Local-First Smart Home: One Dev's Rules
Original: Smart home devices should work without the internet
Why This Matters
Local-first home automation resists vendor lock-in and cloud dependency risks.
Developer Spencer Kittleson shares a decade of home automation rules built around one principle: core devices must work without internet. His stack uses Tasmota, MQTT, Node-RED, and a Raspberry Pi.
After Google broke its Nest API, Kittleson decided nothing essential in his home would depend on a vendor's server. Ten years later, that's still rule one. His stack: Tasmota firmware on ESP boards, an MQTT broker, and Node-RED running on a Raspberry Pi. Cloud services like Alexa are allowed, but only as optional inputs — if Alexa goes down, wall switches and a local dashboard still work.
His ruleset grew over time. Early rules cover the basics: don't remove the old way when you add a new one (the taped-down wall switch is a classic failure mode), keep everything cheap to change, and audit your automations — he once had four scheduled triggers hammering the same garden pump. Later rules, added after more people moved in, get stricter: cloud devices need an API with logs or they don't get installed, config lives in one place instead of five vendor apps, and no batteries unless they last a year or more.
The post includes two full conference talks, slide by slide. Recurring examples include a Tasmota sprinkler controller, a garage door setup, a Samsung fridge displaying a TLS certificate error on its own screen, and a Camp Chef grill that requires Wi-Fi just to show the temperature — the kind of vendor overreach his rules are designed to block.