Remote access and the openhab cloud

[mohamed (abou radia)]

• do the " remote access setting " and " voice assistant devices " are Inconsistent with the principle of openhab that is " No cloud required " ? …
• what does privilege the openhab cloud over the clouds of the Manufacturers such as sonoff or shelly ?

[Wolfgang_S]

@mohamed

• do the " remote access setting " and " voice assistant devices " are Inconsistent with the principle of openhab that is " No cloud required " ? …

Well, “No cloud required …” is one part. openHAB also states that it’s Cloud-Friendly.
As long as you would like to use e.g alexa or goolge home-assistant the cloud is involved as translation of commands is being done in the cloud by design. So that’s the cloud-friendly part.

@mohamed

• what does privilege the openhab cloud over the clouds of the Manufacturers such as sonoff or shelly ?

You can setup your own openhab-cloud instance on your private hardware.

[Bruce_Osborne]

@mohamed

what does privilege the openhab cloud over the clouds of the Manufacturers such as sonoff or shelly

It communicates with other cloud servers avoiding being locked in to a single technology or vendor.

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@mohamed

do the " remote access setting " and " voice assistant devices " are Inconsistent with the principle of openhab that is " No cloud required " ? …

No. You are not required to use these services. They are available to those users who choose to use these cloud services. Similarly, there are a number of bindings that work through a cloud service API. openHAB isn’t anti-cloud. But it does support those users who are anti-cloud.

@mohamed

what does privilege the openhab cloud over the clouds of the Manufacturers such as sonoff or shelly ?

They serve completely different purposes. The openHAB cloud service at myopenhab.org provides:

• remote access to your openHAB instance through a web browser, specifically access to the REST API and web server
• enables integration with other cloud services such as Alexa, Google Assistant, and (hopefully again soon) IFTTT

Sonoff and Shelly provide a cloud service to remotely control and see only their devices.

As Wolfgang indicates, you can also run your own instance of the openHAB Cloud Server and, it’s a bit of work, you can even integrate it with Alexa or Google Assistant if desired.

For the most part, the questions indicates a lack of understanding of what exactly a cloud service is and does. The second question in particular is similar to asking “What make a fork better than a lawn mower or a hammer.” They are all tools but they do completely different things. What makes something a cloud service is that it’s running on someone else’s machines. But the purpose of those cloud services and what they do will all be completely different. It might help to read up on some basics of cloud services to clear any confusion.