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Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

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Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#41

Imagine you are designing the web server for some hardware like this. You might write it in Go, dockerized and hosted it in Kubernetes in Google Cloud. You might use a hosted mongo db and 3rd party auth service. Now in 30 years time, Google Cloud will probably no longer exist, your database API will have changed beyond recognition, and your auth service has closed down. IPv4 no longer exists and your hardware depends…

> IPv4 no longer exists

I hope you're right, but i'm not entirely convinced. IPv4 has proven to very resilient.

A survey in Denmark of pretty much all ISPs reveals that most, if not all, of the large ISPs have absolutely no plans for migrating to IPv6. Not as "not right now", but as "no plans at all". Some of them have plans for migrating business customers, but no plans for residential.

We'll end up with companies running IPv6 and the rest of us stuck on an IPv4 network with a 4to6 gateway.

https://ipv6-adresse.dk/

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#42
post #23

Do people use these things online ? I treat mine as regular bulbs that can be controlled via phone.

Some people feel comfortable giving Alexa or Google Home access to their household devices and climate control systems; these rely on internet access.

That's not entirely true for the v1 bridge. The echo needs internet access, of course, to understand the command but the actual control of a v1 bridge is done on the local network.

This changed with the v2 bridge.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#43

Imagine you are designing the web server for some hardware like this. You might write it in Go, dockerized and hosted it in Kubernetes in Google Cloud. You might use a hosted mongo db and 3rd party auth service. Now in 30 years time, Google Cloud will probably no longer exist, your database API will have changed beyond recognition, and your auth service has closed down. IPv4 no longer exists and your hardware depends…

This might be one of those "it's a feature, not a bug" dealies. Software is now subject to similar rules of decay and planned obsolescence as hardware and material objects. Guess you just have to go buy a new one under whatever pay structure is the current paradigm.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#44
post #43

Imagine you are designing the web server for some hardware like this. You might write it in Go, dockerized and hosted it in Kubernetes in Google Cloud. You might use a hosted mongo db and 3rd party auth service. Now in 30 years time, Google Cloud will probably no longer exist, your database API will have changed beyond recognition, and your auth service has closed down. IPv4 no longer exists and your hardware depends…

This might be one of those "it's a feature, not a bug" dealies. Software is now subject to similar rules of decay and planned obsolescence as hardware and material objects. Guess you just have to go buy a new one under whatever pay structure is the current paradigm.

Except the vast majority of material objects don't decay, or at least don't decay quickly.

The hoe I use for de-weeding my garden was my great grandfathers, and is probably 100 years old. It functions pretty much the same as it did when it was new. My father had to put one new screw in it I remember, so it has served its purpose continuously for 100 years with ~20 minutes of maintenance.

A similar small bit of software would need recompiling monthly, and rewriting every 10 years, at huge labor costs, just to keep the same functionality.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#45
post #15

I need to buy a new TV, and I'm desperately looking for a "dumb" one. I just need a HDMI input and that's it.

If you don't connect it to the internet, all TVs are dumb.

At least until TV manufacturers start having them try and connect to open wifi points or try and piggy back off of a connection thru HDMI ARC.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#46
post #17
post #15

I need to buy a new TV, and I'm desperately looking for a "dumb" one. I just need a HDMI input and that's it.

Isn't that what a computer screen is?

Sure, but computer monitors are typically much more expensive than TVs of the same size.

Computer monitors are designed to be looked up close, which mean they are often at a higher resolution and higher quality. Furthermore, especially with gaming monitors, high refresh rates and low response times are important. A TV only needs 60Hz and response time is mostly irrelevant unless you are console gaming.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#47
While there are reasons for concern, I don't really blame Philips (Signify) for this. They released the v1 hub quite early in the smart home space. It wasn't compatible with Apple Homekit features when they were released due to hardware limitations for reasons they presumably couldn't have predicted (unless they made it a more capable and expensive device in the hopes it would support unknown requirements). They made all v1 owners an offer to get a new hub "free" with a colour changing bulb, though it's not good value if you don't want the colour changing bulb or find it on sale and don't care about the hub. The old hub will continue to work, just not remotely. After eight years, I think it's a responsible and fair response within the parameters of consumer gear. The only way it could be better would be if the hub weren't required at all, or it was more easily interoperable with other controllers, but from the start that would have meant a more complicated experience.

I was an early adopter of Hue, even though it's kind of expensive I enjoy the capability to change the colour and mood of room lighting. $400 worth of lighting hardware for a house over 15 years is less than the comparable effect of painting a single room. From the start it has good support for local-only implementations with good open source libraries.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#48
post #22

AFAIK the bulbs are compatible with v1 and v2 hubs, so the bulbs do not need to be replaced. The v1 hubs will continue to work across a local area network. Philips offered a heavily discounted upgrade for v1 hub users to get a new v2 hub. However, I still think they should support the v1 hubs for the lifespan of a typical bulb (15 years), at minimum.

Yea, as long as it works locally and they don't pull the old app .. still it's shitty they're trying to push people to buy new shit they don't need. It's just creating waste to increase sales. The attempt to grow without responsibility really needs to die. Consumerism with the goal of more consumerism is a cancer.

The v1 / v2 split was arguably Apple's fault. v1 launched before Homekit; then Homekit required special hardware authentication; then v2 launched to support this; then Apple walked back on the special hardware and allowed things to be done in software, but Philips had already made breaking changes for v2.

Again, Philips made the wrong call here.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#49
post #40
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart isn’t the bad part, it’s closed source firmware that causes these (and other) problems.

No, it’s the insistence on using the Cloud for things that could easily be done on-premises.

Funny enough the v1 bridge that is being shutdown, allows for on premises access and cloud services like HomeKit have never worked.

Re: Philips Hue Bridge v1 online services will be shut off after April 2020

#50
post #7

Stop buying smart home shit. People warned of exactly this when they started.

...and if you do, make sure to buy things that are offline first.

Like Philips Hue v1? :)

Well, "local net" first, it originally had no "cloud" support.

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