I have been looking at making my house smarter, but I do not like all the cloud and internet connections. Are there any decent LOCAL smart home devices/applications?
I continue to make my home network even more complicated. The cool thing about having dedicated hardware for each function (modem, router, Wi-Fi) is that I'm now at the point where I can add arbitrary Wi-Fi access points as nodes to my mesh network and my client devices seamlessly switch between them while still automatically being protected by the DIY VPN I described in this article.
https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-protect-your-home-network-with-a-gigabit-vpn/
Discussion
There are tons of Zigbee-/Z-Wave-based smart devices that integrate with Home Assistant (which is open-source and selfhosted), which don't need any internet access. For example I use all kinds of Philips Hue and Ikea smart devices with Home Assistant and they work perfectly without any cloud/internet access.