More cloud services, please? - I have money to waste.

[larryllix]

Teken was right!

 

         ..... The sky is falling!

 

http://uk.businessinsider.com/googles-nest-closing-smart-home-company-revolv-bricking-devices-2016-4

[madcodger]

It's not the CLOUD that's bad - It's THIS COMPANY that is acting with disregard for its customers. The concept of centralized storage and processing can be a very good concept. But admittedly, it leaves you vulnerable to something like the mess of a company that Nest is becoming, inside a company that I now shy away from because their tendency to act in this way: Google.

 

Look at personal health record vaults as another example: Google lost interest and shut down their Google Health service, while Microsoft still operates its similar service. As another example, I have an original Kindle that still works great, many years after it was introduced (and with books and articles loaded via a form of the cloud - Amazon).

 

Saying that "cloud" services are ALL bad is an overstatement. Yes, there is a vulnerability, but there is also a risk of rapid obsolescence by using non-cloud devices. Perhaps the real story is that it pays to think about WHICH cloud provider you choose. Will I buy another Nest? Absolutely not. Does that mean the concept behind it is worthless? Again, absolutely not.

[paulbates]

I see both sides of it.  There are viable cloud services out there, and I'm certainly dependent on some of them. At the same time, when it comes to key devices that control a major function of the home, it definitely helps if there is a local API involved, so you don't get an unwelcome surprise.

 

We're still in a vulnerable stage where there are a lot of great new cloud based ideas out there, but not clear who will there in the long run.

[larryllix]

Agreed. It's not the cloud that is bad, it is just a wonderful and powerful  tool.

 

    Cloud enhancement?...definitely yes!

 

    Cloud dependence?... A fool and his money are easily parted. Don't be an enabler.

 

No wonder some of these high-tech gurus get so much money. They need it to be lead blindly into the darkness of inexperience.

 

 

A regular person learns from his/her mistakes.

A smart person learns from other's mistakes.

A fool never learns from anybody's mistakes.

[Teken]

As others have stated the concept of the so called cloud power is not really at fault here. Its the lack of common sense and application of such from those bent on using a solid idea for their personal gains.

 

We have all seen dozens of companies that have come to market with some random product / service.

 

Why?

 

Because its cheap, fast, and easily managed.

 

People and companies can do what ever they wish at anytime - this is about control, possibility of making quick cash, and ultimately to allow the vendor(s) the ability to drop anything that doesn't fit their current business model.

 

As others have noted it really doesn't matter who you are in the industry from (A)pple to Z. Business will modify, disable, remove, alter, or terminate these so called services at a drop of a hat.

 

The reality is the consumers have enabled these companies to do so by voting with their wallet. If all of the iSheep / Droid bums continue to support such a concept it will continue as such. The only saving grace are these random articles that make huge head lines for what ever reason even though the heart shaped turd they call the Revolv was a complete piece of junk.

 

Did I say its ugly as sin?

 

Even though the article doesn't state how many people actually own this piece of turd the number really don't matter in the big picture. As the main issue at hand is high lighting what a complete and utter fail it is to have a completely dependent product on the happy cloud.

 

With anything I state there must be balance and I freely admit (IF) a person is fully cognoscente of the pitfalls and limitations of going with a full on cloud hosted service for hardware. Then, its assumed they fully understand and realize at some point they may see their wares modified, limited, or terminated.

 

The problem is most of the companies either tout the strengths of the cloud vs its liabilities and limitations. The majority of the dumb are too stupid and lazy to take just 3 seconds to comprehend the over all impact on them. I lose no sleep to those like the Revolv users because again they were too stupid to fully understand the basic fundamentals.

 

The Insteon HUB in what ever flavor is another perfect example of such . . .

 

To know hundreds, thousands, of people all around the world are using and sitting on a ticking time bomb is in part scary yet funny as hell.

 

Why??

 

Because again - the majority of the people who bought this device have no concept of how it operates until they own it. Or see the limitations imposed by the hardware or when the cloud is sad and they see nothing works as expected.

 

If history is any indicator as it normally is - If you have huge companies from Apple, Google, Microsoft, name any company you can think of. What are the odds that Smarthome / Smartlabs will change, modify, terminate said service / hardware?

 

Smartlabs has consistently over the span of ten years in the Home Automation industry abandoned almost every piece of hardware in favor releasing a new controller.

 

This should make people take pause when considering another purchase for a controller from Insteon / Smartlabs. 

 

What is my biggest beef with Smartlabs with respect to their controllers? Absolutely no local access to do anything when the cloud is down!

 

There are actually people around the world that say its OK?!?!

 

The only reason its OK to the current generation of brick heads is because they have no concept of how things used to be or were! As we move forward each year the concept of owning something becomes less and less each and every day.

 

What the stupid are selling the even dumber fools in the world is the concept of temporary ownership.  

 

I would love to meet the person who first came out with such a concept. Shake his hand in acknowledgement of such a brilliant idea - then punch him in the throat!

 

The bottom line, we will continue to see more of these articles come to be. Because this generation of humans and the era of common sense has literally become the rarest element in the universe.

 

 

[larryllix]

<snipped>

 

People and companies can do what ever they wish at anytime - this is about control, possibility of making quick cash, and ultimately to allow the vendor(s) the ability to drop anything that doesn't fit their current business model.

 

As others have noted it really doesn't matter who you are in the industry from (A)pple to Z. Business will modify, disable, remove, alter, or terminate these so called services at a drop of a hat.

 

The reality is the consumers have enabled these companies to do so by voting with their wallet. If all of the iSheep / Droid bums continue to support such a concept it will continue as such. The only saving grace are these random articles that make huge head lines for what ever reason even though the heart shaped turd they call the Revolv was a complete piece of junk.

 

<snipped>

 

 

All well stated.

 

One of the largest problems these days is as I stated elsewhere....Dreamware.

They publish and stated nothing on the boxes, attempt to keep the potential purchasers in the dark and cause them to dream how cool th product might be. This gives the sell chain complete freedom to change, upgrade, downgrade, stagnate, or discontinue the product at any time.

 

In addition this Dreamware approach causes potential buyer to dream up features that don't even exist because we all want the latest and greatest and will imagine a feature to ease the wallet strain.

 

Much of these cloud crashes only hurt our time invested and it was a free service anyway. In this case people have invested money in a piece of hardware with a warranty.

 

I hear discussion on some forums, "What about people with a valid existing warranty?". I don't if such things can logically exist, by timing.

 

If these warranty owners exist my hope is a Class Actions suit evolves in a lesson teaching law suit to not only warn sheeple off but to teach these dreamware companies a lesson. The Dreamware technique has spread too far and wide for me.

 

Now if you will excuse me, I have $500, burning a hole in my pocket, to go buy another white, blank, box with only two words on the front...

 

                 "TRUST US"

[Javi]

Well written Teken,

 

I believe this is the reason we are all on the ISY.

 

But I think we need to be careful as well.  All of our devices will work without a cloud service but if the PLM is discontinued we can also be SOL, Some of us may be able to fix our PLM if it malfunctions but many of us can not or will not. I must admit the Echo feels like another device that will soon be gone from my home, It is a great idea but NEEDS to be able to parse voice locally and issue commands locally, and only go to the server if or when a local command is not matched.  I will use my phone for voice commands even if the Echo is in the same room as I know the phone will get it right the first time most of the time, and I feel like a dork (OK, a bigger dork) when using a stupid syntax to get "Alexa" to execute a command.

[larryllix]

Well written Teken,

 

I believe this is the reason we are all on the ISY.

 

But I think we need to be careful as well.  All of our devices will work without a cloud service but if the PLM is discontinued we can also be SOL, Some of us may be able to fix our PLM if it malfunctions but many of us can not or will not. I must admit the Echo feels like another device that will soon be gone from my home, It is a great idea but NEEDS to be able to parse voice locally and issue commands locally, and only go to the server if or when a local command is not matched.  I will use my phone for voice commands even if the Echo is in the same room as I know the phone will get it right the first time most of the time, and I feel like a dork (OK, a bigger dork) when using a stupid syntax to get "Alexa" to execute a command.

Somebody needs to hack the SmartyPants Hub so we can control it from ISY with a SuperNerdNode!

[paulbates]

Hub I and II support is possible. The interface for the Hub I & II that Houselinc uses is akin, if not identical to, serial IP. Mark Sandler has had Hub I & II support for his HomeSeer plug in. I used a Hub I with homeseer this way in 2012.

The Hub Pro is different and does not support this type of interface, probably to do with HomeKit's proprietary nature. But a path is open with Hub I and II.

 

Having said that I would find a way to keep with a serial PLM. The Hub I & II interface requires the Hub to be polled by the controller to get message from the Insteon network. Programs that are triggered by a switch / iolinc trigger are and feel a little slower. You have to have your IP network polling the hub every second, not a preferred behavior.

 

When the day comes that the PLM is discontinued, I'll either buy a number of PLMs, or have moved on to some other powerline solution.

 

Paul

[mwester]

Putting aside my own preferences and prejudices about cloud-based systems, I think the real issue -- as pointed out in the article but not quite so concisely -- is that the consumer is led to believe that they are purchasing the device, when in fact they are really "leasing" a software service that happens to come with an enabling chunk of hardware.

 

And to make it even worse, when you sign up for a service, or rent hardware, there are clear legal terms and conditions that spell out what to expect (from both parties)... the current "Cloud Scam" is that because these companies can get away with a model that looks like they're selling hardware and providing free services, they don't need any Terms of Service, and thus they're free to do anything at all, with no liability whatsoever.

 

Foolish foolish consumers.

 

Caveat Emptor!

[Teken]

Well written Teken,

 

I believe this is the reason we are all on the ISY.

 

But I think we need to be careful as well.  All of our devices will work without a cloud service but if the PLM is discontinued we can also be SOL, Some of us may be able to fix our PLM if it malfunctions but many of us can not or will not. I must admit the Echo feels like another device that will soon be gone from my home, It is a great idea but NEEDS to be able to parse voice locally and issue commands locally, and only go to the server if or when a local command is not matched.  I will use my phone for voice commands even if the Echo is in the same room as I know the phone will get it right the first time most of the time, and I feel like a dork (OK, a bigger dork) when using a stupid syntax to get "Alexa" to execute a command.

 

Agreed, on the Insteon 2413S PLM and this is part of the reason which I find really dumb on my part is having three back up units sitting on the shelf.

 

When I sit back and think about why I have almost $400.XX worth of product sitting on the shelf in hopes of keeping my down time to a limited period.

 

It really makes no sense from a financial stand point never mind practical use case. This is just a huge band aid and acceptance in knowing this single piece of hardware is made like glass. After more than ten years given all of the known engineering best practices and design.

 

The bottom line is this 2413S PLM is a complete and utter piece of junk . . .

 

Yet what are people like you and me to do while we wait for the mythical UDI PLM?!?!

 

With respect to the Amazon Echo I absolutely agree the device should be able to have on board memory and processing to allow 90% of its operation to be completed. Only (IF) there is something that is not known should it reach out to the cloud to complete its task.

 

Surprisingly this basic concept is rarely seen or used in any hardware that I know of. Its sad to accept the world is completely brain washed at this point and the steady move toward cloud hosted services will be the norm.

 

I know its not a popular thing to say but I really hope many more of these issues come to light. Sadly I suspect we will need to see someone die before the cloud hosted services get dialed back in some form.

 

I've never been a huge fan with respect to regulations on products / services. But in this case it might be time new laws be put into place to protect the consumer. At the very least it should be a huge neon warning sign like they do on cigarette packages.

 

If people are hell bent on smoking while they see photos of cancer mouth and know the facts of how this single product is made to entice you and ultimately kill you.

 

If they so choose to ignore these in your face facts - it is what it is . . .

 

This same in your face information needs to be made known to the end user when they purchase these cloud toys. If the people are too stupid to fully understand the consequences of such they deserve the same fate as the bum texting while walking across the road on a green light.

 

Oblivious to the MACK Truck having the right away going 60 MPH while only ten feet from said texting moron . . .

 

I always find it incredibly ironic to visit people who many would call less educated because they don't live in a big city. When compared to those so called less educated the disparity of common sense, understanding, and the ability to use critical thinking.

 

Seems most favored to go toward the guy who (IS) less educated?!?!?!

 

Funny how some of the smartest people in the world are the dumbest in many areas.

 

Ironic . . .

[larryllix]

<snipped>

 

Seems most favored to go toward the guy who (IS) less educated?!?!?!

 

Funny how some of the smartest people in the world are the dumbest in many areas.

 

Ironic . . .

I know a few that are OCD tech no matter what and a few that are highly educated and rich due in business ventures. It's definitely an OCD problem these days.

Just look at all the bent necks thumbpeckers that will live in moderate to severe pain later in life.

 

With you analogy, I always enjoyed the smoker's comments like "We didn't know that back then". I stated smoking when in 1958, and I knew it was bad fo me then.

[kohai]

This past week we left home on a Sunday afternoon and came back on a Friday.  Sunday evening I started to get email messages on my phone that my honeywell wifi thermostats were offline and my alarm system wasn't communicating to the internet (both have cloud services that were sending me these emails). 

 

I spent the week wondering why my internet was down.  When I got home I found out the city had a power outage that was long enough to go past my UPS batteries up time.  Somehow in the process of lower power, my router's file system got corrupted (yeah, still wondering what happened there).  When the power came back on, the router was in a non-bootable state.

 

To make things a bit more wonky, I was lazy and had my router's DHCP service assigning "static" IPs to my devices based on mac addresses.  So when the power came back on, these handful of devices no longer knew their IP and were now in a wonky state.

 

After reloading the OS on the router (and discovering my backup was out of date for these "static" IPs configs) I have really made a few devices have static ips and I'm thinking more about robustness of the network.

 

Oh, and to top that off, I came home to find a tub dripping water (more like a small steady stream).  Might have been doing that all week!  Made me think of the thread on here about detecting leaks.  Had to get a plumber to fix that one.