I was going to get a Nest, but now I'm having serious second thoughts.
Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
181–190 of 325 posts
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of smart home devices that work without any form of internet connection. Have been for 20+ years, too.
There's "smart", as defined 20 years ago...which is timers, complex schedules, etc. And, then there's "smart" as we define it today, which is WiFi, browser or app-based UI, etc. I'm unaware of a Nest competitor that is not tied to the cloud-based service of the provider. I am not super attuned to the market, however. Things have likely (hopefully) changed since last I researched things like Nest a year or two ago.
Yes, I have a system with browser and mobile ui, based on zwave, 433mhz and modbus devives. The software I use is symcon, which has existed for 5 years at the least; but there is also eg openhab for those insisting on open source only. I optionally have internet integration too, but strictly optional.
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#183To be honest, some things are better with old-technology Like the Bluetooth door lock fiasco, like some complaints about "you have to download an App to turn the lights on in this house", the IoT/"Smart Home" people are not accustomed to the reliability expected of such things Having a device that requires it to be online to work I can only accept if I don't "need it" (like to get in my home or heat it when it's cold…
Could local building regulations not be used to require the existence of a heating system that can be turned on when mains electricity/gas is available i.e. some kind of manual over-ride to any digital control system?
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lot's of people are throwing Google and alphabet in to the same bucket here. Please don't do that. The alphabet companies are free to be ran however they wish and Nest is an extreme example of NOT running a company the Google way. When the alphabet change happened, this became quite clear in just a few months time internally. What you're seeing here is further evidence of that.
Nobody gives a crap about these semantic games. Nest is owned by Google. https://nest.com/about/
I'm trying to explain (perhaps poorly?) that the change is not simply semantic. No one who is part of Google proper has any say in what nest, glass or those other companies do at this point. None of the culture, support etc... transfers over. The CEOs of these new alphabet companies are free to do as they please. What you're seeing here is this in action.
Saying Google are somehow accountable for nest or glass is like saying that dropbox are accountable for the actions of reddit. They are literally that disconnected now when it comes to how the businesses are managed.
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read that slightly differently; selectively pissing off early adopters is worse , since they disproportionately influence products' odds of success.
Exactly. Google thrives on early adopters waiting in line for and spinning up their newest shiny thing. Sorry if the sarcasm was lost there.
It was lost on me, yes. Thanks for clearing it up.
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies sunset SAAS products (with subscription fees, one time setup fees etc) all the time when the cost to support them becomes too high, growth stalls etc. Clearly Alphabet/Nest could have done a better job of customer service and offered users a partial refund or discount on a replacement product. That said, is it realistic to expect a company to support a software service indefinitely (when the business case n…
Depends how you sunset it. Depends on the reasonable life of the product. In Europe at least Consumer Legislation has an expectation of a reasonable life. It's not reasonable for instance for lots of your fridges to die after only a couple of years. Car makers have to provide spare parts for, I think, six years after the end of production of a model. I think a lot more could be done to sunset products gracefully, and…
Damnit. If you're going to remove my ability to use it after 18 months, then just sell it to me on an 18 month contract for $20/month and let me decide whether to sign. It's already clear I don't own the hardware, so why not make it official?
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#187To be honest, some things are better with old-technology Like the Bluetooth door lock fiasco, like some complaints about "you have to download an App to turn the lights on in this house", the IoT/"Smart Home" people are not accustomed to the reliability expected of such things Having a device that requires it to be online to work I can only accept if I don't "need it" (like to get in my home or heat it when it's cold…
Could local building regulations not be used to require the existence of a heating system that can be turned on when mains electricity/gas is available i.e. some kind of manual over-ride to any digital control system?
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> arrogance of a company making a webcam that sends your video to their servers, and provides no means to use the camera in a secure/local fashion I basically say the same thing about every 'smart home' device. I would love to be able to query my thermostat to find out when and how long it turned the heat/AC on and whatnot, but I only want it to talk to my local wifi and devices. I don't want it to use a cloud servic…
After the Dropcam fiasco, I wondered if there would be a market for secure smart devices with an open API. To me, it's an obvious benefit and one that I would buy (whereas I won't buy the cloud-based devices of this sort), but I suspect the ease of use of something like Dropcam trumps all of the other considerations. I even considered doing a Kickstarter to build something in that space; the technical side, both hard…
The problem with taking these things out of the cloud is that you're then a hardware provider rather than a service provider.
Your revenue would come from selling increasingly inexpensive hardware and/or trying to sell your software to run in a consumer environment where you have very little control.
Very few companies can make money that way. Smartthings is backed by Samsung (800 lb gorilla). They appear to be playing a long game now because they provide cloud-backed service (for free) and cheap hardware. The strategy will very clear shift towards subscription service eventually, IMHO.
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#189This is also one of the reasons I've moved most of my "hub like" functions to home assistant https://home-assistant.io/ which is open source 100% https://github.com/balloob/home-assistant I was burned by them buying Revolv, the most promising of all hubs due to having multiple antennas and touted as supporting multiple new protocols via software updates (which never happened post merger).
As an early adopter, I'm used to being burnt by technology, but for some reason, the Revolv disappointment really hurt. It actually reduced my early adopter tendencies ever since.
I think it hurt so much because the product underdelivered from day one (I purchased it on day one) and did not improve over time in an area of technology that should have been doable.
Oh well.
Re: Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not saying it's an ideal outcome for a company to sunset a product, but why is the consumer expectation so different for pure software vs a connected hardware device (i.e. software + hardware)? Consumers experience sunk cost when any product gets sunset, whether it's hardware or not.
Hardware has that upfront cost which consumers take as this should work for x amount of time. In the case of electronics I would hope they last a significant amount of time. If my hardware can work still at least give me a way to write my own code for it or use it as is with the "cloud" portions disabled/removed. If I get a new cell phone my old one doesn't need to become a paperweight because the carrier isn't pushi…
>Hardware has that upfront cost which consumers take as this should work for x amount of time.
What is X?