But I didn't buy it from Google, I bought it from Nest (pre-Google) - a company that designed and sold high-tech gear that was designed to be permanently installed and (presumably) last a good long time. The acquisition was not a good match, but it is what it is - lesson learned and reputations lost.
(and the design, honestly, was more down Apple's lane than Google's - I thought the former would be more likely to buy them out, not that it guaranteed any different results).
I think that's an overly optimistic take, because we've been through this over and over, and it's only getting worse. We collectively are clearly not getting the message, and we don't own anything as a result.
I am actually going to self-host and vibe code my own cloud service on Cloudflare.
On the other, it’s a freaking thermostat controller. An appliance. I don’t want to have to replace appliances before they break, and software breaking it is unacceptable.
I’ve been largely holding off on domotics because so much of it reeks of premature obsolescence... Maybe someone over here has good experience with Home Assistant et al?
I will probably buy a couple more of the RLC-810As, since I can only assume that newer models will be harder for the owner to actually own.
for a thermostat that's measured in decades
They've had 10+ years to plan ahead for this eventuality, and it's not rocket science.
ive considered connecting the interconnect wire to my esp32 (that replaced the security system) and get it pushed into home assistant, but without the ability to silence, a push notification that it is going off just didnt seem worth it
> $1200 in hardware, practically worthless.
Those things are really hard to control, and no scheduling, no remote control, no sensors, etc.
To a point anyway.
Therefore if some device trusts emudhra root certificate...
It's not a phone, so we're not necessarily expecting the lack-of-longevity we'd expect of a phone. (Although even a lot of phones are basically corp "can-you-upgrade-every-2-yr-or-more".)
I have a z-wave hub I bought about 8 years ago. Admittedly, it's shit, but it does one thing right — you only need the manufacturer's cloud services if you want to control it from outside of your LAN, or if you want integrations with other services.
Fortunately Nest owners got lucky this time and there was an escape hatch that allowed projects like No Longer Evil. But there's a long list of devices that have been bricked when their manufacturers shut down a proprietary backend.
Other major reason being that "IoT" devices usually have the shittiest WiFi radios that usually don't even support 5 GHz and almost never support WiFi 6/7 modes where they aren't wasting a ton of airtime on their low-bandwidth communication.
I have a pair of Govee ceiling lights that have a RGB+CCT primary downward facing light and an addressable RGB accent ring. The ARGB ring only exists in their app. As far as both their Matter support and their official API are concerned these units have a single element which is the downward light, the ARGB ring is not controllable from any third-party systems.
If these were using Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Matter over Thread they wouldn't be able to do this but because they use WiFi they can.
I'm going to be opening one up soonish to see how hard it'll be to just replace the controller with one running WLED (or even reprogram the controller already in it).
More dumb electronics please.