Logitech's stance on local APIs
This post originally talked about Logitech not willing to support local APIs after removing their private, but widely used, local API. This decision has been reversed and this blog post is no longer applicable to Logitech. More information on the events can be found in this blogpost.
Logitech has decided to remove a widely used local API of their Logitech Harmony hub. We’ve been tracking the story here. This has caused a lot of commotion among our users, and users of other smart home solutions, that integrated with the Logitech Harmony hub and all of a sudden were surprised with a broken smart home. Not a nice way to start the already busy holiday season!
Since it’s 2018, a lot of these discussions are playing out on Twitter. While browsing the discussions, we came across this statement by a senior manager for product marketing for Logitech Smart Home, Todd Walker:
Currently, we do not plan to add support for local control.
— Todd Walker (@ToddW_Logitech) December 19, 2018
We have a lot of opinions about this, but felt that they were appropriately covered by Twitter user, and contributor to Home Assistant, Jon Maddox:
You realize that any kind of device like this…with only cloud control…is an inferior experience right?
— Jon Maddox (@maddox) December 19, 2018
Why would you mandate the latency that round trip cloud requests incur? Please try harder to make the product better, not usurping more control over it.
The Harmony smart assistant skills are limited to 1 hub. Will you guys be resolving that?
— Jon Maddox (@maddox) December 19, 2018
Your official implementations of things we’ve accomplished ourselves, are actually inferior.
I think people would be less upset if the case was different.
Why should we buy more than one Harmony hub if only one of them works with Alexa? We utilized the local api to create our own supported experience that allows for private, secure, faster, and more than 1 hub.
— Jon Maddox (@maddox) December 19, 2018
That means we BUY more than 1 hub. That’s a really great thing.
And lastly, (to get it all off my chest 😄), locking down a local API and forcing users to a complete cloud solution is not more secure.
— Jon Maddox (@maddox) December 19, 2018
Home networks are trusted zones. Corporate clouds have proven time and time again to be revealed as less than secure.
I can be responsible for my own home network. I cannot be sure that yours is.
— Jon Maddox (@maddox) December 19, 2018
Consider embracing these users. Create an authenticated local API. Local control is the only guaranteed private, secure, and RELIABLE way to control the future of devices at home.