241–250 of 303 posts
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Wireless shifting. It's supposed to save us from the tyranny of the shift cable.
And when your batteries inevitably die out on the trail and you're stuck in some random gear, you'll bless the day you bought into this ~ innovation ~.
I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…
Build an ecosystem around Hue (Apple app store).
Have help pages but don't do any support (Apple app store).
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And when your batteries inevitably die out on the trail and you're stuck in some random gear, you'll bless the day you bought into this ~ innovation ~.
I'd be surprised if they didn't recharge it by pedaling. ;)
...unless they ran a wire up the the controls to carry power :)
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It's a total dick move on Philips's part to "update" incompatibility into existing products that people already own and have spend money and effort to integrate. These people bought product with the expectation of compatibility, now they're out their investment because of Philips's selfish business decision. Even they have elevated support costs, Philips's made their bed by offering compatibility in the first place f…
> It's a total dick move on Philips's part to "update" incompatibility into existing products that people already own Last year, Shimano (the bikes-and-fishing people) released a firmware update for their electronic shifting system which prevents 2012 (10-speed) parts from working with 2014 (11-speed) gear mechanisms. Literally, if you upgraded your bike from 10 speeds to 11, it worked when the hardware was released,…
In general, being more compatible increases the value of a device. When it doesn't, you've got some bad market forces at play.
I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I can't see any upside to this and I can't imagine what the discussion looked like when implementing this decision. My (admittedly cynical) guess is that it was one part "We're fielding a lot of support questions on products that aren't ours and our malfunctioning" and two parts "Our customers will be more motivated to buy Philips Hue products…
I'll never understand why companies make such customer hostile decisions. I think it's because Apple more or less proved that the walled garden approach can be wildly successful and everyone is trying to copy them. Seems however that they are the only ones to have success with it.
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A firmware update for a BICYCLE? I obviously haven't ridden in a while.
Wireless shifting. It's supposed to save us from the tyranny of the shift cable.
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I've been using the Wink hub with a variety of different z-wave light switches, electrical outlets, plug adapters, and even a thermostat for the last 6 months. I DEFINITELY feel like the Wink hub is the weak link. It needs resetting frequently enough that I don't really trust that I'll be able to turn on my heat remotely when coming back from vacation, so my neighbor is usually on notice for manual backup (let himsel…
My conclusion was that any hub that requires a round-trip to a internet service is just not realistic for home automation.
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Lightning and USB-C aren't really comparable because USB-C supports USB 3.1 while Lightning is limited to USB 2 speeds for everything, including video out. Which means that Apple have to compress the video out and stick an entire ARM SoC in their very expensive AV adapter to decompress it, and this degrades the picture quality. By comparison, USB-C can carry uncompressed HD video, power, and a fast USB 3 data link at…
The latest iPad Pro IIRC has some sort of post-2 chip (I just don't remember if it's 3 or 3.1), it's just not being used yet. The connector itself has 16 total pins available, and the plug has 8. Since the Type C connector is 18 pins with 2 being orientation detection and 4 being ground, it's still possible to have the Lightning connector itself support 3.1 by actually using both sides at the same time instead of jus…
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In my code development, I've definitely found some fun cases. i2cs (newer protocol) devices require a checksum, and they respond a bit differently in some cases. So for instance, my code that does a Product Data Request to get the model info for a device isn't working for i2cs devices right now. I'm still working on that, probably tonight. I'd think something like Mister House would probably do the sort of simple cas…
> I'd think something like Mister House would probably do the sort of simple case you need without figuring out all of the INSTEON protocol. I'm a developer and I want to hook all kinds of things together. I don't need a GUI but would like full programmatic access. The case I have in mind would start off as a few lines of Python, probably using asyncio or something which is really powerful for this kind of thing. I'd…
But you are right that there are holes in their documentation. The code I'm using does a good job showing unknown commands though, so it's pretty easy to fill in what's missing. I think IoT has a lot worse devices, documentation wise.