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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

#71
post #7

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

This. Fuck all this basic technology redesigned with Internet functionality. This bulb has been going for longer than people live http://centennialbulb.org/ but if it were connected to Philips' bullshit, it'd have been dead dozens of times over.

It's not the light bulb's API versioning that's the problem - it's that the fucking bulb has an internet connected API in the first place.

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

#72
post #24
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what a computer screen is?

Sure, but where can you find a 130cm monitor?

Just search for 50" monitors on amazon or whatever online marketplace you frequent.

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

#73

So, Philips Hue users need a new $60 bridge after 8 years? That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.

Yup, and the old bridge will keep working locally, still has an open API, and there was an upgrade program when v2 was introduced, with a 33% discount. Four or so years ago.

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

#74

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…

Still better than the frontend which will be declared out of fashion within six months after release.

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

#75
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.

While it's tempting to blame this on Philips doing this to increase sales, I think it's just as plausible that they just don't want to spend resources on maintaining the infrastructure required for the v1 bridges anymore. The v1 was very early in the market, and doesn't even have the horsepower to support HomeKit etc.

This is also a more likely explanation if you consider that Philips offered heavily discounted v2 bridges to v1 bridge owners. It's probable that it's cheaper to Philips to sell v2 upgrades to customers at or below cost than it is to maintain support for the v1 bridge.

Having said that, it sucks for v1 owners that they have a product that's going to lose features unless they upgrade. I do have a few Hue bulbs (with a v2 bridge), but I have everything set up through openHAB, with remote access going through a server I control. This way I don't have to rely on anyone but my VPS provider to keep all of it functional. Unfortunately this route is out of most people's technical know-how. And I certainly sympathize with people who could do this, but would rather use an off-the-shelf product that just works.

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

#76
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

What actually is a 4to6 gateway? For example, how would an IPv4 client connect to a 128-bit address like 2606:4700:20::6819:6c0d?

You contract with a tunnel broker (most, if not all, are free) to give you an address.

If you have a lan then you can set up radvd (or similar) to distribute addresses. You may need to replace your router though.

Your ipv6 packets head out over a 4to6 tunnel to your broker, and then out to the wider world.

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I recall a comment on HN a few months ago from someone who said they deliberately didn't connect their smart TV to their wifi, but then found that the internet-enabled features were in fact working. Turns out the TV had indeed found an open wifi network on its own and had automatically connected. They had to create a locked-down VLAN on their own network (with no outside connectivity), and connect to that in order to get the TV to remain offline.

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

#78
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

What actually is a 4to6 gateway? For example, how would an IPv4 client connect to a 128-bit address like 2606:4700:20::6819:6c0d?

I can imagine a weird contraption of a custom DNS server that tracks client requests, returns unique private IPv4 addresses and simultaneously tells to some NAT-PT engine that this source IPv4 address talking to that destination IPv4 address needs to be translated to that IPv6 address.

I can imagine this to be extremely fragile and break whenever an IP address is looked up using any different manner than plain DNS (e.g. by having IP in API responses, or just using DoH). Yet, I can imagine someone's probably already working on this abomination.

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or embed a $2 3g dongle.

The real cost there is data usage, and just keeping the SIM live. Even with large volume discounts, that's not gonna be cheap. (Wireless carriers don't price machine uses cases the same way they do retail phone SIM cards.)

And then there's obsolescence: you said 3G... how long before carriers have shut down their 3G networks, or at least have reduced coverage to the point where it's hard to get a 3G connection in most places?

Granted, if the manufacturers only use that as a backup, since most customers probably will connect the TV to their wifi, maybe it won't cost that much.

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

#80
post #73

So, Philips Hue users need a new $60 bridge after 8 years? That actually seems reasonable to me. 8 years is longer support than most other devices.

Yup, and the old bridge will keep working locally, still has an open API, and there was an upgrade program when v2 was introduced, with a 33% discount. Four or so years ago.

They gave me a pretty good upgrade deal just a month ago: a new v2 router with a lightbulb for under $60 Canadian ($45 US, now). This was offered to me somewhere in the iOS app when I was checking for updates. It took a while to ship (came from Europe for some reason), but I consider it a good deal, and have no regrets about buying the v1 router when I got it. The old bulbs work with the new router, though not as smoothly as the new bulb.
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