Most "smart homes" today mean voice assistants, smartphone apps, and dependency on third-party cloud services. But what happens when the internet goes down? What if the provider discontinues support? A truly intelligent house must function autonomously – with all logic running locally and remaining fully under the owner's control. In this section, we present the core principles of robust home automation: distributed architecture, industrial-grade communication protocols, local data processing, and failover resilience. A smart home that stays smart even without an internet connection.