Pick something you like, then look up its Home Assistant integration. If it says "Its IoT class is Local Push.", then you're all good. Lutron Caseta is my gold standard. After that, ZWave or Zigbee.

EDIT: From what I can tell, the Belkin integration _is_ local push, so I don't know what the big deal is. Does removing "support" just mean no more updates? If they aren't already, hook those guys up to Home Assistant and you can keep them until you die.

My Meross plugs have been very stable. Have not had to reset them, reconfigure them, rehome them, re-pair them, etc.

For light switches I tell everyone I know it is either LUTRON or nothing. Your time is not worth messing with anything else, and Lutron has been in the game long enough they have demonstrated commitment to their products. Finally, my Lutron system has been one of the few IoT devices I have ever had that was truly "set and forget". Once the Lutron switches and shades were bound, they have been perfect ever since for me.

Sonoff S31 - cheap and have been rock solid for me. I use them with Home Assistant.

Look at the original Honeywell Z-Wave products, still going strong and still doesn't need an internet connection to work.

They will work with any Z-Wave/Zigbee compatible controller.

> It's wild to see how for no reason other than marketing, we're seeing devices with a static feature set being bricked

I work in the smart home space. Your sentiment is reasonable and understandable but, respectfully, you’re wrong.

First, all these devices will continue to work locally. They’re just killing the server, which has continual real costs. They’re not being bricked, they’re just regressing to their static features.

Second, ZWave and Zigbee were never the future. It’s very hard to convince consumers they need a hub. My firms market research indicates that most consumers think it’s a cash grab. And the return rate of Zigbee products because they “don’t connect to WiFi” is scary high.

Finally, you need an app and cloud of some sort for controlling the device. Consumers expect that app will control the device and it will work anywhere in the world, because that’s why they bought it. That’s just the basic market research on the majority of consumers of smart home products. Users need a way to control the device (or at least set it up), and that means an app, which means continuous updates as app stores change. Global control means cloud relays and server costs.

Matter (the protocol) was inevitable. Consumers already have an IP network, and the big tech companies can afford to build and distribute apps and relay servers built into their phones and cloud offerings. This minimizes the risks of device manufacturers and maximizes compatibility.

In the email they mention that they're focusing on other parts of the company. My guess is that their lousy quality for recent devices (IME) is causing lots of returns and lots of customer service demands. That costs them money. If the new devices worked better, they wouldn't have these ancillary costs, which are probably the true reason for shutting this all down.

I agree this sucks, but what would the cause of action be? They're offering partial refunds for items purchased within the warranty period (though you have to have proof of purchase, which of course practically no one will have).

I don't think companies can be sued for discontinuing cloud services that are required for older devices to keep working, otherwise Google would have surely been sued over their Nest security system shutdown, among other things. Maybe a shareholder derivative lawsuit could make sense, but Belkin isn't publicly traded, and presumably whoever owns them is OK with this decision (and wouldn't want a costly lawsuit).

I use this exact Sonoff dongle! I use it with ZHA and I've been very happy with it. I have it paired with a Hue bulb, several cheapo Aliexpress scene switches, and (my recommended switch) a MOES ZigBee scene switch.

Only tip I have for you is that everyone suggests to use a USB extension cable with these to get it away from your PC or whatever device. My dongle is sticky-tacked to my office wall.

The Home Assistant-branded ZBT-1 [0] is $30ish and, if your goal is Home Assistant, you're probably better off going that route especially now that IKEA is going all in on Thread/Matter (which the ZBT-1 supports in addition to Zigbee.)

I do have that particular Sonoff dongle - as well as a ZBT-1 - and I can vouch that the dongle works as well as the Hue hub it replaced, controlling a couple dozen lights.

(Obligatory prime-day-is-not-much-of-an-actual-discount so don't worry if you miss out on this sale - https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B09KXTCMSC)

[0] https://www.home-assistant.io/connectzbt1/

I also had lots of issues with the newer Wemo products, even when using them without the Wemo app (over HomeKit). I spent tons of time on the phone with their support team, manually resetting the devices time and time again. They work maybe half the time.

A warning on Zigbee - Ikea just announced that they're moving their smarthome products to Matter over Thread. It's a win for interoperability, but they've been one of the main reliable and affordable vendors for Zigbee buttons/remotes, door sensors, smart outlets, lightbulbs (way cheaper than Hue), etc. There will still be others, but the ecosystem may not be the best long term investment anymore.

I use that dongle with Zigbee2MQTT, everything works perfectly and you can pry this setup from my cold, dead hands.

Imho you're kinda describing how Zigbee and Z-wave work. The devices have various profiles like "Light bulb" or "button" or "temp sensor" and you can pair them with a Hub device. You could replace the hub with a new one, for instance, if say, Ethernet or TCP/IP became outdated. And new profiles are invented over time to allow new classes of devices.

Matter is a new standard that is incredibly slowly rolling out, the problem with it is that it isn't the 'full picture' because it only specifies a protocol but not the physical medium. So you can have matter devices over TCP/IP that have to be connected to Wi-Fi, or matter devices over Thread radio (more akin to Zigbee). Wi-Fi will come with its own set of headaches since you have to have some dumb app or whatever to use, to get the correct credentials onto each individual IoT device.

Some of these items were sold much more recently than that! Also, I paid a few hundred bucks to have the light switches installed in my home, so the wasted cost is perhaps double what I paid Belkin for the switches.

> continue supporting HomeKit

As far as I understand, Apple insisted that HomeKit devices be manageable locally with cloud connection optional. Your device can still do cloud connection, but Apple devices will only talk to it locally though a HomePod or an AppleTV or some iDevice that you leave on your home network.

So it's not really how they are choosing to continue to support these products, and more of a byproduct of how HomeKit works.

Only caveat there is setup. IIRC a lot of devices have to be added to HomeKit via their own apps. Would be frustrating to never be able to move your device to a new “home”.

I have ZWave devices that are now 20 years old which work like the day I bought them. Stick with a standard, local solution and you don’t have to deal with these kinds of messes.

They don't require the cloud if all you want to do is turn them on or off. You can send SOAP requests to them, or use OpenHAB, HomeAssistant, etc... to control what you have, but longer term it might be a good idea to invest in Tasmota or ESPhome switches if you have technical knowledge. Paying up for Lutron might be a more long term solution if you want hands off, though they don't have the device coverage that Wemo had.

https://www.openhab.org/addons/bindings/wemo/

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/wemo/

Older Wemo switches can work locally with Home Assistant using the wemo integration, which communicates via UPnP without cloud dependency. You can also flash some models with alternative firmware like Tasmota if you're comfortable with that.

I have wondered about this also. I noticed that some of my older plugs seem to keep on chugging even when internet is out. I am guessing they have some internal clock that they fall back on when the internet is not available. However, this would only work until the first power outage happens, at which point they would no longer know what time it is, and there would be no way to reconnect to them via the Wemo app to sync up their internal clocks.

HomeKit was not the basis for Matter, although obviously some HomeKit concepts (and I suppose actual HomeKit code) were contributed by Apple. The dominant input technology to Matter was actually Nest Weave. This can been seen by comparing the code bases.

Weave was designed from the start (circa 2013) with local control in mind. However features based on local control were a tough sell inside Google after the acquisition (as one might imagine). Today, many of the pivotal people in the Matter effort are ex-Nesters, and they, along with their (equally passionate) Apple counterparts have been strong champions of local control.

I had to use a different title since the original was confusing. I considered using the title "nearly all", but didn't want to make it seem like I was editorializing. But honestly, that might be the more accurate description.