Hive to pull the plug on smart home gadgets by 2025 Home automation platform Hive plans to terminate key products in its line, including the Hive View cameras, HomeShield, and Leak products. A Hive spokesperson told The Register: "At Hive, we've got big plans to make... homes greener, so we've made the tough decision to discontinue our smart security and leak detection products …
Not really the same, as PCs running XP and Windows 7 would still continue working once MS stopped supporting the platforms, A place I worked last year still had several standalone PCs running XP as the devices they controlled had no drivers for Windows 7 or 10.
By the sound of things, Hive products wull simply stop working after the cut-off date.
Ouchy!
Maybe not the best point to make in a debate about essentially iot rubbish, but my point on UT stands.
It was a stand-alone game, yes you can play on line, but here in-sticks 23yrs ago, there was barely anything other than dial-up available.
yes lots of 3rd party servers are available, but one day how ever long it was ago, i thought.... hey i fancy a game of UT only to find that the official server had been turned off. yes, some googling later a alternative & a patch were found, but it did not say , on the packaging, the outside of the packaging, prior to purchase of a physical media game, that the internet was required or that it would turn off at some point and take all your achievements with it.
for the record, i still play UT, it works a treat on W10 even.
XP/ 7 - I was joking, sorry maybe should have used an icon.
Gotta go, time for a round of Quake ;)
I am not so sure, this is consumer tech and the cut-off dates are 3 years away. Bluntly, most people will have got bored of it or replaced it long before then. If they stop selling them then fine but people ditch all sorts of other tech products, often in a shorter timeframe without a second thought.
Is anyone surprised? They shouldn't be it is they way things work now. Why anyone thought that all this IoT cloud connected crap would be anything other than transient is what is more surprising.
Whilst I agree to a certain extent it is consumerisation of the products that it the issue.
There is a huge difference between what is purchased as genuine security equipment and a collection of consumer gadgets masquerading as as s security system.
I am clearly a lone voice on this but I don't understand why there is an expectation that it would turn out any other way. It is consumer electronics dressed up with tech and Apps as a security system.
On the plus side they have stopped selling them already (although other resellers still appear to have them).
When I worked in CCTV some companies systems still used 30 year old tube cameras built before the days of CCD & CMOS sensors, not great quality, but they still did an adequate job.
These things should be classed as appliances with an expected life measured in decades, not the sort of stuff that gets relegated to the attic or tip when something a slightly different colour is released...
Reminds me of the world of proper running shoes. Not the posing things you buy in the fitness sheds, the stuff you run 10ks to marathons in. Every season a new colour variant comes out.
Me? When I need a new pair I buy last year’s model, have to hunt a bit for my size in stock but much cheaper. Just don’t go too old, the midsoles go brittle after a while.
The only thing Hive does is switch your central heating on or off, as far as I'm aware. I think the worst that could happen is you're too cold or too hot (with a big gas bill in that situation).
I would like to think the thermostat continues to function offline, but you never know with this IoT shite.
The Hive controls our boiler/thermostat, but also monitors it.
And that's all I use it for. And we have a ring doorbell. Which is really quite useful to us.
I'd like some other home automation stuff that works with either of these, excluding stuff that can spy on us or gather more detailed information than how hot we keep our house. But they all seem to have proprietary software that means you have to use their hub, even if it's supposedly Hive compatible (like the fancy light bulbs). And they're also bloody expensive for what they are.Keeping users trapped in their walled patio means they can charge what they like.
I use this (or a fair approximation) on the front door:
https://www.amazon.com/Chrome-Embossed-PRESS-Renovators-Supply/dp/B00AIIEVP4/ref=sr_1_51?keywords=doorbell+buttons&qid=1657839989&sr=8-51
Actual chime, wire and transformer are up to you (and the wiring code in your jurisdiction), but at least once you install it you'll be secure in the knowledge that it'll last your lifetime, and possibly through your grandkid's, too.
If you need/want a camera ... get a camera, not a doorbell.
"As HIVE controls our gas boiler, its demise will put death from CO poisoning a nor-remote possibility."
Maybe Centrica are just bringing forward the day when new gas boilers are no longer available and encouraging their customers to switch to something else.
I agree with your comments on IoT, solely in relation to the Cloud. However, I don't think smart building tech is a flash in the pan. I also don't think that the timescale you mention is reasonable. Several of my clients are still using smart tech ten or more years after I installed it.
I use, and install, lots of IoT devices. But, I have an immutable rule that I don't install anything that relies on ongoing Cloud services provided by third parties. So, every installation has a local server (usually a NUC. Sometimes a Raspberry Pi), that works locally whether or not there is an Internet connection. Some can even be controlled by SMS.
One of the systems that several of my clients use, and love, is the Logitech Media Server (Squeezeboxes, essentially). Whilst originally there was a Cloud option, there has always been a locally installable server (originally SlimServer). Logitech killed LMS years ago. There was a sharp intake of breath amongst their users, but they open-sourced the server code, and it is still going strong. Hopefully Hive do similar.
Conventional wisdom with these type of IOT devices is that you pay a premium and go with a brand leader so they will receive security updates and the backend functionality won't get prematurely turned off. As is often the case, ignoring conventional wisdom saves a lot of money.
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I tried to buy a camera for viewing my front door a few years ago. It was just for letting me see who was at the door making a delivery, when I was at home, in the garden out the back. Would be going on a closed circuit wifi or wired network.
I had suffered from deliveries not being dropped off, not ringing the doorbell and just dumping a sorry we missed you card
Went into my local electrical retailer named after a pop Indian culinary delight as I happened to be passing.
Gave the sales bloke my requirements, told him there obviously couldn't be any cloud element and I didn't really need recording. If he'd got nothing that fit the bill please would he tell me now and save me some valuable time.
He then proceeded to show me a Ring doorbell which when queried if they'd released an update to allow offline working admitted they hadn't. I then saw Nest, Hive and I think something else, all of which needed an internet/cloud connection.
When I said no to all of them he informed me that I was obviously going to need the internet or how could I view the camera when away from home? I asked if he'd listened to my requirements when I first spoke to him and he rather bizarrely said yes.
I asked what use the camera would be if the cloud service went down or bust? He didn't have an answer to that. I said what if it’s going somewhere without an internet connection? He just told me everywhere had the internet now. I asked what happened if the internet connection went down or the company went bust which earned me a shrug of the shoulders.
I said I’d try elsewhere and got a Foscam on Amazon.
"they hadn't got to the extended warranty part of the script."
Didn't stop them with me. I ordered a fridge freezer from them but they cancelled my order due to supply issues. A few weeks later came a letter offering me extended warranty for the none existent appliance.
"they hadn't got to the extended warranty part of the script."
Didn't stop them with me. I ordered a fridge freezer from them but they cancelled my order due to supply issues. A few weeks later came a letter offering me extended warranty for the none existent appliance.
You should have accepted that offer. It would have been interesting to see how they would have solved that non-functioning fridge freezer. Non-existence shouldn't be a problem, they offered the extended warranty.
"For those people who did buy the extended warranty, what happens when they phone up in a couple of years to say it has stopped working?"
A very good question. The answer's probably buried deep in the T&Cs of the extended "warranty" denying all responsibility for failure of the vendor to supply the service. If they missed that trick and have to make good on all these warranties there's going to be business available for lawyers.
Re :"Went into my local electrical retailer named after a pop Indian culinary delight as I happened to be passing.
Gave the sales bloke my requirements, told him there obviously couldn't be any cloud element and I didn't really need recording. If he'd got nothing that fit the bill please would he tell me now and save me some valuable time."
My old boss, when he was a student, bought a PC from PC World. It was a good PC, and worked for years. Then, one day, the HDD failed. As the machine was out of warranty, they refused to touch it. So, he bought it in to work and I had a look. I confirmed the hard drive had physically failed, and opened up the machine. To find a wierd motherboard with onboard SCSI, and no IDE ports. I say "weird" because this was a machine intended for consumer use, and not a server, or workstation (which tended to be the areas that used SCSI).
He bought the new HDD, I fitted it and and installed Windows, but my boss was not happy. SCSI HDDs cost considerably more that IDE ones..
My company finally agreed to buy me a decent desktop for my data crunching. However - they insisted it had to be from an expensive major manufacturer whose USP promised models were available for many years after a sale.
Came the point where another desktop was needed - which had to be an identical hardware configuration. The supplier's catalogue showed the precise model was still available. Then the small print: they couldn't guarantee to supply it fitted with the same type of third-party motherboard.
Fortunately we had bought two initially - and the second one was now prised out of a colleague's grasp as he now used a laptop.
I bought an Eufy doorbell after some research. Recordings are held locally, no cloud. Alerts reliably go to my phone. Charge lasts about a month. Commendably low number of false positives and no missed visitors. The only minor irritation is the alert chime can't be configured in the way I would prefer. The point is that if Eufy go belly-up I should still have a working doorbell.
I use a Eufy set up for our cameras - generally rather happy with it.
One thing to watch though, is that the "held locally" thing has its limits, as the HomeBase gets a bit funny if the internet (or the cloud service) goes AWOL.
You can livestream the cameras from the homebase using RTSP, and the cameras are still recording to the Homebase, so technically it is "working" without an external connection, and your recordings are being held locally.
But, you interact with the homebase via an app which relays via the Cloud service (there isn't a web interface or similar on the base station). So, without the internet you can't view recordings, receive notifications or turn off the alarm if triggered.
Your recordings are held locally, but the setup is still relatively useless without the cloud component. Technically, you could feed the RTSP streams into Zoneminder, but the cameras are battery jobbies, so you'd forever be recharging them (or would need to run a usb charging cable to them).
So, although Eufy never hold video from my cameras, the entire solution would still be fairly useless if they shut down their cloud service.
I also have a Eufy battery doorbell because I didn't want to pay an ongoing subscription but make no mistake we are still as much at the whim of Eufy and their servers. Whilst the doorbell and the chime use the local WiFi network they rely on the Eufy internet servers for the app to setup, view and monitor the doorbell. If they pulled the servers tomorrow they would be unusable. Given the battery is not replaceable I basically am gambling that won't happen before the battery dies (won't hold sufficient charge to be practical, I currently get about 3 months per charge) and I need to replace the whole lot and the initial investment wasn't that high.
So whilst the market it as stored locally it actually isn't the same as works entirely locally.
"I said I’d try elsewhere and got a Foscam on Amazon."
They (Foscam) are going the same way.
Instead of updating the firmware in their NVRs and cameras to support other browsers than IE, they pushed their own subsctiption service or "Foscam VMS" - God that is utterly, utterly SHITE!!!!
Foscam VMS is one of the most dreadfully shite bits of software ever. Plus Foscam keep using dodgy ssl certificates for their cameras and NVR with no option to install your own - when they aren't being "revoked".
Some years ago I bought a Roberts internet radio, that used the Reciva service to provide information on available radio stations. It's a jolly handy bit of kit, lives by the bed, and tunes in to radio stations all over the world. It was not cheap.
Last year the new owners of Reciva announced they were shutting the service down. What does that mean? Expensive radios (almost) bricked. Mine still works to listen to stations on my 5 presets, but that's it.
I'm sure someone could have afforded to set up a new minimalist server that would have enabled the radios to keep working, even if it wasn't updated daily - Roberts weren't the only people using the service.
Oh yes, Roberts I believe offered a 20% discount on a new radio.
I built my own streaming radio using an ESP32, two buttons, and one of those MP3 boards. Fitted it with an LCD panel (16x2) and stuffed the whole thing into a cheap tupperware clone.
Only does http, but that's most of what I listen to. For setting it up, I just plug the thing into a serial port (my phone would do in a pinch) and reconfigure as I like (AP details, ten stations). Doesn't need a mothership or any of that crap. If you want to know the stream of a station and there's no playlist file, just play it in Firefox with UBlock's logger enabled, then pluck the stream URL out of there.
Best bit? I wrote the software myself. So it's probably shit but it does exactly what I want it to do.
I'm looking at making a simple surveillance thing using an ESP32-CAM board, but last year's experiment blew itself up in the sunlight. They run hot and the radio shielding can precludes fitting a heatsink. It would probably be easier and better to use a camera fitted to a Pi 0W or something, but I don't know Linux.
Either way, this story is one more in a tragically long list of reasons why depending upon a cloud service puts you and your device entirely at the whim of the people running the service.
"[...] stuffed the whole thing into a cheap tupperware clone."
When PoundWorld shut down I bought a stack of their transparent kitchen storage boxes. For their intended use they have a limited life as the lid clamp hinges progressively suffer from bending fatigue. However - they provide excellent boxes in various sizes for my electronic projects - although I would be wary of their 250vac insulation properties.
An alarm installation techie neighbour drools over the box containing my Arduino doorbell repeater system. Most of the innards provides various test facilities in case of problems. One of those projects that evolved with lots of tweaks - and you marvel that it works so well.
"If you want to know the stream of a station and there's no playlist file, just play it in Firefox with UBlock's logger enabled, then pluck the stream URL out of there."
Most browsers come with developer tools that enable you to do this. You don't need a Firefox addon.
Generally, you open up those tools, click on the Network tab, then navigate to the site/stream and it logs all the network requests.
I had a very similar experience with my Philips Streamium. I continued to use it for streaming on my home network for a while, before consigning it to history, and learning a lesson about devices that require a service to function, as well as the companies that provide that service.
"Reckon I'll stick to radios with aerials for the time being."
FM is the only service that works reliably for me - DAB is unpredictable. Digital TV stopped working after a new block of flats blocked the reception.
I am dreading the loss of my wired phone connection - to be replaced with 1 hour battery backed fibre VOIP systems.
My travel radio of choice is the Sony SW-100 https://swling.com/blog/2016/09/the-sony-icf-sw100-a-miniture-dx-marvel-never-likely-to-be-repeated/ which is gobsmackingly good for something so tiny. At home my DAB is gathering dust because the station I used to listen to on it, Guildford’s Eagle Radio, is now defunct. It used to come in perfectly in Central London on DAB. When that was replaced with some generic rubbish I went back to the BBC on an analogue “world band” radio.
Upvote for Eagle Radio. I used to listen to that here in France. It was fun to get local news from where I used to live. A mere 18 years later (as it was at the time), and the Wisley Interchange is still a mess.
Bloody Bauer Radio killing that station (and geoblocking). I used to listen to it from the days when they broadcast from the top of the shopping centre in Woking.
Anyway, a thumb up for the memories.
to be replaced with 1 hour battery backed fibre VOIP systems
If it's Openreach they aren't battery backed anymore. When FTTP was new the modems had a phone socket that used Fiber Voice Access and had battery backup. FVA sales stopped on 31 March 2020. Now you plug the "landline" phone into a socket on the back of your internet hub that doesn't have battery backup.
Living in mid Wales - one of the bits of the UK that lies outside London and the like, I agree that DAB is fucking shite. Since the 1970's I have driven my cars around the area with the odd bit of interferance and drop out when listening to radio.
My current car has a DAB radio and it spends about 30 % of it's time with 'service unavailable.' or whatever and a deathly silence for bloody miles.
Progress, they call it.
DAB isn't that bad. But you live in an area with a shite DAB signal. Not quite the same thing.
I drive a lot and find DAB is mostly a decent signal. On the other hand, anyone living near Tebay on the M6 in Cumbria or 10 miles up or down from there would think FM is shite using your logic because the only signal available is Classic FM. No other FM stations, no DAB. Plenty other areas like around the Lake District too. I suspect it might be something to do with large hills and small mountains, but I could be wrong.
I asked the question years ago about what could DAB do apart from more stations (at the expense of quality) that FM radio can't? Somebody recently mentioned an EPG and yes on a limited number of DAB radios you can get an EPG. They then mentioned apart from BBC Radio how useful would it actually be? Everything else you can do can be done with an device with an FM receiver. Recording is possible on various devices from my phone to some iPods. Radiotext can be done using RDS as can traffic alerts etc. I had a clock radio in the 90s that had RDS and traffic alert on it. I think I've still got it somewhere.
Full disclosure, I used to work in the media and digital radio.
One simple explanation for DAB - to sell off the radio spectrum that the discontinuation of the "traditional radio" allowed to be "freed up" in a bidding war.
££££££
That’s not what’s currently planned, where the major stations are supposed to go digital only. Community and smaller stations would remain on FM. This will allow for those areas where the former local stations are now broadcast from London just with local adverts and news. Who are they going to sell the FM spectrum to exactly and what is this bidder going to do with it that isn’t radio broadcasting?
The problem is that take up of DAB has been slower than anticipated. The original switch date was set for 2015 and Ofcom believed by then 50% of listening would be digital. They were the only ones in the industry who believed that as most people I knew were sceptical. This was going to be switched during the term of the national Independent radio analogue licenses. Therefore the licence term would be shorter and as a result the national licenses were rolled over and not put up for auction. This was because it was believed by Ofcom that no one would bid for a short term license. That despite there being media reports containing interviews with interested bidders. Global radio also did a massive amount of lobbying against these licenses going up for auction to protect their station Classic FM.
The current date for switchover is mooted for 2030 https://radiotoday.co.uk/2021/10/no-fm-switch-off-in-the-uk-until-at-least-2030-says-dcms/ and makes a mockery of the original date. It’s also cost the treasury the money that would have been bid to have those licences and the associated spectrum. For comparison Norway switched in 2017.
The only way they got DAB sales to the level they have is by not selling decent analogue radios in this country. Try buying an analogue radio with digital tuning and you’ll have a hard time outside of specialist retailers. No point in taking a DAB radio to the USA because it won’t work there. No point in explaining that to the bloke at Currys or indeed John Lewis as they at first told me it would work. When I proved they used a different system called IBOC (in band on channel) aka HD radio they were fazed. Then they both pointed to FM on the radios. I pointed out that this didn’t help with AM reception for sports broadcasts which were often not available elsewhere. The replies were jointly sorry can’t help in that case.
Agreed. Much of what we get with DAB could already be done with FM. The "promise" of DAB was better and more features as well as better quality and more channels in the same amount of bandwidth. Then the beancounters figured out that lower bitrates in mono instead of stereo meant many more lower quality channels in the space we could have had many good quality channels. The relatively slow roll-out to a decent level of coverage hasn't helped either. I'd say the biggest problems with DAB are:
1. The way it's used by the broadcasters
2. The poor roll-out.
3. The lack of of an upgrade path to DAB+
My radio does both FM and DAB. With a good signal FM is best (I listen to Radio 3 a lot)*, but the DAB signal is more resilient to interference which can affect an FM signal.
*And I would like to thank all of those of you out there for paying your licence fees for BBC TV and paying for the wonderful Radio 3 which without subsidy would be wholly uneconomic, and I'd have to slum it on Classic FM.
I am dreading the loss of my wired phone connection - to be replaced with 1 hour battery backed fibre VOIP systems.
You do realise that you can extend the backup time yourself ?
The simple way, and I suspect only way "permitted" by OpenRetch, is to just plug the power adapter into a UPS. That's a bit inefficient given the multiple conversions involved.
Assuming (I've not seen the kit so can't comment) the termination equipment just needs a single DC power supply (and is fairly tolerant of voltage variations) then it's probably OK to just power it off batteries that are on float charge normally. A lot of modern kit fits that bill - just a generic 5V or 12V DC adapter and internally it's got a switch mode regulator to get the voltage(s) it needs. Having the internal SM regulator means it could cope easily with an input that varied from 10-11V (battery running down) to 13.8V (battery on float).
Either way, your backup time is entirely down to how much battery storage you throw at it.
I use a couple of these, I've not tested run time but it's been OK so far for shortish outages;
The Reciva radios are not all dead! They are based on a single board ARM computer running Linux - this means they can be re-programmed to keep working even thought the cloud based side of the service was closed down. The challenge is running alternative software on a system with 32MB RAM and 32MB storage (yes, MB not GB). But an internal streaming media server now exists that allows them to continue working. Search "Sharpfin streaming media server for Reciva radios" and avoid sending your radio to landfill!
What does that mean? Expensive radios (almost) bricked. Mine still works to listen to stations on my 5 presets, but that's it.
Try the folks at Listenlive. They support some discontinued radio types, and there's some (admittedly small) discussion of Reciva there.
"I bought A Netgear MP101, internet radio, one of the first IOT devices, before the cloud"
Not "before the cloud" ... The MP101 was released in early 2004, General Magic was describing "the cloud" back in '94. See this article in Wired from April '94:
https://www.wired.com/1994/04/general-magic/
"The beauty of Telescript," says Andy, "is that now, instead of just having a device to program, we now have the entire Cloud out there, where a single program can go and travel to many different sources of information and create sort of a virtual service."
Just realised you replied
I (and everyone I worked with at the time, and in the IT press and trading I’ve done up to dates you mention) with been drawing ‘clouds’ to represent all that ‘stuff’ outside my org’s network, since 1987, as I am sure you have (almost certainly longer than that since you seem to have been everywhere, done everything, invented or been present at the conception of any modern device or service that anyone could mention, attended every lecture, passed every exam, met everyone, lived several overlapping lives in multiple countries….you get the picture, if anyone has a black dog, then your dog is blacker….if anyone goes to Tenerife, then you’ve been to Elevenerife) but I’m sure you realised that my use of the term here was in the generic, modern overall sense people use it now? It didn’t need your customary ‘look at me I can Google a fact and present it like I knew it or remembered it from an article’ smartarsed “Er I think you’ll find…” clarification which many people on this forum find very old and very tiring to read. In short, people will have understood clearly what I meant.
Sonos and the devices that would not work without an upgrade.
wasn't there also another heating control system that went the same way a few years ago ?
My TV's processor (Thanks Sony) is so shite, that I can no longer get iplayer, ITVHub, My5, etc on it. Not my decision, the software suppliers decision and the software has removed itself from my TV (maybe due to a TV OS upgrade). Same on an Uncles TV a year or two ago so been waiting for mine to do the same
Me, I still like my Squeezebox, Logitech killed it, but the sever is open source and the devices still go strong.
As for the TV's, a good old Roku to the rescue, though downright annoying we have to work around it
It's not the processor in your telly, it's just the software developers and the companies who employ them. My 2010 Philips will still work with the most online services from the broadcasters. For other stuff I used Kodi on a Raspberry Pi, the video add-ons aren't perfect but usually good enough.
With netflex bitching about loss of customer LG did an up date that stops me logging into netflex, then netflex did an up date, that totally fucked thins up ( temper tantrum) basically my 8 year old $6000 telle is just a dumb display, both LG and netflex have lost any return custom from me
TVs have a much longer lifetime than apps, and TV manufacturers typically don't care much about updating their 'smart TV' apps once they have your money, even if the apps are still available and being maintained.
I treat TVs as dumb monitors and rely on cheaper 'evolving tech' boxes like the Roku or Chromecast to.providevthe smarts. It disconnects the update cycles.
Would be nice if all "smart" TVs included a simple way for users to disable the additional features, so that those of us using the TV as a monitor wouldn't have to suffer the extended startup times and more convoluted UIs, and those of us who do make use of the built-in smart apps initially can then continue using the TV for the lifetime of the panel without being constantly reminded just how quickly the manufacturer gave up on providing updates for the apps, if they ever bothered to provide them in the first place...
Would be nice if all "smart" TVs included a simple way for users to disable the additional features, so that those of us using the TV as a monitor wouldn't have to suffer the extended startup times and more convoluted UIs
I replaced my TV last year and the one I got - a Samsung 2020 49" Q80T QLED - has an option to disable the smart menu. Since I only ever watch TV through my Sky box over HDMI 1 that's perfect. All I see when switch on is a black screen then 'HMDI 1 Game' in the top left(*) for a couple of seconds before the Sky menu appears.
(*)Game mode disables some of the less desirable display processing.
Do you have a PiHole? I had the same problem with catchup\streaming players dissapearing and discovered it was because I have a PiHole. If I disable it the services come back.
So you are only 'allowed' to use those services if you let yourself be royally reamed by by those gits who insist that you need to be followed round at all times to enable "tailored content", i.e. ads you never asked for or need!
Well, what a surprise... NOT.
Simple solution - NEVER buy so called "home automation" or "security" products which rely on a subscription/or account on the manufacturer's (or anyone else's) systems just to bloody work.
They WILL dump you in the shit and not give a damn about the now useless hardware you are left with.
There are open source home automation systems out there. I use Home Assistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/). Sometimes things break, but they usually get fixed quickly. My Hive thermostat stopped working with HA recently, but was fixed in a couple of weeks (and I could have rolled back to a working version if I could be bothered)
The open source home automation systems are a good source of information that can be used to choose which products to buy.
Hubitat is another one that lives on-prem and does not depend on an internet connection for 99% of it's functionality. (The remaining 1% is for things that interface to cloudy things, like Echo Speaks and the Alexa connector.)
After I got burned by most of the wifi 'smart' devices out there, I dumped them all for Zigbee equivalents and the Hubitat; As soon as I wrap my brain around Rhasspy and the Hubitat connector for it, I'll probably end up dumping the echos as well along with Plex, which has turned out to be an unreliable piece of shite that constantly wants to update itself for no apparent reason other to be an annoyance.
Yeah, the phrase "video playback subscriptions" in the article left me spluttering a bit. I wonder whether "smart" door locks are subject to the same level of WTFery, and which state they'd fall back to in the event of a payment lapse or the "service" being withdrawn.
"I wonder whether "smart" door locks are subject to the same level of WTFery"
Can't speak for all of them but all of the ones I have seen are, if they can't connect or authenticate with the server they won't cycle (so they will stay in their current state) and after a fixed period of time (or the battery dies/is removed) they will disable the local override function until they re-authenticate with the server.
I've made great use of that useless hardware, bought cheaply. A lot of depreciated IP cams still output a local feed that can be piped into a VMS like Luxriot (free for the home) and, if you're feeling privacy-conscious, run on a separate network with only the VMS facing the Internet.
It would depend on what you mean by subscription. If you pay a one-off price to buy something which is then dependent on a server somewhere it's almost certainly a Ponzi scheme unless the price contains a sum which can actually be invested in something that pays returns to keep the service going - an unlikely situation.
If, however, the subscription is an ongoing payment by you for the service then it's a somewhat better chance if there are enough subscribers to make it worth someone's while to keep the service running.
That latter part "If, however, the subscription is an ongoing payment by you for the service then it's a somewhat better chance..." depends on the manufacturer (or whoever they may have subscontrated the subscription bit out to if they've done that) playing ball.
Do you know of any who have "played ball" or have the just said "Tough. It is proprietary - sod off".
... whether that is a TV, radio, security camera, or whatever, then that device will only work for as long as the manufacturer can be bothered to continue support for it. Since most manufacturers have the attention span of a toddler, that is not going to be long.
But at least they will give you an offer to purchase the next iteration of the same crap.
So their vision of net zero is to force their customers to dump equipment they bought and installed and then buy new equipment that has similar functionality?
Is this the famed net zero?
It's not like you buy these sensors on a whim. Like, you know what? *bites a pear loudly* Imma slap a Hive camera rite there. They'll film me and imma feel like I am on telly! It's almost like a gawd will be watching me!
Correct, that's why they've decided to generate a tonne of landfill as they can't possibly run two sets of APIs. It makes sense during a climate crisis to make yet more incompatible tat and transport it from China to the UK. Anyone who doesn't throw out this version and by the next must hate the planet or something.
Not supporting their products ought to be illegal but that PR nonsense quoted near the start of the article should mean they're fined double.
CLOWN computing !
i learned this long ago. i had a roku 1001 audio player. they pulled the plug on it and decided to go the video way.
from then on : no more devices that need the internet.
Surveillance ? get a NVR on-premises. yes you can contact it from the outside world , but there is no command and control server. the machine has its own harddisk and does not need internet to record. Amcrest
Well, at least they notified their users, unlike Insteon.
I am always amazed by the people that completely rely on cloud services. Whether it is IoT like Hives, Insteon, Nest, Honeywell or many others, storage, like the Samsung Cloud or Microsoft/Google/Apple's equivalent, you should always have a back-out plan.
Now for a worrying question: does your company have a back-out plan ?
“Now for a worrying question: does your company have a back-out plan ?”
Do you ? I appreciate the sentiment, but we don’t. My company relies quite heavily on the whole M365 thing, with added sprinklings of PowerBI. The general consensus here is that MS is “too big to fail”. I gave them the numbers, the cost for being able to back out at a moment’s notice was prohibitive compared to the benefits.
If MS would fail, it would be a shit show for communication for a week or two, but we’d still be able to sell online, ship goods, get reports, design products and so on, since all business critical functions (or those that are deemed to be critical by the powers that be) are in our own data centers.
At home I don’t need a back-out plan. If SMA would fail it would be annoying to miss reporting on my solar panels, and my heat pump would work less efficiently, but nothing would stop working. Nothing else requires some cloudy thingy to function, and I will keep it that way.
Behave! Of course not. Our company like so many others is hellbent on putting all our digital eggs into one cloudy basket. Driven - as ever - by exec's believing in ever-increasing savings that fail to materialise once they themselves have moved on to pastures new.
Can't possibly achieve those nebulous saving if we also need to have a backup plan in case it all goes TITSUP.
Same as their previous kit that lasted even less time. I want the "smart" kit but I don't wnat anything connected to the internet. Trouble is it getting more and more difficult buying anything without IOT.
Apart from the security issues and ease of monitoring by crooked governments, it is all a big con to resell the same old junk every few years and to force people into leasing everything.
I dread to think what the life of an electric car will be in a few years time - any increase on the 3-5 year lifetime of a smart phone?
In future all hardware will be leased and sold with a separate licence for each feature.
It's ok, no one's electric car will be driveable because they'll all be plugged in feeding the grid, as that is now the legally mandated answer to where all the wonderous renewables power goes when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
The upside is everyone's annual mileage will be really, really low, insurance should be dirt cheap because of that, and the roads will be empty :)
To be fair, alarms, doorbells, and fridges can all manage quite well without networking, as they have done for years. But I'd be reluctant to get a "traditional" CCTV camera these days, if only for reasons of practicality. I'd still never connect an IP camera directly to the internet, though.
Jawbone fitness tracker bands all became unless overnight when they went belly up and the servers got turned off. Which taught me not to rely on anything that replies on cloud based services to work.
I only own one 'smart' device that relies on the cloud and that is a LED bulb, I did look at how easy it would be to jailbreak it and install an open firmware on it, but it appears that it involves destructive drilling in to it, to get to JTAG headers, and since it only cost me a a fiver i'm happy to leave it as is for now as id probably break it.
"I'd buy another one for a fiver and have fun hacking the bugger."
Personally, if such a bulb was actually needed in that location, I'd shit-can it, and buy another bulb that doesn't require such a connection. Probably for less than a fiver.
Hacking for hacking's sake is all fine and dandy (and for the most part I'm all for it!), but I value my time more than learning something about a proprietary bulb interface that'll I'll never need again.
Hacking for hacking's sake is all fine and dandy (and for the most part I'm all for it!), but I value my time more than learning something about a proprietary bulb interface that'll I'll never need again.
Quite likely someone has already done so. Downside is that the instructions are presented as a video, with a lot of irrelevant blather and the crucial bits whizzing by at warp speed.
"As a smart tech brand in the middle of a climate crisis, we know the focus needs to change"
What has that got to do with switching off existing support?
Creating more landfill and obsolescence?
Are they implying that their existing products are so inefficient they need to be axed for the good of the planet?
It is moronic beyond words.
Yet again, IoT is a mugs game for consumers
Well given I suspect most of this tat will be covered by patents, perhaps we give a choice:
Support the products until the licenced patents expire ie. 20 years, or release information under an open-source/creative commons licence with royalty-free rights to patented technology.
It very often isn't and it's not just internet-connected stuff: there were constraints in early DTT receivers that effectively bricked them and let's not get started on DAB/DAB plus.
The reason analogue TVs and FM radios had longevity was a public commitment to standards. Without that, all these devices are waste-in-waiting.
"there were constraints in early DTT receivers that effectively bricked them"
In 2009, Freeview changed the data block size (IIRC) when they "updated to the NIT (Network Information Table), which some receivers could not accommodate" (info from wiki). so earlier "big box" TVs with built-in Freeview were bricked.
The TV could still be used, if you used an external set top box (Sky, Freesat, Freeview) to feed a signal into the AV input.
Nice dream, but there's a sucker born every minute, and the world is brimming with enough stupid suckers to keep buying this shite indefinitely. The ones that suffer a bad experience - and actually learn from it - are more than outweighed by the Legion of Morons (tm).
My finger is hovering over the downvote button (but have not pressed) purely for the massive disconnect from reality.
A sufficient number of people don't think any further than "oh shiny". That's why the companies concerned can get away with offering a mediocre reduction off one of their own products, even when any discerning customer should run in the other direction. But... oh shiny.
>The hardware might be strong, but all too often the cloud behind them is less so. ®
Well, despite the title observation that this is not a registered trademark in any sane country, good point, worthy of copyright, nice use of plural hardware to annoy us yanks.
You didn't once mention vapour. Good on ye. Leave it to the trolls.
my initial distrust of depending upon a company's willingness to provide support after the sale is proven. My Honeywell thermostats continue to work with no idea an internet exists. The only internet connected items in my house are my router, 2 laptops and 2 cell phones.
I wonder how the cops will feel about this, considering they're piloting a new law allowing access to privately owned internet cameras. Will they charge companies that stop supporting IoT cameras with obstruction of "justice?"
How about extending 'Right to Repair' legislation to cover IoT devices. After all, if a device requires some server to function, then it feels like an argument could be made to say that it's broken if the server isn't up and the 'part' required to repair it would be the server software, which the supplier should be obliged to provide.
Right to Repair seems to be gathering momentum in several jurisdictions, albeit with varying levels of success (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/right-to-repair-uk). Maybe this could be a relatively simple add-on, though I'm sure the suppliers will be reluctant to share the extent to which their devices are calling home and their server software mining our data. Still, obliging them to put software into the public domain that provides the core functionality when they advertised the product seems like a good thing.
Much as I'm not particularly impressed with them, as a previous commentator mentioned Logitech eventually seemed to do the right thing when they stopped selling Squeezebox players https://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Main_Page
Great system in principle but lousy implementation even with the cloud data... Binned it a while back, switched to Drayton Wiser which is far more flexible and works locally - no cloud required. It also offers nice add ons such as connecting a smart meter to the system so I can see actual usage and cost in the app.
And another vote for Eufy doorbell and other cameras - just works, local hub, no cloud
A couple of years ago I invested in Hive technology after buying a house with a Hive thermostat, I then realised I was totally dependent on their servers and the small box they were connected to. I started my journey and now have many sensors and devices connected to my own server running home assistant, including the last of my Hive products which work flawlessly with Home Assistant. If anyone needs persuading this is the right way to go Hive is a lesson for all. Checkout https://www.home-assistant.io/
"...to discontinue our smart security and leak detection products"
Big brave you.
"Tough" for your customers more like, who didn't have any choice in the matter anyway. Not so much for yourselves who chose to wash your hands of supporting something you *designed* to require your support, but stopped caring about because it wasn't bringing you any fresh income.
Especially as you get the chance- sorry, excuse- to sell them more disposable-by-design shite.
Anyone else hate that formulaic, weaselish style of PR speak that turns something like this into a self-aggrandising excuse to act like *they're* being Big Grown Ups Making Hard Decisions Because They Have To- and not because they chose to do something self serving- and bearing the pain, when it's their customers being forced to suffer?
Ugh.
I wonder if the real reason these products are being discontinued is because they have contain a TLS certificate that is due to expire and they have no means of updating them in the field. They wouldn't be the first company to just stick in a certificate with a long expiry date and not both implementing an update mechanism.
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