Questions on cloud use

dibe

Hello dear forum.
I am thinking about getting a homey to do some home automation tasks. But for this I would like to understand what exactly is happening via the cloud and/or what happens if I would limit that access. I understand that I need internet/server access to install apps and do firmware updates. I also understand that speech recognition depends on cloud/server access. But what about the daily use of the apps to control the connected devices in my home?

In other words, what would happen if I would deny internet access for Homey in daily use and use a VPN connection into my LAN if I needed to do anything while not at home. Would everything still work or is Homey dependent on access to the server for daily operation?

Thanks,
Dirk

jjtbsomhorst

As far as I understand the things that depend on using cloud are speech and the availability of your homey outside of your own network. For instance using the mobile application or by using my.athom.com. Also next to that it depends on the app really if there are any other demands.

But that is ofcourse more a internet thing instead of a cloud thing. (cloud != internet). For instance the various news apps use the services on the internet to gather information. Also things like the weather apps use services. But if you want to only use it for switching your devices internal a internet connection is not really necessary. (I haven't tested this yet)

swttt

Login goes trough the internet as well. 

dibe

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, true, it also depends on what the apps might be looking for on the internet. So for all practical purposes I would open up access. I am not sure I understand what "Login" means in this context. But I will give you an example of what I don't want:

When using the lightify system of Osram to have connected bulbs in your home, every command to control your lights goes via the Osram server, even if everything happens in your local LAN. If you deny the controller internet access many things are not working any more. So Osram knows about every bulb and when it is on or off. And, should anyone ever succees in hacking the Osram server, they would have control over all lightify bulbs in the world. Kind of scary.

So, Osram knows about everything I do with their bulbs and if there is a problem at Osram, I am impacted by it and might not be able to use the system at all until it is resolved again.

So my question translates to: How much does Athom know about what I am using Homey for and what is going on in my home (e.g. what the status of the sensors in my home are) and what happens if the servers at Athom would become unavailable for some days or if my ISP had a problem and I would be without internet for some time?

Thanks,
Dirk

jjtbsomhorst

As far as I understand everything that is not in need of an active internet connection ( and devices as far as i know do fall into this category)  will still function because the flows are handled on the device locally. But maybe you should read this to begin with : https://blog.athom.com/2017/06/04/cloud-magic-behind-homey/

dibe

Thank you very much. That blog article answered all of my questions (I think). A very good overview of how it works and I think I like the concept. It seems a good compromise between keeping things local where possible and using the cloud where necessary. Many do it the other way around these days. Thanks!

swttt

This is just as far as i know (and i might be wrong, to be sure just email support about it). Login works trough a oauth server in the cloud, this gives a session cookie. Once this expires you need to login again etc. Depending on what kind of device/app is used on homey you might need internet. For example apps that would need internet (and most might not suspect) are Nest and Tado. They use cloud based apis. Not sure about other apps, but there might be some more. 

But insights, flows etc. are indeed local. Speech is local until ok homey, everything after that is sent to the cloud (and until now not stored, not even to improve speech2text in the future)