Often, remote access is advertised as the main feature of a smart home. Of course, in some cases it is useful and you can find a lot more ways to use a smart home, but it is certainly not very good to rely entirely on it, and there were many cases when just at the right moment the smart home and remote access were simply unavailable and could not be done some action. Many times when I was out of my house, the Internet router hung up, then for some reason the Internet just didn't work, then the smart home server hung up, there were situations when the zigbee stick stopped working, for example, it could be due to a thunderstorm and then of course it's not very clear how to manage it at all and if I'm in if this moment was far away, then in general it was very difficult to understand what was happening and how it could be corrected in general.

Sometimes I had to connect to the smart home system in very strange ways and, for example, restart the router or some device with very clever commands. For example, I have such a function additionally that I can go through the telegram bot and perform some actions that will help me regain control of the smart home system.

It also very often happens that just for some reason, for example, the space on the smart home server runs out, or some application stops working for some reason, or services crash, or some scripts stop working, or certain devices may no longer be available, for example, after some kind of failure, or just maybe if there is a power outage, they are not fully loaded, or for example, the device via wi-fi may simply lose the network and stop working, as well as various sensors that run on batteries, it may turn out that the battery is just dead at this point and they will also either display the value incorrectly, steam off to the home system, or the smart home system will not receive any value from them at all, and of course this can also affect the overall management.

Of course, it is often shown that if you suddenly forgot to turn off the iron from the outlet and you bought a smart outlet and plugged this iron into this outlet in a timely manner, then you can always go remotely and check whether the outlet is turned on or not and whether the iron consumes electricity or not and turn it off remotely, but of course you can not- first, it may just be cheap wi-fi, and it may also turn out that the cloud of the manufacturer of this outlet will also not be available at this moment, or some other situation will occur related to the failure of this outlet, then of course it will be quite difficult to turn it off remotely.

But most often it happens that of course on all these smart sockets or light bulbs it is possible to configure the default action for example after a reboot so that they either turn on, or off, or switch to the last remembered position, but how many times have I already watched there so for some reason or after the next update of this outlet, or simply because of some inconsistencies in smart home systems and applications, so this device itself seems to show that it is included in this mode, and if it is really turned off and on, then there may be a completely random state on it, for example, when the iron may be turned on again, and of course this will be quite unpleasant and may even be dangerous.

In order to understand in principle what is happening in a smart home, I often mainly look at the total energy consumption, I have a common smart electricity meter, it stands at the entrance to the apartment, at the input of electricity to the apartment, and I can roughly understand whether something is turned on now or not., it may turn out that some kind of outlet really turned on or some light bulb turned on again after a reboot, or even it happens that you can just accidentally enter the smart home system and click a button just by viewing, for example, the page of this smart home of this system and touch some switch and just turn on or off some device.

Well, even for example, if you use voice control such as Yandex, it may also turn out that the command was accidentally uttered or it was recognized as a command and some action is done in the smart home, and if you also have several different houses in this ecosystem, this possibility also exists now, then of course you can accidentally turn it on in the wrong house, for example, at the dacha or in an apartment or somewhere else, some device or some outlet or some relay, which even in principle will not be clear that this action occurred at all, if the consumer is not very powerful, then even through the electricity meter, you will not be able to see this consumption, and of course you will also need to come up with something in this case.

As an option, various smart relays and meters are also sold combined, which can be put, for example, in an electrical panel and turn off all electricity in a smart home altogether if, for example, you go somewhere for a long time and far away, but in fact, of course, you need to ensure that those devices that require constant consumption, and the smart home system itself is not de-energized at this moment and that is, you will need to make several different circuits for power supply and, accordingly, of course, this also needs to be designed in advance, provided for in advance, which is not easy at all.

Web cameras often helped me to control what is still happening in a smart home, because visually it is much easier to assess for example whether a light has turned on somewhere or if you can see for example that some device is working maybe the same fan or air conditioner of course will still be visible on the camera, but if they are located quite close, and even at the beginning, I also put the camera in an additional position for some time and directed it to the smart home server, so that you can see by blinking different LEDs what is happening to this server and if the smart home system is not working, then the camera can be accessed through the manufacturer's app, and of course this also helped me understand the current state.

And most often, of course, I also provide that the smart home has several different contours, that is, first of all, I have a server that does not use wi-fi and is located directly on the ethernet network, and therefore it certainly does not depend on this router and on the wi-fi point, and if even in the event of a failure or if this router hangs, it will still be available and you can manage it.

Well, some devices, for example, that work on zigbee, they can also hang for some reason and in order to, for example, restart this server when I leave for a long time, this server can also be connected to some wi-fi sockets and thus, if the smart home server does not work at all, but I can if you need to restart it, then I can use the contour via wi-fi and turn off this outlet, and if I get the opposite, wi-fi is frozen, then I can just put the zigbee outlet there and thus restart this wi-fi router and fix the system.

Of course, the presence of several control loops, different ways to connect to the smart home system, for example, I use both the proprietary application and the OpenHAB system and its remote access, I use the Telegram bot to connect there are several other ways to connect via a web server, and so of course even when my system hung up, I actually had to hack my protection knowing how it works, in order to still return control remotely over the smart home system.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.