Logitech will brick its $100 Pop smart home buttons on October 15
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I'm sorry, that feature is not supported on this model. I have ordered you the latest model using the credit card on file.
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No. The real fix is a local server listening for multicast. You should not need the Internet to turn a light on or off in your home from your home.
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We shouldn’t force anybody to do anything like that.
But the government should make key and/or source escrow a condition for DMCA coverage, and release everything if the company drops the product or abuses their DMCA privileges. If you want to screw over your customers, our government shouldn’t help.
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Why they did away with cheap buttons enabling effortless ordering is still a puzzle to me. No instead of just clicking a button to order more TO from amazon I actually check to see if the local grocery is cheaper 1st. (and ditto for about a half dozen other items)
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There are stable, long-lasting options. Look at Zigbee and ZWave devices.
It's all these "connected" devices that get us in trouble. The only two connected devices in my smart home are my streaming clients and my Alexas. Everything else "smart" is entirely local.
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Reminder that newer isn't always better. My "dumb" apartment is going to keep working until something physically breaks lmaooo
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1) some Logitech mice have onboard memory and you can use their onboard memory manager software. It's extremely lightweight and no install needed. I know it works for the G604, g502.
2) if you want an alternate to stream deck software, bitfocus companion is open source and will run streamdecks perfectly.
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I don't think it's older versus newer it's their gaming mice are the ones with the onboard memory. (Because that way you can use them in tournaments that don't support installing software, I believe is the rationale). I just remember the onboard option not being available for some of their high-end office mice, but it was there for every gaming mouse I looked at. And if you're doing that use their onboard memory manager software rather than their g-hub or whatever.
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I saw some nanoleaf lights at a friend's houses. They looked great and I was considering buying some but exactly at that time they did something similar this article.
So... I didn't. And I've read they've done this more than once, rendering good products (almost) unusable, in order to force customers to buy a newer version.
So... I didn't. And I've read they've done this more than once, rendering good products (almost) unusable, in order to force customers to buy a newer version.
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Depends, Is the model to keep the customer happy or to just find the next product that you can get in front of customers faces quickly and profit from before you jump ship again, and rinse and repeat?
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I would love to see such an article!An Ars article on how to do this would be nice. I'm sure there are 17000 YouTube videos on this, but to have an expert curate for me what actually works for a beginner would be good.
I'm competent with PCs, but when trying to walk through the mountain ranges of networks / Linux / soldering or circuit boards I get badly lost in the foothills.
Statements like "All smart devices in my home are Matter over Thread, controlled by Home Assistant." assume that I have any idea on how to set any of those up. I'm sure I could learn, but I rather work on my photography.
It's not my expertise. I've never used Home Assistant. I am building a server right now, and I'm pretty deep down the rabbit hole of other specific features.
What I do know is it's never been easier to spin up a server though. Often it's as simple as writing a file to a USB stick and plugging it in as your boot drive.
And that's not even counting buying an off the shelf NAS that can serve as your server. Here's a guide I just looked up, can't vouch for it, but it serves I think as an example of what the steps look like:
https://mariushosting.com/how-to-install-home-assistant-on-your-ugreen-nas/
I don't think that looks hard for anyone remotely technical.
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When you buy into a proprietary device ecosystem which expressly does not support open firmware, this is what you get.
Maybe eventually people will learn.
Maybe eventually people will learn.
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You're looking for bulbs with the text "suitable for use in enclosed fixtures."
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This has been my experience too, running Philips 12V MR16 5W LEDs, vs Philips 50W halogen. I have halogens that are still running 16 years after purchasing the house, whereas every LED globe typically requires replacement after 12 months - both with similar duty cycles. The LEDs are considerably more expensive, and generate more e-waste.
I’ve starting logging their installation dates are returning them to the distributor if they don’t meet their claimed service life.
As for the smart home, Logitech’s position is disappointing, but not surprising and seems to be the norm.
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In theory that solves the problem. Less so in practice. Even bulbs rated for enclosed fixtures have problems in fixtures which are fully enclosed with a relatively small volume. Like the sort of fixture one finds outside on a porch or outside near a door into a house.
We have an old indoor light fixture which has what look like two little lamp shades hanging on chains, with the bulbs aimed down. They are open on the top and the bottom, but it is narrower at the top than the bottom. We went over to "enclosed fixture" bulbs for that because "regular" LED bulbs were not lasting long, they don't like being upside down and apparently there wasn't enough air flow for them through the narrow part. We also found one brand of dimmable LED bulb where if we installed a pair in that fixture only one would light up, even though either would work if the other was unscrewed. Somehow they interfered with each other when they were close together. Those two bulbs are now in different rooms.
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And that's why I will NEVER buy smarthome hardware that uses stupid cloud servers to function. Buying into those is just begging to get screwed over at some point. Just. dont. do. it!!
A dinky little computer in the metercloset that's running home assistant, that's all you will ever need.
A dinky little computer in the metercloset that's running home assistant, that's all you will ever need.
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Shitty smarthome devices are like anything else that's shitty. It's not the smarthome its just a bad proprietary implementation, not a downfall of an entire category of devices.
My ~~Philipps~~ Signify Hue Lightbulbs that adhere (mostly) to the zigbee Light Link standard are still in use. Nowadays with a home assistant.
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chaos215bar2
Ars Praefectus
Nope. I had a G903 mouse, I think. The one that worked with the wireless charging pad. You could configure everything, store it in the onboard memory, close the app, and it would remember everything. It was pretty much my ideal mouse.
A couple years later a button failed so I bought a replacement. Same model name, but there had been a silent revision to the product. The new mouse required different configuration software and had no onboard memory. I had to return it, because without the Logitech software actively running, it would revert to an obnoxious, bright rainbow effect on the lighting.
Maybe they fixed that eventually, but I'm using an MX Master 3 at work and it's the same thing. None of the configuration is stored on the mouse. It's completely default until the software launches. Even the scroll wheel auto-glide, which I hate, reverts back to on when the control software is not running. Configurable buttons do nothing.
The best part is, of course, the software also manages to break every few weeks and needs a manual relaunch.
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The original sin was to try to lock user in their private cloud nonsense. What is wrong with letting these buttons live their life within the local infra? You know, like a regular button.
I can see from here all thes powerpoints form executives, with the words "platform" and "ecosystem" in bold, next to graphs going higher and higher.
I can see from here all thes powerpoints form executives, with the words "platform" and "ecosystem" in bold, next to graphs going higher and higher.
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This has gone too far. What kind of dystipia is that? And nobody is trying to stop this?
The answer is not to force companies to make promise they cannot keep: you cannot force a company to not go bancrupt! (I feel this what the would try)
Rather, one must to force these device to work completely offline, or at the very least to allow users to run their own server, in the case they involve heavy computations that cannot run on device.
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How good are the 'professional' outfits about situations where you aren't the authorized channel partner solutions pal?
I ended up drifting into de-facto responsibility for some Crestron stuff at work; and it is probably the least flaky element of the system it is part of; but we all have to give thanks for that because if something does come up it's immediately a 'fuck you, talk to your Crestron-authorized solutions pal!" situation.
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Anecdotically, my old Ikea LED bulbs have lasted me more then 5 years so far (around 50% over their stated MBTF), with only one failure IIRC. Though they are all in well‑ventilated open fixtures, so the circuitry half is well cooled. Enclosed fixtures with the bulb circuitry recessed obviously cook LED bulbs in no time. So maybe blame your fixtures?
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I too have some Crestron, and Crestron makes good stuff. They also protect their channel, which is part of why they've been around forever and have partners to design, install, and support systems pretty much everywhere. Bosch, Siemens, Johnson, Honeywell (not the hardware-store stuff!), etc. work similarly. Like I said, it ain't cheap.
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Logitech's best products are their enterprise sales and marketing teams.
There's a dozen scrappy companies in the consumer space more deserving of your money for that accessory, and the enterprise space is simply overwhelmed by choice for AV gear. No need to pay through the nose for Logitech.
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Every time I use my Logitech Harmony remote, I wonder how long Logitech -- who dropped the Harmony line years ago -- will continue to run the servers that support it.
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Zigbee and Zwave with Home Assistant. Nobody can just suddenly take away your stuff, because you own it.
Stop buying Wifi enabled Smarthome stuff. Support companies making local-only products. I'm partial to Thirdreality smartplugs, they connect via Zigbee, and have built-in energy monitoring. So you can see how much power and energy your devices consume. My home theater set draws 30w at idle, so yeah... I turn off the smartplug to save some power.
And even if Thirdreality does not exist anymore, I'll still be able to use my smartplugs. It connects via home assistant with Zigbee. And fun fact, because Philips Hue also uses Zigbee, I can connect them directly to Home Assisant, bypassing the Hue Bridge. I got 2 Hue Smartplugs, which I swapped them to Home Assistant for the automation capabilities... even though Hue can also locally connect to Home Assistant.
All in all, don't buy cheap Wifi smarthome stuff. Zigbee and Zwave are the best.
Stop buying Wifi enabled Smarthome stuff. Support companies making local-only products. I'm partial to Thirdreality smartplugs, they connect via Zigbee, and have built-in energy monitoring. So you can see how much power and energy your devices consume. My home theater set draws 30w at idle, so yeah... I turn off the smartplug to save some power.
And even if Thirdreality does not exist anymore, I'll still be able to use my smartplugs. It connects via home assistant with Zigbee. And fun fact, because Philips Hue also uses Zigbee, I can connect them directly to Home Assisant, bypassing the Hue Bridge. I got 2 Hue Smartplugs, which I swapped them to Home Assistant for the automation capabilities... even though Hue can also locally connect to Home Assistant.
All in all, don't buy cheap Wifi smarthome stuff. Zigbee and Zwave are the best.
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Interesting. The open source support for the Squeezebox products is exactly what I was coming to offer as a contrast to the same company's smart home bullshit.
Logitech bought Slim Devices and had open-sourced their media server software for more than a decade (I want to say 20 years?) before the final shutdown. The open-sourced server transitioned to community support and has been living on as Lyrion post-shutdown.
https://lyrion.org/
(Formerly just known as Squeezebox Server then Logitech Music Server/LMS)
No reason they couldn't have done the same thing for their smart home products.
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I preemptively took my Harmony remotes out of service shortly after Logitech announced they were dropping the line. At that point it became only a matter of when, rather than if, they’d stop working, and I’d rather that be to my schedule than theirs. And honestly they were pretty finicky to set up and keep functioning anyway.
Now my only remote server dependent household devices are a pair of August electronic door locks. They work really well, but I’m pretty sure I’ll wake up one morning — not soon, I hope! — to read that their support is going EOL.
IMO what we need is an off the shelf server-in-a-brick able to handle Matter/Homekit/Thread etc. on a local network. Its form factor would be similar to an Apple TV, and it would run a lightweight OS with a user-friendly interface on low power ARM driven hardware. Honestly, Apple would be an ideal source for such a product, but I don’t see them showing any desire to get into this kind of market.
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I won't touch any more of Logitech's stuff. I have mice, keyboards, joysticks from the early/mid 2000s that still work. I still use their 5.1 speaker system from back then that still shakes the damn house and sound incredible, at least to me. (Audiophiles don't come for me...)
But around 2015-2020 somewhere, it all went to crap. I don't know if it was cheap components or what. I liked their stuff still, and would get the high end gear. The wireless mouse that charged from the mousepad, their cordless and even corded headsets. I liked them. They worked and felt good.
And they all broke. Again and again and again.
The left click on the mouse died after a year. Warranty replace, yay. Dead again in 6 months. Paid for another? Dead again. Multiple headsets, the power switches died again and again or the USB port died.
With Logitech, it's all e-waste anymore. Yet their stuff from before they cheaped out feels bulletproof.
But around 2015-2020 somewhere, it all went to crap. I don't know if it was cheap components or what. I liked their stuff still, and would get the high end gear. The wireless mouse that charged from the mousepad, their cordless and even corded headsets. I liked them. They worked and felt good.
And they all broke. Again and again and again.
The left click on the mouse died after a year. Warranty replace, yay. Dead again in 6 months. Paid for another? Dead again. Multiple headsets, the power switches died again and again or the USB port died.
With Logitech, it's all e-waste anymore. Yet their stuff from before they cheaped out feels bulletproof.
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For me, this is reminder # 1745 to avoid "smart" home products like the plague. The real enduring value is in "dumb" home products that Just Work over the decades. And in the unlikely event of a mechanical failure, replacements are inexpensive and readily available.
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"Sorry about our crap.
Here's a coupon
so you can get a crappy discount
on more of our crap.
Thank you for being a loyal customer."
Here's a coupon
so you can get a crappy discount
on more of our crap.
Thank you for being a loyal customer."
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Right with you. "Smart" homes seems like a solution looking for a problem. Well, I suppose it is a solution for the "problem" of "how can we make a lot of money selling unnecessary things".
Very tired of appliances and seemingly everything else just breaking within a couple years.
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It's reasons like these that, were I to ever own a home, would install dumb motion sensors in the hallway. With adjustable light switches elsewhere. After reading about fridge ads I checked on dumb fridges and saw the basic top freezer still selling for under $1k. Same with a washer and dryer. I don't see the need for more than the standard knob.
The older I get the more resistant I get to some tech. Electricity and the basic appliances since the 90s are fine. It's only computers and video games that really interest me for high tech in homes.
The older I get the more resistant I get to some tech. Electricity and the basic appliances since the 90s are fine. It's only computers and video games that really interest me for high tech in homes.
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I was talking to my wife about this the other day. I have a Philips LED bulb I bought back in 2011 for 17.95. The box said it could last 20+ years. I’m still using it today.
In the same vein, none of my Hue LED lights have died yet (knocks on skull) and I started using them in 2014 when I got a 3 pack for a birthday present. Up to about 20 bulbs now and none have died.
The LEDs I get from Home Cheapo or Blowes though? Those things last maybe 18 months if I’m lucky. I’d much rather spend more for bulbs that won’t die then to spend $10 on a 6 pack that’ll all be dead within 2 years.
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The point is that I don't need an alternative just so that the hardware functions on Windows.
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For both hardware AND software. You sell someone something and then a few years later pull out the rug and render the thing you sold unusable, that should come with a full refund. This practice of just bricking stuff is late stage enshitification.
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