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A good lesson for buyers of IoT smart home devices

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A good lesson for buyers of IoT smart home devices

"Nest's move to stop supporting Revolv smart hub leaves customers with costly 'brick'"

"Customers should be aware that with the internet of things, devices need to be seen increasingly more of a service than a physical object"

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/revol ... -1.3521927

Be careful about making a major long-term home investment in smart devices from suppliers like Google (Nest) that update and obsolete products at a frantic pace. Your 2-year-old system that you intended to last 20 years on your home may be bricked remotely with little recourse. As the article points out, for liability reasons the supplier may not wish to leave your product able to connect to the internet after they have stopped supporting it.
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I think designing the use of your home around electronics, specific activity rooms etc. is never a good idea; tech moves rapidly and so do trends. Have a home theater in the basement being used as a storage room.

I remember going to a marriott years ago and seeing built in n64's as part of their 'system' and thinking how cheap it looked even though it probably cost a fortune at the time of commissioning.
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So are Logitech Harmony remotes !
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That's why I picked a system that wasn't reliant on cloud access (Vera).
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I guess people purchase these types of system to basically show off! Especially Harmony remote! I mean seriously you can buy an android TV box that does everything and control it from your samsung phone.
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I'd never buy anything that's "backed" by a company.
If I can't manage the device myself without any outside intervention it's not going to get purchased.
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Chingyul wrote: That's why I picked a system that wasn't reliant on cloud access (Vera).
Slightly blown out of proportion. This was a crowdfunded hub that stopped selling over two years ago. Less than 2,000 hubs were ever sold.

There are also plenty of other offline/non-cloud dependent hubs: OpenHAB, CastleOS, Oomi, etc.

As for home automation, just because the hub is disabled doesn't mean your setup is trashed. All the end nodes (outlets, bulbs, switches, etc.) all use set protocols and can connect to any supported hub. The worst thing that happens is one needs to purchase a new hub (which are all <$150 now) and set it up again. SmartThings v2 added offline support and even Philips Hue works offline. Plenty of products get End-of-Lifed without much fanfare (but some user protests...).
Home automation, NOVO (HiFi) Magazine, Google Trusted Photographer, electric vehicles.
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death_hawk wrote: I'd never buy anything that's "backed" by a company.
If I can't manage the device myself without any outside intervention it's not going to get purchased.
Lest we forget even linux requires a git from the net to get fixes and install. The net itself isn't air and water its all a "service". What were are seeing here is that nothing lasts forever. This isn't any different than old devices not able to get and run youtube like they used too. Huge pot stir around that last year! Xbox dropped original xbox from live and will drop 360 too one day. Android apps in the market no longer support older android os. etc and etc

What it helps to show is which companies support their products longer. Those who don't should be avoided not rewarded. Plus it shows a big difference between a product and a service and the nest is mostly just a service. That costs alot to start running it. All of that should have been thought off before you invested in its ecosystem. Heck in any ecosytem. But some people just have to buy buy the latest stuff. But You don't have to buy the iphone 6 when it shows up. You don't have to buy a samsung nexus every year. But some dumb people do and they also bought the nest.....

Move along nothing relevant in the article except for nest "participants" to go....Doooooh!

Image

hd dvd owners felt the same, so did betamax owners and laser or mini disk etc etc. There are plenty of hot deals that many have gone .. D'oh!!!
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death_hawk wrote: I'd never buy anything that's "backed" by a company.
If I can't manage the device myself without any outside intervention it's not going to get purchased.
I'm waiting for companies to settle on one or a few open standards that can be fully supported by the community. All these proprietary and cloud-based solutions are not worth investing heavily in.
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JamesA1 wrote: Be careful about making a major long-term home investment in smart devices from suppliers like Google (Nest) that update and obsolete products at a frantic pace. Your 2-year-old system that you intended to last 20 years on your home may be bricked remotely with little recourse. As the article points out, for liability reasons the supplier may not wish to leave your product able to connect to the internet after they have stopped supporting it.
Yes, this is a very good point ... hence I've been reluctant to invest in a platform that does not have open APIs.

It is also why systems like Crestron are so expensive - people pay the money because they know these systems will be around 20 years from now.
lamboman wrote: Especially Harmony remote! I mean seriously you can buy an android TV box that does everything and control it from your samsung phone.
It's not the same, and I don't always have my phone with me when I want to watch TV. Harmony remotes are a great product for what they are.
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coolspot wrote: Yes, this is a very good point ... hence I've been reluctant to invest in a platform that does not have open APIs.

It is also why systems like Crestron are so expensive - people pay the money because they know these systems will be around 20 years from now.



It's not the same, and I don't always have my phone with me when I want to watch TV. Harmony remotes are a great product for what they are.
harmony has proven themselves for years. They are still here and still running for some time. Hey so has flirc!!

Phone apps as a remote only work
a) if your wifi is on and both connected to the same network and interference on either effects function on both
B) if the software for the app supports software for the device.Both need to support wifi direct
c)all potentially needs updates with software changes. Its inevitable and proven by the fact there is more than 1 version of the software. Plenty of new revisions or updates

Making those changes is a service. I would not consider an app for your phone as a option that lives outside of ecosytems because apps more than most relies on an "ecosytem". Its very reliant on that ecosystem and that ecosystem as it stands today is not as old as harmony's ecosystem.
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Nest is planning to pay money as compensation on a case to case basis. They didn't say pay 100% though.
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coolspot wrote: Yes, this is a very good point ... hence I've been reluctant to invest in a platform that does not have open APIs.

It is also why systems like Crestron are so expensive - people pay the money because they know these systems will be around 20 years from now.



It's not the same, and I don't always have my phone with me when I want to watch TV. Harmony remotes are a great product for what they are.
They also tell me about the type of people they are as well ...reckless with money !
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Mar 23, 2004
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lead wrote: hd dvd owners felt the same, so did betamax owners and laser or mini disk etc etc. There are plenty of hot deals that many have gone .. D'oh!!!
Beta, LaserDisc, and MD weren't exactly popular but all still had a pretty long/full life nonetheless. HD-DVD is a different story where the makers/backers admitted defeat and closed up shop in short order. That seems to be the way things go these days, if something is not successful they just shut it down completely instead of continuing on with low popularity/market penetration. Having things connected to the internet, "the cloud", etc. and heavily reliant on those, means this attitude of "shutting down" things also means your stuff can become totally useless...after you spent hundreds of dollars on the stuff :rolleyes:

Anyway I think a more important lesson for the IoT folks is to remember...
"IoT is Skynet!" :eek:
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My experience with Logitech products after they've stopped selling them has been great. I've got a Squeezebox Boom which they've stopped selling Squeezeboxs in general, but it still works for many services like Pandora. No new dev for me to use Spotify but that's alright for me.
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lead wrote: What were are seeing here is that nothing lasts forever. This isn't any different than old devices not able to get and run youtube like they used too. Huge pot stir around that last year! Xbox dropped original xbox from live and will drop 360 too one day. Android apps in the market no longer support older android os. etc and etc
There's no reason you can't run legacy hardware.
I'm sure if I fired up my original ADP (G1) I could still run 1.6 on it.
There's be like 4 compatible apps but if I had an app I needed to run that was that old I'm sure I could do it.
It's not being remotely disabled like this is or Xbox from Live.

Hell I'm still running a few XP machines for legacy things that don't work with anything newer.
Even today I'm basically buying used/refurb computers due to compatibility with 7.

If you buy into an ecosystem that can be remotely disabled (eg this, Live, etc) it's your own fault.
Stick to an open standard where you control things and you can run it as long as you want.
dighn wrote: I'm waiting for companies to settle on one or a few open standards that can be fully supported by the community. All these proprietary and cloud-based solutions are not worth investing heavily in.
This so hard.
Sadly... open standards aren't usually want manufactures go for unless there's a giant push for it.
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Jan 11, 2004
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B0000rt wrote: My experience with Logitech products after they've stopped selling them has been great. I've got a Squeezebox Boom which they've stopped selling Squeezeboxs in general, but it still works for many services like Pandora. No new dev for me to use Spotify but that's alright for me.
FYI Spotify support on Squeezebox is very good. You need to be running LMS. They've updated to support the new Spotify Web API.
TBH my Squeezebox devices have received more updates and better features than my SONOS boxes. It isn't even close and Squeezebox was cancelled in 2012.
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Oct 31, 2012
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JPTN wrote: Slightly blown out of proportion. This was a crowdfunded hub that stopped selling over two years ago. Less than 2,000 hubs were ever sold.

There are also plenty of other offline/non-cloud dependent hubs: OpenHAB, CastleOS, Oomi, etc.

As for home automation, just because the hub is disabled doesn't mean your setup is trashed. All the end nodes (outlets, bulbs, switches, etc.) all use set protocols and can connect to any supported hub. The worst thing that happens is one needs to purchase a new hub (which are all <$150 now) and set it up again. SmartThings v2 added offline support and even Philips Hue works offline. Plenty of products get End-of-Lifed without much fanfare (but some user protests...).
Just to add my 2cents, hope that's OK.

Actually Vera is still very much current and from our experience very popular. The original Vera grew up to become Vera2, Vera3, then VeraLite, the VeraEdge, then VeraPlus. The company behind it is Mios who is also provides software to a number of other systems. They're up to UI7 on the front end for Vera.

I agree there is very definitely something to be said for hubs that don't REQUIRE the cloud to work. The cloud makes things easy to find and log in. But if the cloud is required for intelligence I'm not a fan. For example if the hub needs the cloud working to decide to turn on a light on schedule, or when a door opens, I'm not a fan. The brains should be in the box. Vera is an example of using the cloud to make it easier to log in to the box, and for notifications - but not for local logic.

Homeseer, Hometroller and ISY994i are other good examples of boxes with 'local brains' and in fact no reliance on cloud at all if that's your preference.

You're right, with many technologies like Insteon, Zwave, newer Zigbee HA, the customer is not stuck with one automation box - they can migrate or upgrade so if the 'old box' stops working, they don't have to abandon their hardware.
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