I'm wonder if a line of "smart IoT" devices where the assumption is that cloud-down is the primary use case (and cloud-connected is a secondary "nice to have" mode even if that's how it's used 90%+ of the time) would succeed?
If I'm remembering right, if you do have one of those acting as a hub, it should work fine in that capacity on a local network with no internet. This lets you have fully local automation triggers, among other things.
Well I'd love that kind of systems; in my flat, the heating and ventilation is controlled by a central server that is managed by a local startup.
When I lose internet access, or the server is not reachable (and this is super frequent), my floor heating (my only source of heat) stops running, and ventilation starts.
Have to wait for someone to reboot the networked server, but they work only Mon-Fri, 10am to 5pm.
