After the recent UK storm, I found myself without my FTTP connection for about 72 hours. This was my first experience with Hubitat without an internet connection, and I thought I’d share my insights as local execution was a key requirement for me.
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Router Issue: My BT Smart Hub 2 stopped issuing IP addresses or allowing Wi-Fi access when my internet went down. This was a significant issue as it prevented me from accessing my Hubitat hub either via Wi-Fi or Ethernet.
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Power Cut Impact: During the outage, I also experienced a 6-hour power cut. When the HE powered back on, the clock reset to midday, causing all my time-based triggers to fire at the wrong time. Without internet access, I couldn’t manually reset the time, which was frustrating.
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Hue Lighting Scenes: Over time, my Hue light strips lost their scenes and reverted to bright white. I couldn’t use the Philips Hue app to restore scenes, likely because the Hue cloud lost the last used scene data without an internet connection.
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Wi-Fi Lights Control: I use Wi-Fi lights outdoors for better range, controlled via Alexa with virtual devices. Without internet, I lost control of these devices, as expected.
The combination of these issues meant my smart home became very basic, forcing me to use physical switches. However, the fact that HE operated locally meant some automation still worked, but the safety net of cloud connectivity was lost due to the issues above.
As a result, I’ve now created HE Scenes for all my Hue lighting scenes to solve the scene loss issue. I was also surprised that my router stopped functioning without internet. Has anyone else experienced similar issues with running HE offline and found solutions? I’d love to hear your experiences and tips!