Hi, new here.
I work in devops, bash, python, and swift, both back-end tool sets, and pretty pretty GUI based tools, to support teammates. current setup smart home was done for convenience of others, and is driving me batty… consists of wifi switches, (tuya) and some bulbs for a fan that “had to have a dimmer on the light” and some tuya based it seems wifi fan controllers (without dimmers), and roughly 10 amazon echo dots throughout the house… now everytime the wifi hiccups, or the oh so reliable spectrum internet dies, everything obviously is manual control… minor inconvenience, but the major problem is things seem to go wonky and switches dont reconnect in smart life right, and nothing wants to work right… so looking at using a raspberry pi to setup an AP for the switches with tuya-convert and OTA reflashing, and decided to look down the rabbit hole of possibly getting my own voice assistant, to replace alexa, that i could build my own skill for to control the switches, etc, and have it to where in the internet does indeed go down, since my wifi is on battery, and the pi would be on battery (big battery), possibly have it setup to where i could still voice control my crap… because its still an inconvenience, no matter how minor… to have things in the house not work right, due to an internet outage… so i realize id be replacing the eco dots with a different device, possibly even pis, just wondering if this is going to be worth my time to attempt… or is there a better route or just live with the frustrations
Hi @matts,
I’m not sure to understand what your question is (that is a very long sentence that you wrote here 
).
Is your question does Mycroft worth your time? If yes then I would say it’s always good to learn new things and setup and using Mycroft will be a great source of new knowledge.
Does Mycroft could replace Alexa and other, I would answer yes (this is my opinion) if you know what you want and if you have some technical skills (which seems to be your case).
it’s def worth your time 
well mainly the questions is this: would I be able to setup using a zigbee gateway/hub, Home Assistant, and Mycroft; to host everything on my own, and code my own skill to control all the devices, almost all are tuya devices… with voice, without internet
i would use TUYA-convert to OTA reflash all of the switches/devices, set them to connect to the zigbee gateway.
setup and host own mycroft server, and Home Assistant, and build Raspberry Pi devices to replace echo dots.
code skill to facilitate voice control of the devices through mycroft.
goal is to be able to voice control my devices if my internet happens to go down, by hosting everything here at the house, so the ultimate question is
can i do this, with mycroft… when considering that id be hosting my own server for it, running my devices over zigbee gateway(s), & running something like Home Assistant if needed.
or am i trying to do the impossible
I would try with Homeassistant or another home automation system that supports Tuya and where a Mycroft skill already exists, e.g. OpenHab, Fhem. You will be more flexible with automation or integration of new IoTdevices from other vendors.
im not as concerned with adding new devices, as all the light switches in the house are already the tuya wifi switches or dimmers. Also all the fans are on wifi remotes, that look to be tuya based as well. There’s really not much in the way of additions ill be making here either, more in the automation. the biggest concern i have is the ability to voice control the devices while the internet is down, as I have some people here that walking is a major thing for, so its way easier for them to talk to the lights, fans, thermostat, & etc. The plan is to either use zigbee, or a pi 3 b+ as the access point for the smart devices. i can host mycroft on an actual server, ive got 192gb of ram, dual 10-core 2660 v2 xeons, and a 1.4 tb raid 6+0 array across 8 SSD’s off of an LSI 9266-8i.
im also looking at doing a cluster of pi 4 8gb’s, anywhere from 14-28 with POE hats, with 2-4 of the pi’s just being heads. looking at the replacements for the echo dots being the pi 4 8gb with Pmod hats that allow connecting 3 Digilent Pmod modules.