Today is the second day without an internet connection. We have a small ISP and they lost power. No idea how long they’ll be offline since there are about 200k without power in our area. (I am writing this on my iPad with cell service. )
None of my Wyze devices are usable. However, my Kasa devices all work offline. My Z-wave and YoLink devices work manually. My Amcrest cameras are recording and viewable. My Ecobee thermostat keeps working, even though I can’t change settings.
As for Wyze— can’t control the bulbs or plugs. Cameras aren’t recording motion events to the cloud, nor are they viewable. I have some bulbs set to come on with power, but not all and you can’t change the brightness levels or colors.
Cloud-based devices are fine as long as the cloud is always available, but our ISP, the only one available, goes offline regularly, frequently for days at a time.
Yep, the Wyze infrastructure is essentially totally internet dependent. Most of the cameras will continue to record to a local uSD card during an Internet outage - although you won’t be able to watch them until you get Internet back (unless you pull the card and plug into a computer).
I just barely set up a bunch of automations with Wyze devices in Home Assistant yesterday.
I don’t know how accurate this is, but people have been reporting that the Wyze bulbs all work locally if you use the Home Assistant Wyze API. I can only say that when I run rules to the Wyze bulbs through Home Assistant, they are WAY, WAY faster than running them through the Wyze Rules engine or Alexa or Google.
I just switched a whole bunch of Wyze sensors over to it to be completely local too. I still have all the sensors on my main outside doors using Wyze HMS, but all the rest I am pretty much converting to be local sensors on Home Assistant now and it is really awesome so far. I was thinking that I might end up buying local smart switches or relays for my lights, but the Wyze Bulbs are working so fast now that I might not do that after all, especially if I confirm that the Wyze bulbs actually do run locally with the HA Wyze API even when the internet is out.
Having a smart button is heavenly though! I have the single press turn lights on or off, and it’s quick. Then I still have options for double press and long press.
So far, I am super happy with Home Assistant and the Wyze integrations. I even now have a cool “Guest mode” toggle. If guests are staying at my house, I can long press a smart button, and it will toggle Guest mode on, which makes it so my contact and motion sensors aren’t triggering automatic lighting in the areas where guests will be sleeping…no lightstrips or smart bulbs turning on while they’re sleeping. Then in the morning it automatically disables guest mode which then re-enables all my lighting automations again (I had guests over last night and it worked great). It’s so awesome.
Wyze definitely needs an overhaul on their rules engine, and needs to make things work locally better so they’re faster and still functional when internet goes out. It sounds like some stuff will function locally on Home Assistant from what people tell me, and if so, it means some of their devices are already capable of local functionality. It would be great if they expanded and used that within their own ecosystem so that a separate piece wasn’t needed.
