If anyone thought for one second that any device which requires external "cloud" support would continue work beyond what is convenient/profitable for the provider then I have a wifi-only dishwasher to sell you. No, really - please buy it from me.
So many of the smart apps won't even launch without an Internet connection (i.e. connection to their cloud services), even if you just want to control local Bluetooth devices.
friend got a canon camera. you can install the canon app to use bluetooth/wifi to transfer the photos to the phone. At some point the app went from thre app allowing limited permissions to insert into camera roll, to full permissions to access all photos on the phone.
I recently bought a G-Shock watch, it can connect to your phone via Bluetooth, it was a selling point but may be convenient to sync the time with a quick connection.
First, the G-Shock app displayed a prompt that it won't work with animations turned off which is just baffling. I have them disabled in Android settings under accessibility options because I find them frivolous.
Then with the animations enabled the G-Shock app says that it's EOL since mid 2023, now CASIO WATCHES app is for everything.
Install CASIO WATCHES, doesn't complain about animations being disabled which is an improvement but then when I want to add a watch it says I need an account.
Two local devices connecting via Bluetooth need a goddamn online account! Uninstalled that shit immediately.
I don't regret the purchase, I like the watch and it works perfectly without any connection crap but boy is all this online nonsense annoying.
Apps require constant maintenance. If you just leave an app in Play Store or App Store and don’t touch it for a while, in couple of years it will be gone. Compliance requirements, obsolete APIs, forceful upgrades by the Apple/Google all see to that.
That means you need to keep the app project updated and all dependencies in reasonable form. It’s not outlandish if you are a big company but as someone who oversaw the development of platforms where you had apps dedicated to hardware - it definitely takes effort. I can understand why companies want to cut loose ends here.
they don't require constant maintenance. They are forced to receive constant maintenance. Ex if you don't release updates, you get delisted. But you wrote a calculator app. What updates and maintenance does it require that wasn't forced on you by google/apple by changing out the os from under you, or simply because they feel like it?
This is wrong. Yes, they require constant maintenance. But that maintenance is pretty limited in scope, if it is required even. All they have to do is to push some updates once or twice a year at max, and maybe update the usage of some APIs. It's not like these companies can't do it. In the grand scheme they wouldn't even notice it if one of their developers would do that.
It's that they just don't want to. They're greedy as hell, and they don't care about you.
Even if it would be too much work at one point, e.g. if Apple would finally update their Bluetooth stack more often then every 10 years, and the API completely changes. Why not just open source the whole app, or at least their interface so independent developers could develop something so not all of their products need to go into the waste? Because even in this hypothetical scenario, one thing holds true: They're greedy and they don't care about you.
I unironically look forward to the world where this is solved by unsupervised AI agents incrementally upgrade these apps to keep them evergreen...
...and the Lovecraftian gradual drift as incremental recursive hallucinations turn them into still... mostly working... strange little app-like-bundles of Something Weird.
I don't know why I have to take a selfie of myself to start my washing machine. I also don't know why it requires me to stare at it for 30 seconds afterward, or the machine shuts off. The face is my own, for the first 15 seconds or so, but then it's not. I've checked, it's a pixel perfect copy, it's not being slowly adjusted as I watch it, but for the rest of the day, the face I see in the mirror isn't my own, either.
My Lockly lock supports a complete offline setup, no phone required to register finger prints or setup PIN codes. I believe I can even turn off the BT completely if I so desire.
My house lock doesn't have an online mode. It has to be programmed by visiting physically, unlocking it, and then you have to stand there and touch it for a while in order to remove or activate a code. In other words, it only supports two features that a keyed lock doesn't:
1. a keyholder can't lose/forget the key
2. keys can be disabled without the expense of replacing the whole lock core
Since the purpose of a house lock is entirely a cultural/legal signal (you are allowed to come in / you do not have authority to come in) rather than security (if you are willing to damage the house, you can definitely enter), this is the perfect "smartness" for me.
It depends. According to the link this lock was supported for over ten years, and the landscape for this type of device was pretty Wild West back then. There are a lot of devices that never even got that much support.
Today, give me any HomeKit supported device and I’m satisfied it will work for as long as I need it to without some dodgy 3rd party app siphoning my data.
And let’s be honest, if you were buying fridges or washing machines based on WiFi features that’s on you. Locks and lights have legitimate uses for remote control and always have.
> And let’s be honest, if you were buying fridges or washing machines based on WiFi features that’s on you.
I don't understand what you mean by this? My clothes will smell really bad if I leave them in the washer wet. If the appliance has a leak, I need to be nearby to remediate. Thus its not safe for me to start the appliance before I leave for 8+ hours.
If I can remotely start my washing machine, just prior to me arriving home, I can move the clothes to the dryer.
Don't most washers and dryers have timed start like dishwashers do? I always remember mine having pictures like that but maybe that's just not a common thing
but why???? If i have already gotten off my ass to go throw the clothes in it and so I'm literally standing right next to it, in what universe won't I just press "start" and instead press a bunch of buttons to set up a timer?
If you want to run it overnight, or while you're at work, so it finishes as you arrive and doesn't leave the clean clothes in a clump for hours (or so it runs during cheaper power hours)
>and doesn't leave the clean clothes in a clump for hours
As opposed to having your clothes be in a wet clump for hours? Between the two choices I'd prefer it being dry, because I know at least there will be less microbial activity.
Remote start, and finish notifications, are genuinely useful things.
At the same time, I don't know if they're actually worth the downsides of needing to create an account, having hackable IoT things, installing an app per appliance brand (at least), etc vs, say, a timer and/or delay.
Ugh, I'm so incensed. This is the 2nd IOT product in my home getting bricked within 2 months.
This is one of the reasons I am working on an enclosure-compatible open-source version of the 2nd gen Nest thermostat over at https://sett.homes/ . It reuses the enclosure, encoder ring, display, and mounts of the Nest but replaces the "thinking" part with an open-source PCB that can interact with Home Assistant. Nest has been pretty-badly supported in Home Assistant for over a year anyway, missing important connected features.
I bet the same approach would work for the Kevo lock that I've got too...
As an owner of a few of those smart plugs I can attest they didn’t work properly when supported. You could get them paired in matter but they just fall off the network and never come back until you did a full reset.
I’m sure a few people didn’t have trouble but the Wemo support forum and Reddit were justifiably full of anger at the products.
The old ones are rock-solid. I use one to control an attic fan, which isn’t easy to get to, but it has never failed in three or four years of use. Another sits outside under the eaves, to control the hummingbird feeder heaters. Again, several years, always works.
The new ones, however, are unreliable garbage. I have no idea what they broke, but they were a waste of money. Same symptoms you report.
Meanwhile, there are countless century-old (or even more) dumb locks in regular use, and they will continue to function even when some apocalyptic event destroys all infrastructure.
If you don't have the physical key available to you outside your house, you failed to have a backup option for the inevitable failure of the electronics.
I definitely agree with the spirit of this, but I also know a lot of non technical people who aren't as paranoid about things like this as I am (we have a keypad lock, backup keys in mounted lockboxes along with a 9v battery to power the keypad if need be), and they just expect that paying for something fairly critical like a door lock means it will either work normally, or give an indication that stuff might go sideways soon ("low battery! Replace or be locked out", for example).
I suspect stories like "I left my house without my keys on the day they shut it down to go for a walk and couldn't get back into my home." Or "I somehow locked my keys in my car, including the backup house key. Luckily my backup car key is in the house." Only to realize the lock isn't working normally and there are 100 emails warning them about this in their "updates" tab.. buried under a mountain of spam.
There will definitely be people who wind up stuck with this, especially with such short notice, and it won't necessarily be because they didn't plan. Now I'm going to go double check my lockbox.
That means Zigbee and Zwave and use them with Home Assistant. There are many locks and devices which support either. There's a learning curve in the beginning, but once you set it up correctly not only you get privacy and control your own devices, you also get far more options for automations and useful or plain cool things in general.
This is fine for the HackerNews crowd, but most people aren’t going to have the skills and/or time to run a local setup, and it’s not unreasonable for them to want smart lock functionality.
If you buy a device that works over Zigbee or Zwave, a layperson doesn't need to have the skills to run a local setup because some third party can always come in and help with the integration (either some third party cloud solution or contractors who can come to your house and set up the local solution for you)
Exactly. Most of those IoT products will connect directly with Apple Homekit, Google Home, Smartthings, etc. without some other hub, app, cloud. Which makes it likely it can be kept working regardless of what that company does. You don't have to go full local setup to avoid the most proprietary IoT devices.
They try to sell you replacement product in the same announcement:
> To help make this transition easier, we’re offering our steepest discounts ever on trusted smart lock replacements, available exclusively to Kevo users.
Are the executives confused by IoT, and it doesn't register that they are remotely disabling a product that they (the brand they bought) already sold?
Or do they know what they're doing, but they think a judge will be confused by IoT?.
(If only there were a mnemonic that would help everyone remember that ASSA ABLOY is to be avoided...)
I'd recommend everyone who buys IoT devices first search if the device is jailbreak-able and/or guides exist that enable you to load homebrew software/control it with open source alternatives.
I have yet to have a single issue with any of my IoT devices because I always make sure I have an escape hatch when the manufacturer decides to pull the plug.
When I built my house I went full home automation. At the time I was telling my friends about how important it was not to have cloud dependancy, and how I was doing everything local.
I use KNX as the main backbone and Home Assistant for control.
And everything was local with the one exception of my Kevo door lock. At the time I built, there just wasn’t a perfect local only solution.
I hadn’t planned properly for a way to integrate a wired in solution into the joinary around the door due to the particular circumstances of where it was, so I needed something wireless, and nothing wireless was local only at the time.
What pisses me off is that it’s the one thing I compromised on, and it’s the one thing that bit me.
Now I have very little notice to find a replacement with the same features.
My house lock is probably the one place where I'm not prepared to compromise security with a DIY solution. Not talking about the software security (in fact open source solutions are probably more secure) but literally the hardware and build quality of any DIY work.
I think you'll find it not as comprising as you believe, and might be a fun project.
Since you'll likely be scrapping it in some fashion, might want to try disassembling it first to see what would need to be done.
If you are not handy with electronics, there is also a chance their will be some work around the 3rd party server at some point, as in the protocol and such being deciphered, or a custom firmware you can build and flash.
If you do get it working, it would make a great spare.
that's kind of funny though as any lock can be picked. if someone wants into your house, most of the time they will not enter the locked front door. they'll find a window in the back that is easier to open with whatever they find in your back yard. they might exit the front door on their way out though. also, most locks are easily picked by someone with practice
If memory serves, something like 2% of break ins use "lock picking" which includes shimming a sliding door, a very low skill attack. Criminals just don't use high skill attacks to burgle homes. Probably a combination of most crimes being opportunistic, most criminals doing them being low skilled themselves, and people like us not being rich enough to move into the level of being targeted by the minuscule percent of high skill burglars.
One of their digital lock designs had a rather cough Pleasing vulnerability. But other than that it's vendor lock-in (heh), and lack of availability in the US.
With most so called locksmiths being drillsmiths in the US, not being able to clone DD and dimple keys.
Puck one. Or maybe the OP is just bitter they can't pick it for their next "belt" after getting chuffed with themselves picking average american garbage.
Digital locks aside, this is more applicable to any lock you buy and rely on (substitute US with your local region):
> lack of availability in the US
I wouldn't go out of my way to find something like Schlage here, when Abloy (Assa Abloy) locks are available in abundance with locksmiths able to duplicate usually all the key variants.
No, there was a vending machine smart lock that if you hitachi'd it right it'd unlock.
And, I phrased it wrong: most people expect to be able to walk into lowes and clone a key. And while it seems assa has been on a buying spree since I last looked at them, I do not associate them with anything you'd be able to find at big box store. When I think assa abloy I think "you better have the key card or you're SOL."
As a European, most of the products mentioned in the linked article and this discussion are from brands I've never associated with Assa Abloy in the first place.
I honestly think mandatory local support for HomeKit standard is one of the best designs. I lost internet despite having power due to a city wide outage. Having HomeKit still work for smart lights and outlet + home assistant was awesome. Pretty much anything HomeKit supported will last “perpetually” for its smart features.
Europe petitioned for a Don't Kill Games initiative, while I support it whole heartily, this seems like something that is a bit more important and would fit right in with that movement.
> Pretty much anything HomeKit supported will last “perpetually” for its smart features.
How so, should Apple ever decide they'll remove it from tvOS/HomepodOS?
And frankly, having to use Homekit for automations (or using it at all) is - compared to Home Assistant - frustrating, especially given their more or less unlimited resources.
And don't even get me started on Siri - compared to what it was when it started on the iPhone 4s i don't feel it made like any progress, at all. Having updated to iOS 26 a few days ago - congratulations, Siri is now failing 100% to "turn off bedside lamp" which worked fine on 18.x and ever before.
No, i don't think Apple is going to keep Homekit's lights on (heh) indefinitely - and wouldn't bet the farm (or house) on it.
There really are too few business models available to build sustainable IoT solutions, apart from subscriptions (and only Security companies seem to have figured this out), pyramid schemes (letting your new users pay for maintaining the whole solution), or plain old planned obsolescence (with forced upgrades, like with Smartphones).
I'm not sure what models would work, apart from regulators stepping in and mandating x years of updates, like with the European regulations. Which basically comes down to #3.
Folks in corporate thought users would just love a garbage spyware app that reproduces functionality already available under the various home automation platforms - but with extra steps and pointless online requirements.
Then corporate finally realises that years of "user 000128571 locked door" log files are worth precisely f'all to advertisers.
Private equity will buy anything and everything even moderately profitable using LBOs, stick them with the loans, take out more loans to pay themselves, spin them off, and wind them down.
Basically no one is going to run a business for the sake of customers or brand goodwill because, in the real world, there are no regulations or motivations to do so because "everything is a scam" is the normalized deviancy.
Take even a boring other industry, say single phase motor start and run capacitors. In the US, 3 of the 4 major original manufacturers of said products are owned by private equity and manufacture under under an array of cannibalistic turtles that M&A'ed basically every manufacturer. The net result is increased prices and shorter product life.
Two of my largest clients are factories in Germany and Italy that make specialist screws. Been running profitable since the 50s by the families. That I like.
Aw man, I'm gonna be that guy who goes kind of off topic, but videos of runaway escalators definitely dispelled the "it can only become stairs" failure mode of escalators for me. Terrifying stuff.
Mitch Hedberg just died too soon after YouTube launched to see it himself.
In the best documented runaway escalator case I'm aware of -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident -- it was determined to be the result of criminally negligent maintenance practices that included the use of zip ties to keep an emergency brake mechanism from engaging.
There was a similar incident this summer at a subway station in Atlanta but there doesn't seem to be a clear root cause published yet. As in Rome, the trigger was too many people on the escalator, but the mechanism is supposed to cope with overload by stopping the escalator.
This reminds me of the recent funicular crash in Lisbon where the initial report said the brakes were applied after the cable disconnected but could not slow down the vehicle.
I find all these out of control scenarios terrifying (I suppose I am not alone in this).
I remember a year or two ago the FCC was here in the comments asking people about IoT and what we felt the issues were.
Sadly, I have no hope of anything to come out of that, not that the current admin really changed anything about that hope either.
This sort of shutdown should, immediately, with the full force of the law, mandate a release of a working version of the software and a working firmware update to switch it to that version of the software, that is licensed MIT or BSD, with full source code, that allows one to build the app themselves and keep using it as it was.
If you don't wanna keep rolling with it, fine, go ahead and move off of it. But this enshittified rug pull is infuriating and it cannot be allowed to continue this way. Absolute scummy behavior. Just fucking open source it, assholes.
Sort of surprising that the app is cloud based rather than Bluetooth. You would expect a Bluetooth lock to keep working even if the cloud infrastructure was offline. And if the locks are only wifi, doesn’t that mean they would go through batteries like crazy? How long can a battery powered smart lock stay online?
They’re Bluetooth based and worked offline, but like so many “cloud” products, the app required an account which it seems to use to provision the key material for Bluetooth. I’m assuming they’re shutting down the account servers - so depending on how long the app goes between logins (or if the key material expires or not), it may be possible to extend their use.
This would be a fun reverse engineering project, probably!
I never understood the smart lock. Some other connected appliances make sense - HVAC for example. But unlocking my door with a key is such a trivially easy, failure-proof thing to do, and every smart lock I've ever seen so riddled with failure modes, that it boggles my mind anyone would go through the cost and effort to install.
I've had a key break in a deadbolt lock before. I can go running without carrying keys. I can assign a temp code to my pet sitter/handyman/whoever without having to police up keys or worry about keys being copied. I know when and which code is used, in case of an incident (none so far). My partner has lost 3 mailbox keys and zero house keys (since there is no house key). My door auto locks, and forgetting to lock your door is one of the biggest security risks, since crimes of opportunity are so much more common than targeted crimes. I've given my neighbor access during an emergency while we were out of the country. I can pre unlock my door from my smart watch if my hands are going to be full. I absolutely think the cost and effort were worth it for me.
But, the obvious failure mode: you assume it locked automatically behind you, but how can you be guaranteed of this without checking? It seems to me at that point it's better to just lock it with a key, which guarantees it's locked.
I get a notification when the doors lock. I can also check the status of the lock in Home Assistant.
If for some reason the deadbolt jams, or the door was not actually locked, then I risk it for those few hours. It hasn't happened yet.
I have probably "manually" forgotten to lock my door more times than that. (e.g. Carrying items out to the car, I think I will go back for more, then I get distracted and leave instead.)
I like my auto lock feature, but I manually lock it as a habit and only rely on the auto lock as a backup in case I forget. I only have to touch the keypad to lock it and can hear it lock. Also, I can check remotely if it is locked (even though the lock can/does work completely without a need for a connection).
The only problem is that Apple Home, Siri, and all related frameworks and APIs barely work. (I also have my entire Home on Apple Home. They've done an awful job!)
I was really hoping Apple’s involvement in the matter/thread design would have pushed the local control and configurable by default into the mainstream. Sadly it seems like it got tossed along the way. I have a new Honeywell thermostat that supports Matter and supposedly local control. But as far as I can tell in order to get access to the QR code / pairing data for connecting it to a matter network in the first place, you have to set it up online and sign up for an account on their (terrible) app. Zigbee and Z-Wave it is then. And anything that is WiFi connected must run or be earlier flashable to esphome.
"ends support for smartphone enabled"...
If anyone thought for one second that any device which requires external "cloud" support would continue work beyond what is convenient/profitable for the provider then I have a wifi-only dishwasher to sell you. No, really - please buy it from me.
it's worse than that - those locks are bluetooth-based, so they don't care about the cloud.
What happened is that they are disabling the app, so it is no longer usable.
So many of the smart apps won't even launch without an Internet connection (i.e. connection to their cloud services), even if you just want to control local Bluetooth devices.
friend got a canon camera. you can install the canon app to use bluetooth/wifi to transfer the photos to the phone. At some point the app went from thre app allowing limited permissions to insert into camera roll, to full permissions to access all photos on the phone.
I hate that.
I recently bought a G-Shock watch, it can connect to your phone via Bluetooth, it was a selling point but may be convenient to sync the time with a quick connection.
First, the G-Shock app displayed a prompt that it won't work with animations turned off which is just baffling. I have them disabled in Android settings under accessibility options because I find them frivolous.
Then with the animations enabled the G-Shock app says that it's EOL since mid 2023, now CASIO WATCHES app is for everything.
Install CASIO WATCHES, doesn't complain about animations being disabled which is an improvement but then when I want to add a watch it says I need an account.
Two local devices connecting via Bluetooth need a goddamn online account! Uninstalled that shit immediately.
I don't regret the purchase, I like the watch and it works perfectly without any connection crap but boy is all this online nonsense annoying.
There is an open-source app ("Casio G-Shock Smart Sync") for syncing time with g-shock BLE watches.
Some of them are also compatible with Gadgetbridge (also OSS, but much richer in functionality).
Bought a garmin watch. You can use it entirely offline. It is a refreshing alternative to all other watches.
That said, they are putting some functions behind the garmin connect app, which is troubling.
Even worse is that they are pushing their subscription service now, Connect Plus…
Apps require constant maintenance. If you just leave an app in Play Store or App Store and don’t touch it for a while, in couple of years it will be gone. Compliance requirements, obsolete APIs, forceful upgrades by the Apple/Google all see to that.
That means you need to keep the app project updated and all dependencies in reasonable form. It’s not outlandish if you are a big company but as someone who oversaw the development of platforms where you had apps dedicated to hardware - it definitely takes effort. I can understand why companies want to cut loose ends here.
they don't require constant maintenance. They are forced to receive constant maintenance. Ex if you don't release updates, you get delisted. But you wrote a calculator app. What updates and maintenance does it require that wasn't forced on you by google/apple by changing out the os from under you, or simply because they feel like it?
This is wrong. Yes, they require constant maintenance. But that maintenance is pretty limited in scope, if it is required even. All they have to do is to push some updates once or twice a year at max, and maybe update the usage of some APIs. It's not like these companies can't do it. In the grand scheme they wouldn't even notice it if one of their developers would do that.
It's that they just don't want to. They're greedy as hell, and they don't care about you.
Even if it would be too much work at one point, e.g. if Apple would finally update their Bluetooth stack more often then every 10 years, and the API completely changes. Why not just open source the whole app, or at least their interface so independent developers could develop something so not all of their products need to go into the waste? Because even in this hypothetical scenario, one thing holds true: They're greedy and they don't care about you.
On the other hand, if someone searches "appname apk", they will be able to download it forever, and install it for another year (thanks google!).
I unironically look forward to the world where this is solved by unsupervised AI agents incrementally upgrade these apps to keep them evergreen...
...and the Lovecraftian gradual drift as incremental recursive hallucinations turn them into still... mostly working... strange little app-like-bundles of Something Weird.
I don't know why I have to take a selfie of myself to start my washing machine. I also don't know why it requires me to stare at it for 30 seconds afterward, or the machine shuts off. The face is my own, for the first 15 seconds or so, but then it's not. I've checked, it's a pixel perfect copy, it's not being slowly adjusted as I watch it, but for the rest of the day, the face I see in the mirror isn't my own, either.
But my laundry has never smelled so fresh.
This made my day. Thank you for this Lovecraftian horror!
just yet another example of dying companies could be heroes by releasing their code to the public
My Lockly lock supports a complete offline setup, no phone required to register finger prints or setup PIN codes. I believe I can even turn off the BT completely if I so desire.
It is just exactly smart enough for my liking.
My house lock doesn't have an online mode. It has to be programmed by visiting physically, unlocking it, and then you have to stand there and touch it for a while in order to remove or activate a code. In other words, it only supports two features that a keyed lock doesn't:
1. a keyholder can't lose/forget the key 2. keys can be disabled without the expense of replacing the whole lock core
Since the purpose of a house lock is entirely a cultural/legal signal (you are allowed to come in / you do not have authority to come in) rather than security (if you are willing to damage the house, you can definitely enter), this is the perfect "smartness" for me.
The lockly model I have is the same, no cloud features.
You can configure it using the keypad or using an app over BT, that is the primary difference between it and a completely self contained device.
It depends. According to the link this lock was supported for over ten years, and the landscape for this type of device was pretty Wild West back then. There are a lot of devices that never even got that much support.
Today, give me any HomeKit supported device and I’m satisfied it will work for as long as I need it to without some dodgy 3rd party app siphoning my data.
And let’s be honest, if you were buying fridges or washing machines based on WiFi features that’s on you. Locks and lights have legitimate uses for remote control and always have.
> And let’s be honest, if you were buying fridges or washing machines based on WiFi features that’s on you.
I don't understand what you mean by this? My clothes will smell really bad if I leave them in the washer wet. If the appliance has a leak, I need to be nearby to remediate. Thus its not safe for me to start the appliance before I leave for 8+ hours.
If I can remotely start my washing machine, just prior to me arriving home, I can move the clothes to the dryer.
Don't most washers and dryers have timed start like dishwashers do? I always remember mine having pictures like that but maybe that's just not a common thing
Delayed start is common for washers but not for clothes dryers (as you really don't want wet laundry just sitting there in the appliance for hours..)
Pretty common in dryers as well.
They turn over and blow cold air periodically to prevent them getting stinky.
but why???? If i have already gotten off my ass to go throw the clothes in it and so I'm literally standing right next to it, in what universe won't I just press "start" and instead press a bunch of buttons to set up a timer?
If you want to run it overnight, or while you're at work, so it finishes as you arrive and doesn't leave the clean clothes in a clump for hours (or so it runs during cheaper power hours)
>and doesn't leave the clean clothes in a clump for hours
As opposed to having your clothes be in a wet clump for hours? Between the two choices I'd prefer it being dry, because I know at least there will be less microbial activity.
In Japan, most regions have cheaper electricity at night, sometimes at up to 50-60% discounts. That might be a factor as well.
It’s not common to have separate units here though. Much easier to setup a wash/dry cycle timer.
They also sell combo units (mostly for small apartments), so you don't actually have to move the clothes to one from the other
Remote start, and finish notifications, are genuinely useful things.
At the same time, I don't know if they're actually worth the downsides of needing to create an account, having hackable IoT things, installing an app per appliance brand (at least), etc vs, say, a timer and/or delay.
Ugh, I'm so incensed. This is the 2nd IOT product in my home getting bricked within 2 months.
This is one of the reasons I am working on an enclosure-compatible open-source version of the 2nd gen Nest thermostat over at https://sett.homes/ . It reuses the enclosure, encoder ring, display, and mounts of the Nest but replaces the "thinking" part with an open-source PCB that can interact with Home Assistant. Nest has been pretty-badly supported in Home Assistant for over a year anyway, missing important connected features.
I bet the same approach would work for the Kevo lock that I've got too...
Honestly I found the "smart" parts of my nest to be pointless once I connected it to HA.
I have automations, sensors, and weather in HA.
I'm looking at moving to a zwave thermostat now. I wouldn't have gotten the nest but it was a (re)gift and I didn't want it to go to waste.
Now Google made it waste.
Thank you for keeping good stuff out of landfills!
Thank you for this. Our 2nd gen Nest is our pride and joy and Google has done nothing but trash it continually.
It's still the prettiest thermostat out there in my opinion, one of the reasons I wanted to save mine
> "After more than a decade of service .... users can no longer open/close or manage their door lock via the mobile app or web portal."
Wow, a whole ten years for a door lock.
Kind of like wemo's recent abandonment/EOL of their plugs... a big company like belkin can't keep an on/off switch working?
As an owner of a few of those smart plugs I can attest they didn’t work properly when supported. You could get them paired in matter but they just fall off the network and never come back until you did a full reset.
I’m sure a few people didn’t have trouble but the Wemo support forum and Reddit were justifiably full of anger at the products.
The old ones are rock-solid. I use one to control an attic fan, which isn’t easy to get to, but it has never failed in three or four years of use. Another sits outside under the eaves, to control the hummingbird feeder heaters. Again, several years, always works.
The new ones, however, are unreliable garbage. I have no idea what they broke, but they were a waste of money. Same symptoms you report.
The cost of keeping the outlets working was more than their calculated user dissatisfaction cost.
Meanwhile, there are countless century-old (or even more) dumb locks in regular use, and they will continue to function even when some apocalyptic event destroys all infrastructure.
At least with the wemo there is fairly decent 3rd-party support at this point...
They just couldn’t refrain from the self-congratulatory bullshit.
2 months notice is very short, especially considering some of these will have been deployed for a decade... A year or so would have been expected.
Some of these will have their owners on the other side of the world with no way to get back in time.
Keep this in mind next time you consider depending on Assa Abloy - bummer to see them lose their ways.
If you don't have the physical key available to you outside your house, you failed to have a backup option for the inevitable failure of the electronics.
I definitely agree with the spirit of this, but I also know a lot of non technical people who aren't as paranoid about things like this as I am (we have a keypad lock, backup keys in mounted lockboxes along with a 9v battery to power the keypad if need be), and they just expect that paying for something fairly critical like a door lock means it will either work normally, or give an indication that stuff might go sideways soon ("low battery! Replace or be locked out", for example).
I suspect stories like "I left my house without my keys on the day they shut it down to go for a walk and couldn't get back into my home." Or "I somehow locked my keys in my car, including the backup house key. Luckily my backup car key is in the house." Only to realize the lock isn't working normally and there are 100 emails warning them about this in their "updates" tab.. buried under a mountain of spam.
There will definitely be people who wind up stuck with this, especially with such short notice, and it won't necessarily be because they didn't plan. Now I'm going to go double check my lockbox.
Meh, nothing a drill with a decent bit won't fix
Unless you keep your drill inside.
Buy locally configurable stuff only.
That means Zigbee and Zwave and use them with Home Assistant. There are many locks and devices which support either. There's a learning curve in the beginning, but once you set it up correctly not only you get privacy and control your own devices, you also get far more options for automations and useful or plain cool things in general.
This is fine for the HackerNews crowd, but most people aren’t going to have the skills and/or time to run a local setup, and it’s not unreasonable for them to want smart lock functionality.
If you buy a device that works over Zigbee or Zwave, a layperson doesn't need to have the skills to run a local setup because some third party can always come in and help with the integration (either some third party cloud solution or contractors who can come to your house and set up the local solution for you)
Exactly. Most of those IoT products will connect directly with Apple Homekit, Google Home, Smartthings, etc. without some other hub, app, cloud. Which makes it likely it can be kept working regardless of what that company does. You don't have to go full local setup to avoid the most proprietary IoT devices.
They try to sell you replacement product in the same announcement:
> To help make this transition easier, we’re offering our steepest discounts ever on trusted smart lock replacements, available exclusively to Kevo users.
Are the executives confused by IoT, and it doesn't register that they are remotely disabling a product that they (the brand they bought) already sold?
Or do they know what they're doing, but they think a judge will be confused by IoT?.
(If only there were a mnemonic that would help everyone remember that ASSA ABLOY is to be avoided...)
I'd recommend everyone who buys IoT devices first search if the device is jailbreak-able and/or guides exist that enable you to load homebrew software/control it with open source alternatives.
I have yet to have a single issue with any of my IoT devices because I always make sure I have an escape hatch when the manufacturer decides to pull the plug.
Turns out that the “S” in “IoT” stands not only for “security” but also for “support”.
This annoys me greatly.
When I built my house I went full home automation. At the time I was telling my friends about how important it was not to have cloud dependancy, and how I was doing everything local.
I use KNX as the main backbone and Home Assistant for control.
And everything was local with the one exception of my Kevo door lock. At the time I built, there just wasn’t a perfect local only solution.
I hadn’t planned properly for a way to integrate a wired in solution into the joinary around the door due to the particular circumstances of where it was, so I needed something wireless, and nothing wireless was local only at the time.
What pisses me off is that it’s the one thing I compromised on, and it’s the one thing that bit me.
Now I have very little notice to find a replacement with the same features.
Maybe cut the wires from the current circuit board(s) and throw in a ESP32 with wifi and bluetooth and driver board for the servos.
My house lock is probably the one place where I'm not prepared to compromise security with a DIY solution. Not talking about the software security (in fact open source solutions are probably more secure) but literally the hardware and build quality of any DIY work.
I think you'll find it not as comprising as you believe, and might be a fun project.
Since you'll likely be scrapping it in some fashion, might want to try disassembling it first to see what would need to be done.
If you are not handy with electronics, there is also a chance their will be some work around the 3rd party server at some point, as in the protocol and such being deciphered, or a custom firmware you can build and flash.
If you do get it working, it would make a great spare.
that's kind of funny though as any lock can be picked. if someone wants into your house, most of the time they will not enter the locked front door. they'll find a window in the back that is easier to open with whatever they find in your back yard. they might exit the front door on their way out though. also, most locks are easily picked by someone with practice
If memory serves, something like 2% of break ins use "lock picking" which includes shimming a sliding door, a very low skill attack. Criminals just don't use high skill attacks to burgle homes. Probably a combination of most crimes being opportunistic, most criminals doing them being low skilled themselves, and people like us not being rich enough to move into the level of being targeted by the minuscule percent of high skill burglars.
And any glass windows are an entry point if they're willing to break the window.
Don’t buy anything from Assa Abloy, local or not.
As someone living in a country where Abloy locks are used everywhere, I’m interested to hear what’s wrong with them
One of their digital lock designs had a rather cough Pleasing vulnerability. But other than that it's vendor lock-in (heh), and lack of availability in the US.
With most so called locksmiths being drillsmiths in the US, not being able to clone DD and dimple keys.
Puck one. Or maybe the OP is just bitter they can't pick it for their next "belt" after getting chuffed with themselves picking average american garbage.
> One of their digital lock designs had a rather cough Pleasing vulnerability.
I'm assuming you're referring to the VingCard vulnerability from 2018? (https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43896360)
Digital locks aside, this is more applicable to any lock you buy and rely on (substitute US with your local region):
> lack of availability in the US
I wouldn't go out of my way to find something like Schlage here, when Abloy (Assa Abloy) locks are available in abundance with locksmiths able to duplicate usually all the key variants.
No, there was a vending machine smart lock that if you hitachi'd it right it'd unlock.
And, I phrased it wrong: most people expect to be able to walk into lowes and clone a key. And while it seems assa has been on a buying spree since I last looked at them, I do not associate them with anything you'd be able to find at big box store. When I think assa abloy I think "you better have the key card or you're SOL."
As a European, most of the products mentioned in the linked article and this discussion are from brands I've never associated with Assa Abloy in the first place.
My Schlage uses a numeric entry and has no connectivity whatsoever. I love everything about it.
Rather barefaced to squeeze in a sales pitch to an End-of-life notice. "Let us slap you again the future!"
Seems like the right time to switch to an offering that can't be so easily trashed.
Yeah, at first I thought they were going to provide a free replacement. But no, just asking for more money from the people they just pissed off.
I honestly think mandatory local support for HomeKit standard is one of the best designs. I lost internet despite having power due to a city wide outage. Having HomeKit still work for smart lights and outlet + home assistant was awesome. Pretty much anything HomeKit supported will last “perpetually” for its smart features.
Europe petitioned for a Don't Kill Games initiative, while I support it whole heartily, this seems like something that is a bit more important and would fit right in with that movement.
> Pretty much anything HomeKit supported will last “perpetually” for its smart features.
How so, should Apple ever decide they'll remove it from tvOS/HomepodOS?
And frankly, having to use Homekit for automations (or using it at all) is - compared to Home Assistant - frustrating, especially given their more or less unlimited resources.
And don't even get me started on Siri - compared to what it was when it started on the iPhone 4s i don't feel it made like any progress, at all. Having updated to iOS 26 a few days ago - congratulations, Siri is now failing 100% to "turn off bedside lamp" which worked fine on 18.x and ever before.
No, i don't think Apple is going to keep Homekit's lights on (heh) indefinitely - and wouldn't bet the farm (or house) on it.
Also Matter/Thread, which is effectively the successor to platform-specific protocols like Homekit for local-only stuff.
I worry about TP-Link bulbs and cameras. Some legislation is required.
Regulations aren't as bad.
> Some legislation is required
Is it not enough to simply let the people decide who they want to do business with? I'm genuinely curious.
Is the article itself not .... "genuinely" enough?
versusHow would a prospective buyer know that the company will shut their product service down?
Sometimes, it's a company that has done it before (e.g. Google). But not always.
There really are too few business models available to build sustainable IoT solutions, apart from subscriptions (and only Security companies seem to have figured this out), pyramid schemes (letting your new users pay for maintaining the whole solution), or plain old planned obsolescence (with forced upgrades, like with Smartphones).
I'm not sure what models would work, apart from regulators stepping in and mandating x years of updates, like with the European regulations. Which basically comes down to #3.
Folks in corporate thought users would just love a garbage spyware app that reproduces functionality already available under the various home automation platforms - but with extra steps and pointless online requirements.
Then corporate finally realises that years of "user 000128571 locked door" log files are worth precisely f'all to advertisers.
Don't buy connected stuff is a lesson people still need to learn
Connected stuff is fine, but who owns the connection matters.
Private equity will buy anything and everything even moderately profitable using LBOs, stick them with the loans, take out more loans to pay themselves, spin them off, and wind them down.
Basically no one is going to run a business for the sake of customers or brand goodwill because, in the real world, there are no regulations or motivations to do so because "everything is a scam" is the normalized deviancy.
Take even a boring other industry, say single phase motor start and run capacitors. In the US, 3 of the 4 major original manufacturers of said products are owned by private equity and manufacture under under an array of cannibalistic turtles that M&A'ed basically every manufacturer. The net result is increased prices and shorter product life.
Two of my largest clients are factories in Germany and Italy that make specialist screws. Been running profitable since the 50s by the families. That I like.
> stick them with the loans, take out more loans to pay themselves, spin them off, and wind them down
China would probably just imprison the people responsible for things like this
and rightly so
Not really, they shut it down and basically now it's just not a connected thing. "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs."
Aw man, I'm gonna be that guy who goes kind of off topic, but videos of runaway escalators definitely dispelled the "it can only become stairs" failure mode of escalators for me. Terrifying stuff.
Mitch Hedberg just died too soon after YouTube launched to see it himself.
In the best documented runaway escalator case I'm aware of -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident -- it was determined to be the result of criminally negligent maintenance practices that included the use of zip ties to keep an emergency brake mechanism from engaging.
There was a similar incident this summer at a subway station in Atlanta but there doesn't seem to be a clear root cause published yet. As in Rome, the trigger was too many people on the escalator, but the mechanism is supposed to cope with overload by stopping the escalator.
This reminds me of the recent funicular crash in Lisbon where the initial report said the brakes were applied after the cable disconnected but could not slow down the vehicle.
I find all these out of control scenarios terrifying (I suppose I am not alone in this).
I also watched that video but we pretend it's not possible for Mitch
I used to pretend it wasn't possible. I still do, but I used to too.
I remember a year or two ago the FCC was here in the comments asking people about IoT and what we felt the issues were.
Sadly, I have no hope of anything to come out of that, not that the current admin really changed anything about that hope either.
This sort of shutdown should, immediately, with the full force of the law, mandate a release of a working version of the software and a working firmware update to switch it to that version of the software, that is licensed MIT or BSD, with full source code, that allows one to build the app themselves and keep using it as it was.
If you don't wanna keep rolling with it, fine, go ahead and move off of it. But this enshittified rug pull is infuriating and it cannot be allowed to continue this way. Absolute scummy behavior. Just fucking open source it, assholes.
Internet of Bricks
Of shitty self-shitting bricks
Sort of surprising that the app is cloud based rather than Bluetooth. You would expect a Bluetooth lock to keep working even if the cloud infrastructure was offline. And if the locks are only wifi, doesn’t that mean they would go through batteries like crazy? How long can a battery powered smart lock stay online?
They’re Bluetooth based and worked offline, but like so many “cloud” products, the app required an account which it seems to use to provision the key material for Bluetooth. I’m assuming they’re shutting down the account servers - so depending on how long the app goes between logins (or if the key material expires or not), it may be possible to extend their use.
This would be a fun reverse engineering project, probably!
And lose the ability to data mine and show you ads while you try to get into your own home, fat chance…
From a quick look, these are still being sold new on Amazon (by third-party sellers)
I never understood the smart lock. Some other connected appliances make sense - HVAC for example. But unlocking my door with a key is such a trivially easy, failure-proof thing to do, and every smart lock I've ever seen so riddled with failure modes, that it boggles my mind anyone would go through the cost and effort to install.
I've had a key break in a deadbolt lock before. I can go running without carrying keys. I can assign a temp code to my pet sitter/handyman/whoever without having to police up keys or worry about keys being copied. I know when and which code is used, in case of an incident (none so far). My partner has lost 3 mailbox keys and zero house keys (since there is no house key). My door auto locks, and forgetting to lock your door is one of the biggest security risks, since crimes of opportunity are so much more common than targeted crimes. I've given my neighbor access during an emergency while we were out of the country. I can pre unlock my door from my smart watch if my hands are going to be full. I absolutely think the cost and effort were worth it for me.
Time to upgrade to "smart" partner
Tell that to the broken key stuck in my door that I have been too lazy to pry out.
I love walking up to my front door and having it automatically unlock when I’m carrying groceries.
It’s also really nice to just leave the house and have it lock automatically behind me.
But I didn’t fall for cloud bullshit. It’s purely local and z-wave.
But, the obvious failure mode: you assume it locked automatically behind you, but how can you be guaranteed of this without checking? It seems to me at that point it's better to just lock it with a key, which guarantees it's locked.
I get a notification when the doors lock. I can also check the status of the lock in Home Assistant.
If for some reason the deadbolt jams, or the door was not actually locked, then I risk it for those few hours. It hasn't happened yet.
I have probably "manually" forgotten to lock my door more times than that. (e.g. Carrying items out to the car, I think I will go back for more, then I get distracted and leave instead.)
I like my auto lock feature, but I manually lock it as a habit and only rely on the auto lock as a backup in case I forget. I only have to touch the keypad to lock it and can hear it lock. Also, I can check remotely if it is locked (even though the lock can/does work completely without a need for a connection).
AirBnB rentals are common (but annoying) applications for these.
"We're killing the product you bought! Here, buy another product from us!"
...And Lucy pulls the football once again.
Sorry for the convenience
lol "probably just use a key."
Sounds to obvious and reasonable.
buy stupid devices win stupid prizes
This is where proper Apple Home accessories shine. No need for apps to configure them or to use them.
The only problem is that Apple Home, Siri, and all related frameworks and APIs barely work. (I also have my entire Home on Apple Home. They've done an awful job!)
I was really hoping Apple’s involvement in the matter/thread design would have pushed the local control and configurable by default into the mainstream. Sadly it seems like it got tossed along the way. I have a new Honeywell thermostat that supports Matter and supposedly local control. But as far as I can tell in order to get access to the QR code / pairing data for connecting it to a matter network in the first place, you have to set it up online and sign up for an account on their (terrible) app. Zigbee and Z-Wave it is then. And anything that is WiFi connected must run or be earlier flashable to esphome.
At this point, I don't care if they connect all this stuff directly to the NSA if that's what it takes to get it to function properly.