Bah, there’s a LOT of devices that could talk to my father’s phone over the LAN if they were programmed that way. But, they aren’t. They report to a wall-known “cloud” server, and the app on his phone checks that same server for the latest status or to relay command/control.
Nice advantage: can get status / send commands even when he is not on the LAN. Bad disadvantage: when the rural Internet blinks out (like every time it rains) he can’t tell the robo-vac which rooms to start cleaning.
Bah, there’s a LOT of devices that could talk to my father’s phone over the LAN if they were programmed that way. But, they aren’t. They report to a wall-known “cloud” server, and the app on his phone checks that same server for the latest status or to relay command/control.
Nice advantage: can get status / send commands even when he is not on the LAN. Bad disadvantage: when the rural Internet blinks out (like every time it rains) he can’t tell the robo-vac which rooms to start cleaning.