My hard rule is I refuse to buy any “Smart Home” product that is IP addressable, or can directly connect to a host outside my own network. Any new device gets tossed into a super restricted VLAN, and monitored. If it tries to reach the outside world on its own, it gets returned and refunded.

So this limits me mostly to things like outlets, switches, alarms/alerts and temperature and air quality sensors. It means I need to use an app that communicates only through networking technology like Bluetooth or Thread or a secured API. So everything comes through something like HomeKit and/or Thread.

Cameras are different. They get VLANd, and they only send video to my own storage which is accessible by my own applications. That footage gets backed up offsite through normal means. Cameras don’t talk to anything outside my network because they don’t need to.

But… that still accomplishes everything I need, so that’s fine. I use open source tools to aggregate, dashboard and handle the integration between devices myself. After initial setup, it’s been set and forget.