This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
On the other hand, one can understand why Google doesn't want to continue to pour resources into an ancient platform just to keep it on life support.
Bullshit. “Pour” my ass. Issue a legacy build of the app that controls them and walk away. What horseshit. This is shameful. The only reason it won’t blow up into a huge debacle is that these products targeted wealthy early-adopters in the first place and those folks can afford to upgrade, and most probably already have.
Absolutely fucking correct... You can maintain locks on my so-called smart devices for as long as you maintain your services... You want to pull the plug, you should be forced to open source and expose the tech so that we can keep it working on our own private servers. Proprietary tech is a bullshit excuse as well... The vast majority of these devices are about 10% of in house code riding on 90% of open standards, protocols, and packages. None of them are building the wheel from scratch.
For fucksake most of these devices could easily be implemented on decentralized architecture, if it wasn't for all the pesky data mining they are doing
There is a ~~class action~~ "mass arbitration" against Google for this: https://www.classaction.org/nest-thermostat-support-arbitration
Additionally, the Fulu Foundation has a bounty reward out for anyone who is able to get these working with something like Home Assistant.
The pot is currently at $12,856.00 https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/nest-learning-thermostat-gen-1-2
In the U.S., since doing so would circumvent measures put in place on these devices, publishing how to do this would go against sec. 1201 of the DMCA. This has a risk of a maximum sentence of 3-5 years in a Federal Prison. You can still privately show the Fulu Foundation how it is done, and they will be able to use this information to help their case in their attempt to reform this law.
If you live in the U.S., you can also help by letting your representatives know about this. Here's an ActionNetwork page that Fulu set up so that you can easily do so: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/right-to-repair-reform-section-1201-of-the-dmca
If you live in the U.S., you can also help by letting your representatives know about this. Here’s an ActionNetwork page that Fulu set up so that you can easily do so: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/right-to-repair-reform-section-1201-of-the-dmca
Do you still have a representative government where you live? I have a Republican House rep and trying to get him to do anything even remotely consumer friendly is just masochism.
If you can point out to republican voters how the DMCA fucks them too, you can bury your shitty GOP rep in calls and letters which might make them change.
Maybe.
Allowing these massive corporations to completely subvert our rights and force "arbitration" is fucking criminal. The fact that this is just accepted practice now in the US is pretty fucking infuriating.
The website you linked to says that it’s not a class action suit, but a “mass arbitration” which I’ve never heard of. It also claims that Google has a “no class action” clause in its warranty/user agreement. I don’t see how that’s legal, but whatever. I also wonder if that clause was there at the time of purchase for gen 1 and gen 2 thermostats.
Thanks, I missed that detail. It's probably because of the "no class action" clause that this is a "mass arbitration".
Unfortunately that usually means that Google is paying a specific company to decide on the outcome of the case. in this case it looks like American Arbitration Association has a contract with Google.
They're supposed to be fair for both sides, but it's been shown that they almost always rule in favor of the company that has pre-selected them.
If anyone is in this situation, they will likely have a much better chance by convincing a judge to allow a different 3rd party to arbitrate the case.
This is exactly why I didn't buy one of these or the Amazon version. I didn't trust that the devices would work as long as they could function and was correct.
I got 11 years out of mine. I had been wanting to upgrade it because it did not accept sensors.
Does it suck that it was still functional? Yup.
I mean they could just unlock the dang things at let some industrious hacker make them useful again. Hell I’d pay like $10 for a firmware that would work with home assistant.
Dumb thermostats last for multiple decades.
As do smart thermostats that don't rely on the continued goodwill of any corporation to function.
Which ones are those?
My Honeywell one is not Internet connected, but it seems plenty smart. It knows the time and day, is programmable for four different periods each day, can handle all sorts of heating and cooling equipment. It also learns how long it takes to get your house to the right temp, then starts working before then to make it happen when the time arrives.
Z-wave thermostats don't require Internet connectivity to function or control remotely. They do require something like Home Assistant for that remote control.
A simple open api could extend the life of these things by decades.
I think legally this suggestion makes you a pirate, a thief, a terrorist and a mass murderer.
I’m already on a bunch of lists. What’s a few more. I should collect them like steam cards.
Anything that supports HomeKit should work indefinitely. I have an ecobee4 that works great with Home Assistant via HomeKit.
I've got one of those with bi-metallic strips, it's 35 years old, works no problem.
Surprisingly, these still work as dumb thermostats after the cutoff date.
This isn’t “end of support.”
This is “loss of functionality.”
Totally inexcusable.
Samsung did something similar with one of their tablets when they remotely removed an app that provided an IR remote function - a primary reason for my purchase. Samsung's support not so politely told me, "Too fucking bad." when I objected.
There was something I could do about it though. Even though a replacement 3rd party app was less than $5 I haven't purchased another Samsung consumer product or service in almost a decade.
Oh how kind of them! They force disconnect an appliance but give you a coupon to buy the latest model.
And the newest model is different how? It's a thermostat after all.
Whole reason I got one was because of the promised savings (never saw any, from the learning, just bullshit offers that allowed the electric company access...).
Guess it's back to the tried and true mercury thermostat.
Yeah if my thermostat starts talking to the internet, its getting buckshot in it.
or digital, or one that doesnt use mercury.
The biggest mistake I made in my home was installing $3k in Nest gear, right before they were purchased by Google and the forthcoming Homekit support was abandoned. I cannot wait to get my Ubiquiti camera drops wired so I can stop paying the whopping $20/mo for cloud storage that was $8/mo when I started.
Tl;dr: Fuck Google
Buy something based on open standards and you won't need to worry about this.
See also: Enshitification
Twenty years ago Google was a small, fun startup that was easy to be a fan of. How the mighty have fallen. "Do no evil," huh? Disgusting.
No, no. It was "Don't be evil." A much lower standard, because it allows and encourages occasional evil acts. That meant being slightly less evil than M$.
Jokes on them, I block my Nest from talking to the Internet so my electrical company cannot control the damned thing. They had control even after I opted out and Google insisted they unenrolled me in the energy savings plan. Don't enroll in these plans [insert it's a trap gif].
That "Smart Energy" discount has shown up in mailings for the last few years and I've considered signing up despite my general dislike of allowing any company more control of my life than they already have.
Why do you say they're a trap? Did they change your thermostat settings far more than they claim or pull other BS you didn't expect?
Smart Energy Discount issues from the personal view of a consumer.
These plans work by sending you notifications that they will be reducing your thermostat for you when there is an energy crunch.
Sounds good so far, here's the issues I had:
Let's say you are a good consumer and let them change your thermostat to 85'F when it's 100'F every single time... You saved... $5!!!! and got to sweat profusely in your own home in the process.
Let's say you were working in the yard and come in sweaty and needing to cool off or you have a hot flash for some reason. If you change that thermostat while they are in control of it, you lose your whole $5 for not just that day, but the entire billing cycle.
Let's say you want to exit the plan. Now you're on the hook to wait on hold with your energy company for hours waiting for the one department and probably one person who can unenroll you. Chances are likely even then that they can screw it up and like in my case, both Google and my southern California electrical company claim ignorance anything was done wrong yet keep me enrolled.
In short and in summary: It's a trap because the savings is far, far too small for the sacrifice.
Thanks for that write-up. I'll continue to ignore the electric company's marketing efforts and remain blissfully disconnected.
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Source Hardware (OSH) for the win!!!!
This sort of thing is one of the reasons I chose a RainMachine irrigation controller over other options, because they specifically marketed their cloud-independent firmware design. It was vindicated a couple years ago when they started going defunct and grasped for recurring revenue by billing for proxied remote access, but even then they emphasized that everything else would continue to function without their servers.
The onus is on the consumer to reward cloud-independent designs like this. While it has been sad to see RainMachine’s collapse, my device indeed just keeps working. Hopefully it isn’t ultimately killed by firmware or app security vulnerabilities since it’s now thoroughly unmaintained.
Might as well just go to rent a center instead of buying smart shit.
This is yet another example of businesspeople taking laypeople for a ride. They want a lifeline to your wallets.
I'm imagining some poor rube who bought fully into the IoT. Like every appliance they own is smart. Then one day they wake up to their entire house no longer functioning because the smart devices can't connect to whatever services they need. Can't even work the smart locks on their doors.
I dipped my toes into "smart" thermostats with a Wyze. Meh. I don't really need to set the temp from my phone, or any of the other features, beyond having a simple schedule. I'm seriously considering reverting all the way back to an old-school bimetal strip, dial on the wall type, in private protest of all this crap.
(Don't get a Wyze. I think they've been discontinued anyway. The damn thing loses connection to the wifi three or four times per year, then I need to go through the ENTIRE setup process again, from the very beginning. The wifi antenna is in the closet not three feet away. POS.)
With Google's track record of jumping into a market and after they have millions of users shutting it down, I'm surprised they didn't do this years ago.
How long before Honeywell does the same? The company spun off their residential services division (including thermostats) about 7 years ago and at first things were fine, but in the last couple of years the service has become increasingly unreliable. Their servers have gone down quite a few times and settings changes are sometimes delayed even when the servers are up.
Their Z-Wave thermostat is a nice upgrade without concerns about someone sitting in a corporate America e-suite deciding to pull the plug.
We adopt new tech simply because it exists, not because it is wise to do so.
Glad I chose not to link my info to it to continue using the feature when Google took over.
Was hoping something like Homebridge could be used to still control these, but so far no luck. After the cutoff they can be used manually like a traditional thermostat, which is a surprise coming from Google. I still fear they are going to generate a bunch of ewaste from people replacing them.
