Your Smart Home Shouldn’t Need Its Manufacturer to Stay Alive

Article summary

Not Bricked, But Definitely Worse

The App Should Be a Bonus, Not the Foundation

Why Matter Helps

Cameras Are Their Own Special Case

The Counterarguments Are Real

Smart home devices are usually sold on convenience. Control the lights from your phone. Turn down the thermostat from bed. Get a camera notification when someone walks up to the porch. Automate the boring stuff and feel like you are living slightly closer to the future.

That future gets a lot less fun when the device only works because a company’s cloud service is still around.

My rule for buying new smart home gear has become pretty simple: if the core functionality depends on a proprietary cloud service, I’m probably not interested. The manufacturer’s app can be useful. Cloud features can be useful. But the device should support an open, local-first protocol out of the box.

For most smart home devices, that means looking for Matter. For cameras, that usually means looking for RTSP and/or ONVIF support. There are also good exceptions outside of Matter, like Zigbee, Z-Wave, MQTT, ESPHome, and other local integrations. The important part is not that every device has to use the same protocol. The important part is that the device should not become useless just because the manufacturer gets bored, pivots, gets acquired, changes its subscription model, or shuts down a server.

Not Bricked, But Definitely Worse

Google’s support changes for older Nest Learning Thermostats are a good example of the problem. Starting October 25, 2025, Google says 1st- and 2nd-generation Nest Learning Thermostats no longer connect to or work in the Nest app or Google Home app. Those thermostats can still be controlled directly on the device, and existing schedules can continue to run.

So, no, they were not turned into wall-mounted paperweights. That part matters.

But a lot of what made them “smart” went away: remote control from the app, notifications, phone-based settings changes, third-party assistants, Home/Away Assist, multi-device Eco mode control, and software/security updates. That is not nothing. If you bought the device because it was connected, programmable, and integrated with the rest of your home, losing those features is a meaningful downgrade.

This is the smart home trap. The physical device can still function, while the product you thought you bought quietly stops existing.

The App Should Be a Bonus, Not the Foundation

I do not think every smart home device needs to be fully open source, and I do not think every manufacturer app is bad. Sometimes the app is the easiest way to set up the device. Sometimes it exposes extra features. Sometimes it handles firmware updates in a clean way.

That is fine.

The problem starts when the app and cloud service are the only way to use the device. At that point, you are not just buying hardware. You are buying hardware plus an ongoing promise that the company will continue to care about that hardware.

That promise has a shelf life.

A better model is “cloud optional.” Use the manufacturer’s app if it helps. Use the cloud feature if it gives you something valuable. But the basic control path should still exist locally. A light switch should still switch lights. A thermostat should still integrate with your home. A camera should still expose a video stream. Your house should not need to ask a remote server for permission to behave like your house.

Why Matter Helps

Matter is not magic, but it is a useful step in the right direction. It gives smart home devices a common language that can work across ecosystems. Instead of buying something that only really belongs to Apple Home, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, SmartThings, or some vendor-specific app, you can buy something designed to be understood by multiple controllers.

That flexibility matters.

Maybe today you use Apple Home. Maybe next year you want to move more automations into Home Assistant. Maybe you have family members who prefer Alexa. Maybe you just do not want to make a 10-year device purchase based on your current phone brand. Matter makes that less painful.

This is where Home Assistant is especially useful. It is very good at acting as the central place where different devices, protocols, and automations meet. If your devices support local standards, Home Assistant can often become the hub that ties them together without forcing everything through one company’s cloud.

Atomic Spin has covered this general direction before in Home Automation in 2024: What’s New?, especially around Matter, Thread, and the slow move away from piles of vendor-specific apps. That post also points out an important reality: vendor apps are still here, and Matter does not expose every possible feature for every device. Energy monitoring, RGB animations, and firmware updates may still require a manufacturer app.

That is annoying. It is not a deal-breaker.

The goal is not perfection. The...