This story is going around various home automation discussion groups:
On May 15th a critical Nest product will go dark.
Google/Nest are basically deciding to kill off a functioning product. Maybe they're finally planning to ship their own version of the same thing, but it's a very odd move.
I am reloading Greg Duffy's twitter feed over and over to see the response...
But seriously, that is bizarre.
Starting May 15th, however, Revolv's $300 hub will cease functioning entirely. "The Revolv app won’t open and the hub won’t work," reads an FAQ on Revolv's website.
Unless there is something I am misunderstanding, this is going to cause quite a lot of distrust for Nest and perhaps for cloud devices in general.
It would be one thing if the company overall was going out of business, but to do it like this is surprising.
That's friggin' terrible. Revolv had a lot of fans and I'm sure whatever Nest is bringing out to replace it after all this time, they're not going to buy into it.
Revolv was something like a swiss-army knife of home automation hubs. There are only a few 'general purpose' type hubs out there.
Killing it off without replacement is a blow to the non-proprietary platform market.
However, in Nest's defense, I think they took Revolv off the market over a year ago, and only the grey market has been selling hardware.
People thought that they owned a hardware device capable of home automation.
Little did they know all they owned was a wireless dongle.
Just like the Wink hub, I think this Revolv hub was part of one of those Crowd Funding/Re-invent the wheel/get rich quick schemes for the "creative generation" who doesn't want to work a regular job.
Well this crowd funding bubble is busting and they are dropping like flies. Either they fail, or google buys them up to exterminate them.
Quirky, the sister company of Wink, which was a hodgepodge of automation gadgets went bankrupt (according to a update on their site a few months back) and fell face flat a year or two ago, and the CEO jumped ship and had someone else take over. From my understanding, Wink isnt doing much better and is in the red.
Quirky most recently has "reinvented" itself as a "community of inventors" with a new CEO etc.
I bought the Wink hub and a bunch of accessories about 2 years ago, and a year ago, they pushed an update to all the hubs that rendered them bricks. So they told everyone to email them and they would send a prepaid box to ship it to the factory to unbrick it and return it to the customers. Long story short, I reverted to the old fashioned way of getting up and pressing the light switch lol.
A $50 hub is not worth the hassle just because most of the time the thing would not work correctly or would go offline- it was too "buggy".
Ill just go with Control4 or better.
I wouldn't say they're "bricking" the hardware. That implies that they're sending an update to literally kill it.
More accurately is that they're stopping a service which the hardware relies on.
This is also a great example of why we should be avoiding (X)aaS products rather than embracing them.
well said...makes me wonder on the cloud analytics.
This is a good example on why you should just buy the cow...
Ask questions and get answers to your physical security questions from IPVM team members and fellow subscribers.
