A smart home that works without the internet

01Problem

Six rooms ran on a cloud ecosystem. The owner wanted the home to work with the internet down, and was not willing to give up voice control or the scenes everyone was used to.

02What was done

1. 01Stood up a local smart-home server: it runs the flat on its own, without the cloud.
2. 02Everything that can run locally moved to local protocols — climate, appliances, media.
3. 03Added what the cloud setup never had: power monitoring, presence, system health.
4. 04A per-room dashboard and documentation: the owner runs the home and reads the scenes without me.

03Outcome

• 331 entities and 38 automations run locally. The cloud is a backup channel now.
• When the line goes down the home keeps going: lights, climate and scenes do not wait for the cloud.

04Stack

• Home Assistant
• Docker
• Linux
• ESPHome
• Python