it works, I can have it working at its latest state for a very long time. If for some reason Mat and Jay fold indigo, I can just keep my setup as is and its still going to work.
My 2 C. Sorry, just couldn't resist.
In this case it is a bit more nuanced, it is the local connection capability that is compromised by the firmware update, a native cloud integration would have kept working (at least to published API’s). A similar issue happened with the Harmony but Logitech did roll back. Of course you could choose not to update firmware for most devices but that could introduce other issues such as security. With Alexa you have no control over that and no obvious way to block updates as connectivity is needed, in this case it seems it is an unintended implication of an update that breaks a reverse engineered API that is no longer needed for the supported use cases.
On the general point I prefer a hybrid approach whereby mission critical local functionality will work without the cloud but enhanced convenience can (Honeywell Evohome, DSC Alarm, local Blue Iris etc). Moving forward it will become harder to be completely cloud free, and while AI based services such as voice control or image processing for security can be done locally these things rely on data to train the AI engines to be more effective and will be a lot more effort and resources intensive than a cloud service, and they may ultimately be less useful.
I understand and respect the choice and sentiment and many will recoil at the privacy implications alone, but it will mean swimming against the tide, and missing capability. My view for the benefit of reliable voice control the risk is worth it and we have a fail back to none voice control.