#ooh interesting I think that makes sense
compact glade
I think "active connection" means the lines of communication are kept open (like when you're connected to WiFi), however, thinking about it in more detail that doesn't necessarily mean that push/polling are always one or the other. I would imagine that you could need to have an active connection to poll, but can't guarantee it. Likewise, I should imagine that an active connection wouldn't be necessary to listen for push notifications, but that doesn't guarantee there is no active connection. As for sending commands over a passive connection, I don't know if passive connections are one way or just don't have regular keep-alive type communication. Likewise, I don't know if sending a command requires establishing an active connection (even temporarily) or if BLE battery devices can also listen passively. I would tend to think that if a battery in a door lock can last 6 months to a year that must be passive, but I have no supporting facts to offer for that theory. Maybe fining someone that knows or looking at the code are the best options to be sure.
dark lagoon
"local push" means that it does not rely on cloud, and we don't need to poll the device - state changes should appear nearly instantly. the only other options are "local polling", "cloud push", and "cloud polling".
"active connection" means that we need to do 2-way communication with the device.
"passive" means that it broadcasts the sensor states, so all you need to do is listen.
some devices are a bit of both - homekit uses an active connection to set up an encryption key then mostly you can just listen to encrypted broadcasts.
active connections are generally short lived - BLE is meant for low power devices, so many will close the connection to save power
"passive" is great for battery and tends to have better range than things that require active connections
in BLE you will also hear talk of active scanning vs passive scanning. thats seperate to "active connection". passive scanning is like literally just sitting back and listening. active scanning is sending out a broadcast that asks sensors to broadcast. its completely untargetted, so all devices in range will answer. this is needed to make some sensors send their data. its still better than an active connection.
there isn't a completely passive way to control a device, at least not in any of the current integrations. control is generally using something called GATT, and requires a connection.