ITEAD Customer Care Center

Last week I lost control over my house, for 12 hours, because something went wrong with iTead systems.

Sonoff devices device works flawlessly per se, and I'm very happy to have 13 of them around my house.

But...

I'm beginning to think there's a glitch in their marketing model. I haven't thought for a moment that they want to spy on us, like some else implied in this forum, but every serious usage require redundancy and backup.

We cannot rely on the whole "cloud" model to be always working: too many things can go wrong on the user side, on itead side and, eventually, on the side of the many third party service providers involved (ISPs and Cloud providers above all).

Every digital and/or networking system might stop working every now and then. While we can surely afford not to remotely switch on a light, what about water heating, house heating, door opening, surveillance systems?

I did my best to build redundancy in my installations, but there are two factors that are not easily overcame.

First, some sonoff device might be (and in my case are) difficult to be physically reached: inside walls or up near the ceiling, the onboard switch is almost useless in these cases.

Second, Dual sonoff aren't capable of manually switching the connected devices on/off: if the system isn't working (i.e. they are offline), the only possible solution is to uninstall them, which is not acceptable at all.

iTead (and coolkit) seem to be trying to sell their solution to third parties (other manufacturers who are supposed to relay onto their whole solution, cloud included) which is cool. If I had to, I would guess that's why they are so "cloud-centered": to offer a easy and rapid solution, all included. It's cool. 

But other than toyish usages, without redundancy their solution is unimplementable: I hope they realize this soon (if they haven't already).

The solution that comes to mind is very simple, and a few have already suggested it here: a dual control system. The cloud is great for remote control, but when the app is on the same local network the sonoff devices are, everything should switch to local. Simply put: automatic switching to LAN control.

If I'm home, I should be able to control my devices even if my Internet connection is down.

If they could do this with an open protocol, that would be top. But after all, not everyone of us wants to build his/her own system: I'm cool with their app, they can keep their protocol reserved as much as they want. To me, the only thing that matters is that I don't ever lose control over my house again.

Other than the above, thank you iTead, I'm very happy with your products!

What do you think?

Simone, confermo ancora tutto offline. Ma il problema principale è che si gestiscono case con questi Sonoff, io per esempio gestisco un intero B&B per regolare i termosifoni elettrici di ogni singola stanza. Solo per fare un esempio :-( Penso si debba fare pressioni tutti assieme verso Itead, spronandonoli a rilasciare la versione che permette in controllo nella LAN Locale. Aprendo Ticket, scrivendo qui e sui vari Social. Io non mi tiro indietro, mi sono già attivato. LET'S GO!!!

My Ewelink shows a message, that they have to update their servers and will be not available for one hour! *lol* Here it doesn't work since this morning and that's ~10 hours without function.

@the Italian users:

I think it makes no sense to write down your claims in Italian language. I'm sure that no one in China speaks Italian and also the most peaople in the rest of the world.

Has anyone tried intercepting the network traffic to see if we might be able to sniff the protocol and build  LAN control ourselves?

@Michael: Interesting thought. Has anyone tried to setup a new account with China as their home ? Does it work ?. I was kinda hoping that everything would be working again when I wake up this morning, but it doesn't. It sometimes works via Alexa, but not using the eWeLink App.

This should be a wake-up call for ITEAD to provide us with local control...

Giving control to end-users would definitely reduce their costs as well as support cases in the long run.  Makes sense business-wise.  I really dont understand how they work but I do hope that they'd get local control support pushed down fast.