Dumb question: Why does Alexa need to connect to the internet to turn lights on/off or run timers. What happens when it cannot connect to the Amazon mothership.
It does all voice recognition in the cloud, only the trigger word detection runs locally.
This reminds me of my friend who had his whole house wired with Google. I've watched him ask Google to turn lights on while standing next to a light switch. I've seen him repeat himself 3 times when all he had to do was lift his arm. Seeing that happen a few times (along with privacy concerns) convinced me to never bother with any home assistants.
According to this[1] post, that might not always be the case. I also have this assumption about alexa devices, and I haven't seen any other evidence to say that voice recognition can happen locally. Personally, I find the claim in the thread a bit hard to believe, but...