Local Smart Home Guide
Local-first gear. Honest compatibility. Real homes.
Cloud-only

Cool, but local control is off the table.

Every device below works with Home Assistant - and some are genuinely useful - but only through the vendor's cloud. There is no real local control: state and commands route through someone else's servers, and the integration goes quiet when the internet or that cloud does. We list them honestly so you know what you are buying.

34 cloud-dependent devices across 14 categories. For the opposite list, see our best local-first picks.

This is not a wall of shame. Plenty of these are good appliances or convenient gadgets, and a cloud integration that surfaces a "laundry is done" or "fridge door open" notification can be worth having. The point is to be upfront: if you want automations that keep running during an outage, respond instantly, and keep your data at home, these are not the devices to build on. When a local path exists for the same hardware, we say so on the product page.

Air purifiers

Alarms

Smart appliances

Doorbells

EV chargers

Emporia EV Charger

Emporia - cloud dependency: medium

  • Home Assistant rating: okay (local control off the table)
  • Integration: No official charger integration; community Emporia (cloud API) integrations and an ESPHome reflash route exist

Read the full notes →

Rivian Wall Charger

Rivian - cloud dependency: high

  • Home Assistant rating: poor (local control off the table)
  • Integration: No dedicated charger integration; charging state is only visible vehicle-side via the unofficial Rivian (HACS) cloud integration

Read the full notes →

Wallbox Pulsar Plus

Wallbox - cloud dependency: medium

  • Home Assistant rating: okay (local control off the table)
  • Integration: Wallbox (official, cloud polling ~every 90s; supports pause/resume and max-current). Community options enable local control over BLE/MQTT

Read the full notes →

Smart home hubs

Irrigation controllers

Lights

Smart locks

Smoke alarms

Speakers

Smart thermostats

ecobee Premium

ecobee - cloud dependency: medium

  • Home Assistant rating: fair (local control off the table)
  • Integration: ecobee (cloud); HomeKit Controller local alternative

Read the full notes →

Vacuums

Valves

Want devices that keep working without the cloud? Browse all products, see the best local-first picks, or read the case against cloud-only smart home gear.