Things that don’t work when the internet is down

[Sunset]

Same here. I always download offline maps before traveling overseas, but I usually don't think to do it before vacationing in the U.S. I suppose I just (mistakenly) assume that there will always be some level of cell signal available when I need it, even if it's only "1 bar". But nope, sometimes it's actually fully unavailable and for much longer stretches than one would think. Mountainous areas and very rural, unpopulated places are the most problematic.

Your story motivated me, I use Maps.me when traveling, so now I just downloaded my State and neighboring States , plus the State we will be flying to for vacation.
Just in case I need a map.

 

[old medic]

The only thing wireless here is our security system... Its powered from a 50Lb bag of Kibbles...

 

[Aerides]

Do people think Ring is a security system? Yikes. I have one at our garage and one at our front door, and that's only so I know whether I remembered to close the garage door and whether there's a package waiting outside. I would never expect it to provide any sort of security.

A basic ring doorbell, no. But Ring now offers a full security system to rival the ADT setups - sensors on all entries, connection to police/fire, etc. We have it, fully setup replacing our old system that required a landline. Ring operates just like old systems, except it depends on wifi for communications/connections. It does have a cell back up in case of internet outage.

 

[Aerides]

Did we learn nothing from Battlestar Galactica? Do not network all your devices and computers in the service of convenience. When the Cylons disable the network, we will be defenseless in the face of their attack. Commander Adama understood this; the others died.

Same as when we were all marveling at the boston dynamics robots:

now go watch battlestar gallactica to see how it ends up

 

[athena53]

We've been using Copilot (https://copilotgps.com/en-us/) for years. Its claim to fame is that it doesn't need the internet for navigation. It needs the internet to download maps only once (plus periodic updates, of course). I typically keep the current US and Canada maps on my phone, then add other maps (Europe, etc.) when we're traveling. No need to sweat about not having an internet signal and no need to guess in advance what areas to download. .

I use Waze- same thing. You need to be connected to the Internet when you input your destination but from there it must access the Global Positioning Satellite system. No Internet needed.

I have a Nest thermostat and it thinks I'm "away" most of the time when I'm home because I don't pass by the area where the thermostat is on the wall. It automatically dialed the temperature up when it detected that I was away in warm weather and vice versa for hot weather- I had to change the settings to stop that.

 

[finnski1]

The only thing wireless here is our security system... Its powered from a 50Lb bag of Kibbles...

I have the same security system here but I prefer to actually call it my Early warning system. My collie is a great barker but I'm certain he would just wag and be happy as hell to see an intruder and play with him.
He has incredible hearing and doesn't miss a thing. Gives me enough warning to get defensive measures ready Plus he still works when the internet goes down!

The only problem is that when we go away, he comes with us.

 

[finnski1]

So yeah some stuff doesn't work for a while. It was interesting to me while I was diagnosing the Google photo issue I was disconnecting every device from wifi. Holly pile of garbage, where did all the devices come from? They were all mine but I don't remember giving 10 devices the credentials.

We are a pretty simple home but I did notice that even so we have 5 devices using wifi at any time. 2 phones, 2 laptops and a ROKU TV.
We do not have any appliances, doorbells, cameras etc. but we both use our laptops all day long and I hate it when the internet goes down. Our tiny town actually installed fiber optic last year and since then we haven't had any outages that I can recall. Even when we lose power the fiber optic hasn't been affected. The power lines are at the top of the pole with the fiber optic/phone lines a few feet below. I think they are more protected. Many times in the past the land line would always function during an outage for this reason.
We were finally able to get rid of our land line when fiber optic showed up. We only had DSL before that and need the landline to get it. Our monthly bill went from $91 down to $44. Pretty happy with that.

 

[Car-Guy]

I certainly wouldn't depend on the Internet for my security system(s). Even as a secondary system... The commercial power is pretty unreliable around here and Internet access is worse. Actual power outages happen ~once a month on average... Power hits (few seconds) are much more common. Internet access outages happen much more often (two or three drop outs a week) but are usually very short in duration. (~5 mins) However, usually the power and Internet access aren't down at the same time. Over time, I've learned to compensate pretty well for the power outages, with UPS(s), backup generator(s) but I just ignore the short term Internet outages.


Maybe if both were more reliable, I'd connect and depend on more "stuff"...

 

[CaptTom]

Thank you for this. It sounds like just what I want from a capability and security POV. I will investigate.

The two open-source smart home projects which made it to the final round for me were OpenHAB and Home Assistant. There are commercial products which support a local "hub" in the home, like SmartThings, too.

As an aside, I will not install anything that I need to talk to to control something, or that talks to me.

I'm the same way. I always tell people that my computer has nothing to say which I want to hear, and it certainly doesn't want to hear what I say to it!

A basic ring doorbell, no. But Ring now offers a full security system to rival the ADT setups...

Yes, for a turn-key commercial solution there are a number of options now. The problem comes back to who controls the data. We've all seen the articles about privacy issues with these systems. These big data companies are now building out their own private networks by interconnecting neighbors' smart devices. Sure, it could help you find your phone, or let the police see your doorbell camera to help solve a crime. But that's not their true motive. The goal is to monetize even more of your personal data. I think I'll sit this fad out for a while longer.

 

[ERD50]

I use Waze- same thing. You need to be connected to the Internet when you input your destination but from there it must access the Global Positioning Satellite system. No Internet needed. ....

Made me look. I use google maps in the off-line mode to save on data when I'm out. They have made it very convenient now, you select a map area, it downloads it, and updates it in the background (you can select DL only on WiFi) automatically (once a month I think).

I try to make a point of pre-entering the destination when I'm on WiFi, as sometimes it might not be able to search, and you might need to provide an address (that you may not know). But I wasn't sure if it could do the destination if off-line (I thought it could, but maybe more limited).

I went into airplane mode, loaded the Map app, and it seemed to work fine, even when I entered a place name rather than address.

-ERD50

 

[OldShooter]

I use Waze- same thing. You need to be connected to the Internet when you input your destination ...

If I understand you correctly, that's not the same. With Copilot my phone has complete maps on a country or region basis. For example, USA and Canada. (see also https://copilotgps.com/en-us/map-coverage)As long as my destination is somewhere in the maps I have loaded there is no more connection or downloading needed; all destinations are already there. When we were on a 5Meg DSL line the big map files were a pain to load, but I just updated my USA map yesterday on our 100Meg line and it just took a few minutes.

The two open-source smart home projects which made it to the final round for me were OpenHAB and Home Assistant. There are commercial products which support a local "hub" in the home, like SmartThings, too. ..

Thanks again. One of the things I worry about with proprietary systems (vs national standards, which don't exist yet.) is obsolescence. Right now I have a bunch of 20YO X-10 hardware installed around the house that is no longer functional. I looked at Home Assistance right after seeing your post and liked the plethora of devices and companies that support it. It looks like it will be around for a while. Any thoughts on OpenHAB?

 

[CoolRich59]

It's surprising how we take internet service for granted, and how it's become a utility like gas and electricity service.

On a similar note, I recently replaced my router and I was shocked by just how many devices are connected to our wifi. Just off the top of my head:

- laptops (2)
- desktop
- smartphones 92)
- 1 tablet
- backup device
- wireless printer
- Sonos speakers (8)
- "smart" scale
- "smart" blood pressure cuff
- Nest thermostat
- Nest smoke detectors (2)
- Flo leak detectors (3)

And, I'm probably forgetting a couple.

 

[CaptTom]

Thanks again. One of the things I worry about with proprietary systems (vs national standards, which don't exist yet.) is obsolescence. Right now I have a bunch of 20YO X-10 hardware installed around the house that is no longer functional. I looked at Home Assistance right after seeing your post and liked the plethora of devices and companies that support it. It looks like it will be around for a while. Any thoughts on OpenHAB?

You are very correct about the lack of standards. The big manufacturers are vying to become the dominant player with their proprietary standards. The mid-tier manufacturers are fragmented among a few different standards, but even those can change with time and vendor add-ons. There are a few smaller outfits which sell generic Chinese parts which you can flash with open-source firmware, too.

I went with Home Assistant because it has a very active development community with lots and lots of "integrations" for just about every type of hardware anyone has ever heard of. The down side of this huge support cadre is that it's a fairly dynamic product, with a few updates per month. Depending on your hardware and level of customization, these changes can break things. Of course, hardware vendors can and do change and even discontinue their own proprietary offerings, too.

Another issue with any open source project is that people can lose interest in a piece of code they authored, and just walk away from it. That's fine if nothing else changes and it continues to work, or if it's a popular enough function that others in the community pick it up.

Finally, as with any such project, Home Assistant developers HATE to write documentation. And when they do, they love to impress users by obfuscating things and using shorthand and acronyms which mere mortals can't understand. And they'll never go back and update the documentation when something changes. So, yeah, there's a steep learning curve. But there's a very active forum where questions are generally answered quickly.

 

[OldShooter]

You are very correct about the lack of standards. The big manufacturers are vying to become the dominant player with their proprietary standards. The mid-tier manufacturers are fragmented among a few different standards, but even those can change with time and vendor add-ons. There are a few smaller outfits which sell generic Chinese parts which you can flash with open-source firmware, too. ...

Yes. I have seen this show before, serving on two or three national standards committees. The main meeting theme is always large incumbents with proprietary interfaces throwing sand into the gears of progress. There are two subthemes: In areas where there are a few powerful customers, the nay-sayers are brought to heel quickly. I still remember one meeting where the rep from Exxon told the room: "Exxon will begin specifying the standard for future procurements and if you are not compliant you will not qualify as a bidder." That got everyone's attention, particularly the reps from Foxboro and Honeywell. The EU used this same tactic three or four years ago to force Microsoft to an open standard for documents.

The second subtheme, sadly, is the one that pertains here. There is no strong user input to the standards process, hence the obstructionists tend to prevail. It is only when the plethora of small, weak, users begin to vote with their dollars that an open standard will emerge. In the mean time we are stuck with proprietary interfaces, nondisclosure agreements among vendors, and prices that are higher than necessary.

I read recently that the Chinese are packing some international standards committees, pushing (surprise!) existing and proposed Chinese standards. Not sure what that will mean long term, but the nature of these committees is that large contingents are more effective than small contingents, even on a one-vote-per-company or one-vote-per-country basis. I have no idea whether the Chinese are interested in home security standards.

 

[Katsmeow]

For the last few days our internet (Spectrum) goes out about 1:00 in the afternoon. DH calls Spectrum who says there is no outage in our area. 15 minutes he gets the notification there is a widespread outage in the area.

And, yes, everything goes out. Alexa won't talk to me, etc. So many things are connected to our network. Going online (like to here) is not an issue since I just make my phone a hotspot. I get plenty of data to do that so it isn't an issue (not as good as the regular data of course in terms of download speed but adequate for most uses).

 

[ownyourfuture]

So no phone, web surfing or TV for a day.
I spent a lot of the time getting things done around the house & reading. Maybe it should go out more often.

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