Everyone should have a Plan B or what I will also call a Backup Plan, Back out Plan or an Escape route.
Forget SmartThings and Home Automation for a moment. In our everyday lives, most of us have an alternate plan in the event that something unplanned happens.
- What happens when the power goes out in my home? (Non automated home)
- Do I have candles and matches/lighter
- Do I have a flashlight
- Do I have fuel in the backup generator
- What happens when I’m supposed to pick up my 6 year old child at school at 2pm, but I get in an accident or have a flat tire?
- Do I have the number for the school
- Do I have a backup that can pick my child up on my behalf
- What do I do if the battery on my cell/smart phone dies, and I’m home alone and someone breaks in to my house?
- Do I have a landline I can use to call 911
- Do I have internet service and can send an email to someone
- Do I have a Panic Room I can run to
- If I suddenly die, do I have my affairs in order?
- Do I have beneficiaries for my life insurance
- Do I have a will
- Does my family know I’m a donor
- Do they know if I want a burial or cremation
These are only a some examples that everyday people deal with, and maybe there are better examples that could have been used, but they are just examples that most people would think about and plan in advance for in the event that something were to happen unplanned or otherwise.
The same thing applies to SmartThings and Home Automation.
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If the power goes out on my SmartThings hub, do I have the ability to still turn lights on and off from a switch or through voice via Alexa or Google.
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If the entire power goes out in my home, am I prepared to deal with it. See 1 way up above.
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If I’m using (and some people rely on) SmartThings as a security system and I have Automations setup to arm/disarm my system and lock/unlock doors, sound siren, etc… and the SmartThings cloud is having issues, what do I need to have in place so that I and my house can function while this outage or flakiness is occurring?
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Being able to unlock a smart lock for example if the batteries die.
- Do I have a key
- Do I have a 9 volt battery (Yale keyless locks)
- Is there an alternative way I can get into the house
A lot of people plan their SmartThings / Home Automation around it all working 100% of the time, and while those expectations would be great if this were true, the fact is, it just isn’t possible today. What they don’t think about ahead of time is what do I do in the event that this technology fails. You should treat this just like you do for things in your everyday life and always think about what do I do if…
For those of you that don’t pre plan alternative routes for anything in their lives, well I feel for you 
The outage that occurred over the last 72 hours I hope serves a greater good/purpose in that it gets people thinking about exactly what I wrote and begin to plan for having an “Escape route”, “Plan B”, “Backup Plan”, or “Back out Plan”, and that the realistic expectations will be that it will fail in some shape or form at some point in time in the future and how to be better prepared for how to deal with the situation when that time comes. Hopefully a failure/outage like this one is far and few between. Just my .02 