"Our door camera is offline...don't you know why?" This is the message I received from my partner one afternoon. It was Wednesday, I was at work, and so was she. Our smart home...was dead. For all the positive reviews, direct marketing, consumer hype, and billions of dollars spent on R&D, the smart home has a huge Achilles heel that is completely out of your control. The Internet. It's not until your internet connection fails that you realize how crucial it is. It's obvious if you think about it, but the whole point of a smart home is that you don't have to think about it: it's there, in the background, quietly taking care of things and letting you get on with your life. All the useful little features, the various ''hacker'' companies are so desperate for you to give them up when they release another feature, an update, or a whole new device, they are useless. I was the first house that day, but not late at night. At that time, my internet service provider's call centers were closed for a long time and all hope of an instant resolution was lost.
From the smartest to the simplest
It was only when my home internet connection failed that I realized how many devices depended on it. My smart speakers in the house barked that they were having trouble connecting to a network if I dared say "ok Google," and the Google Home Hub smart display in the room was displaying a message saying it couldn't connect: no cool background images, no date or time, even if it had power. Just the error message. Without the voice assistants on the smart speakers or display, I couldn't ask for my Philips Hue lights to be on, the temperature turned up via the Nest Thermostat E, or my robot vacuum to quickly sweep the floor. They weren't just voice commands. With no Wi-Fi at home, the apps on my smartphone were also redundant. I was not without light, without heating or without a functional vacuum cleaner, of course. All were available manually: flicking a switch, turning a dial, and pressing a button provided basic functionality, but no advanced functionality was available. Without the Internet, the functionality of my Smart TV and game console has also been reduced. Access to TV apps like Netflix and Prime Video was out of the question, as was online gaming.
![Las aplicaciones telefónicas para mis dispositivos domésticos inteligentes se han vuelto inútiles]()
Phone apps for my smart home devices have become useless (Image credit: TechRadar) And then there was the device that initially alerted us to the problem: the Nest Hello doorbell. We received an email informing him that he was offline, which led to an investigation on my smartphone and the realization that our house had lost its internet connection, rather than Hello developing a crash. While the loss of doorbell functionality that allows us to ensure our Amazon package was delivered safely to a neighbor was a bit frustrating, it was the loss of security monitoring that was more concerning. Hello is capable of recording a few seconds of footage every time movement or sound is detected, and alerts you via a notification on your smartphone. Without an internet connection, the camera cannot record footage because it is stored directly in the cloud, rather than locally on the device. Fortunately, we had no issues during downtime, but it does force you to re-evaluate how much trust you can have in these products, as many smart home security cameras work in a similar way.
Smarts is back, with a possible solution
In total, our internet connection was down for just over 20 hours - in the grand scheme of things, not much of a problem, in isolation. However, it was not just our property. Our ISP has been having problems with broadband in the region, which means we won't be the only smart home to go offline. For a little less than a day this was nothing more than a minor inconvenience, but in a situation where your internet connection is likely to be down for several days and where smart devices become more entrenched in the running of our houses, the problems are real. They need an answer if technology can be trusted to effectively control key areas of our lives. If you can't trust your smart home, device integration and more complex tasks will be a hard sell. Perhaps the introduction of 5G could help, the traditional cable internet line in your home works in tandem with a 5G connection. If one breaks, the other takes over without a problem. In the UK, mobile operator EE announced a router offering it in May 2018 (although it is 4G and not 5G), but mobile networks are not yet sufficiently available, or support this level or use, for this product to be viable. for the mass population. As 5G network rollout continues, bringing next-generation coverage and speeds to more areas, this dual-connection router is becoming a much more viable option and could solve the problem for our smart homes.