Our boxes are built on Home Assistant, which speaks to thousands of devices — but brands differ enormously in how, and the difference decides whether your smart home still works when a company changes its mind. Here is the honest map we use ourselves when surveying a home, brand by brand.
Fully local. No account, no cloud, no vendor permission. If the maker disappeared tomorrow, these keep working for decades.
Real integrations that depend, partly or wholly, on the vendor's cloud staying friendly. We install them gladly — and say the caveat out loud.
Xiaomi is everywhere in Thai homes — vacuums, air purifiers, fans, sensors, cameras — so it deserves a careful answer rather than a traffic-light sticker. The good news: since late 2024 Xiaomi maintains an official Home Assistant integration — one of very few big vendors to do so, and a genuine statement of intent. The nuance: it signs in through your Xiaomi account and works cloud-first, with a partial local-control mode for Wi-Fi devices on the same network; Bluetooth and infrared devices stay cloud-side.
In practice we treat Xiaomi as three different brands wearing one logo. Xiaomi's Zigbee-family sensors (largely Aqara-made) — pair them directly to the box's radio and they're first class, no Xiaomi account involved. Xiaomi Bluetooth sensors — the popular little temperature/humidity displays can be received directly by the box, fully locally, and our in-room voice satellites double as Bluetooth ears around the house. Xiaomi Wi-Fi appliances (purifiers, fans, humidifiers, robot vacuums) — these work through the official integration with the cloud caveat spoken aloud, and many can be driven fully locally by enthusiast integrations for those who want it.
Verdict: a Xiaomi household is a good starting point for one of our boxes — most of it integrates well, some of it integrates perfectly — but we'll always tell you which of your devices sit on which side of that line.
Here's a delightful accident of Apple's rules: to earn the Works with Apple HomeKit badge, an accessory must be controllable directly over your home network — no vendor cloud in the loop. That makes the badge, in effect, a guaranteed-local-API certification. Our box can act as the controller and adopt any HomeKit accessory directly, fully locally, with no Apple account and no vendor account at all — even from brands that offer nothing else local. If you already own HomeKit gear, you're sitting on some of the best-behaved devices a private smart home can have.
Three things to know before adopting. An accessory pairs with only one controller, so moving it to our box removes it from Apple Home — but the box can then present everything it manages back to the family's iPhones as one tidy HomeKit home, which most households experience as an upgrade: Siri and the Home app keep working, now with every device in the house included, not just the badge-wearing ones. You'll need each accessory's pairing code (on the device or its box — worth gathering before an install visit). And cameras are the exception: HomeKit Secure Video stays inside Apple's world and doesn't translate.
The most-asked question, and one where 2026 has a genuinely clear answer with two good paths.
Path one — Roborock, no surgery. The official integration logs into Roborock's cloud once, then does day-to-day control locally: room-by-room cleaning, live maps, sensors, all still working when their cloud has a bad day. Stick to the S, Qrevo and Saros lines; warranty intact, fancy self-emptying docks included.
Path two — Dreame with Valetudo, for the purist. Valetudo replaces the vacuum's cloud firmware with a local web interface: full maps and room cleaning with zero cloud, zero account, forever — the robot that matches our ethos exactly. The trade: buy from the supported-models list (not the newest flagship — rootability lags about a year behind releases), and accept the warranty argument.
Why it matters here: Home Assistant now maps vacuum room segments onto the same "areas" our voice assistant thinks in — so "vacuum the kitchen", spoken in Thai, Chinese or English, cleans the actual kitchen. Multi-floor homes work best as one robot per floor; robots famously can't climb stairs.
| Model | Street price* | Dock | Path | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dreame D10s Pro | $220–280 | basic — rinse pads yourself | Valetudo | The budget local workhorse; ideal upstairs unit |
| Dreame L10s Ultra | $250–430 on deals | full: auto-empty, mop wash & dry | Valetudo | 90% of a Roborock for less, fully local once converted |
| Roborock Qrevo S | $400–450 | full wash/dry dock | Official | The value pick of the supported list |
| Roborock Qrevo Pro / 2 Pro | $595–900 | adds hot-water wash, better obstacle AI | Official | The proven family; diminishing returns begin |
| Roborock Saros 10 | $1,200+ | everything | Official | Flagship tax; solves under-furniture clearance |
*Mid-2026 street prices — list prices are fiction in this market; everything discounts 30–50% at Lazada/Shopee sale events. Suction numbers above ~5,000 Pa stop mattering on hard floors, which is most Thai houses.
Every brand above earns its place by one test: does it still work when the vendor changes its mind? Local-first devices pass forever. Cloud devices pass until a pricing meeting somewhere decides otherwise — as garage doors, and now Samsung appliances, have learned. We'll always install what you own and love; we'll also always tell you which shelf it sits on.