Monitor-IO network gadget is going EOL, but in the best possible way
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
Upvote
178
(178
/
0)
IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
This product was not on my radar, but I'm now sad to see it fail given that the company appears to have a quality that is growing ever rarer in the tech industry: common decency.
Upvote
223
(223
/
0)
Seems like it was a well-engineered solution in search of a problem (anyone who would really need this could probably also quickly rig up some other way to get notified of network issues via existing resources/channels), but I applaud them for wrapping things up well before they go.
Upvote
78
(81
/
-3)
Its great to see them retire the product in a way that prevents it from being just dumped as e-waste, as well as continue to be useful to their owners.
Upvote
80
(80
/
0)
Cap'nAwesome
Ars Centurion
When reading about the demise of Dropcams the other day I kept thinking that companies that truly cared about their customers would release updated firmware that would allow users to disentangle their devices from the cloud services rather than just bricking them. Kudos to these guys for doing exactly that. Are you paying attention Google??
Upvote
139
(139
/
0)
I've been a happy Monitor-IO user for a few years now. I could have cobbled something together, but I liked the idea of a simple device that I just plugged in and forgot about. I've since built my own Grafana dashboards that give better data, but I still liked my little color-coded net status at a glance device.
Kudos to the Monitor-IO team for giving me the ability to keep the device going. I won't hold my breath for someone to create some fun alternate software for the device, but I like the idea that it may happen.
Edit: I just downloaded the files offered on the site, and they include a wiring guide PDF including board and LCD pinouts. Great stuff.
Kudos to the Monitor-IO team for giving me the ability to keep the device going. I won't hold my breath for someone to create some fun alternate software for the device, but I like the idea that it may happen.
Edit: I just downloaded the files offered on the site, and they include a wiring guide PDF including board and LCD pinouts. Great stuff.
Last edited:
Upvote
134
(134
/
0)
This should be the standard for all devices, not the exception.
Hey, Google, Western Digital and others, are you listening?
Hey, Google, Western Digital and others, are you listening?
Upvote
86
(86
/
0)
It is great that they are doing this for their customers, but I have to wonder why it wasn't designed this way to begin with. I can definitely see the value in Monitor-IO hosting a service that it would attempt to connect to test network connection and quality instead of depending on other third party services which might go away or block the device. Or better yet a broad network of endpoints hosted in different places. But why do the graphs and data presentation rely on an external service?
Upvote
11
(15
/
-4)
I bought Monitor-IO 4-5 years ago when I was having a load of - since resolved - network issues.
They were unresponsive a couple of years when I was trying to sort out a different issue, I guessed they were winding down at that point.
It's a very useful tool to have connected onto the network, it's a useful first point of call to help understand when an issue is purely an internal network hiccup or a problematic external break.
Thanks Ars for giving me the heads up on what's going on.
They were unresponsive a couple of years when I was trying to sort out a different issue, I guessed they were winding down at that point.
It's a very useful tool to have connected onto the network, it's a useful first point of call to help understand when an issue is purely an internal network hiccup or a problematic external break.
Thanks Ars for giving me the heads up on what's going on.
Upvote
24
(24
/
0)
Not sure who at the company made this decision, but I feel like I should pay attention because leaders who demonstrate this kind of responsible behavior when it's not required will continue to make good decisions in their future projects.
Upvote
58
(58
/
0)
Wow, this missed my radar in 2018. I would have found it super useful last year, there was something wonky with my ISP. I probably would not have paid $100 for something that just shoots out some pings for me and has a color coded display, but I would have thought about it. I've already thought about cobbling something together to turn on a light when the internet goes down as the wife and I work from home. In the meantime my music streaming is a pretty good canary for that. But still... knowing how much care they put into it and their customers to go so far as to give it this end of life support is something that if you had the ability to see the future would have made an impact when deciding to buy. Top marks folks. If they ever release another product I'll absolutely be thinking about this when looking at it.
Upvote
17
(17
/
0)
RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
If you don't control the sources of your assembly/product, you are proven to fail or go under. Just like now, its still hard to get a RaspberryPi4... all vendors I trust are "out of stock" unless a prohibitively expensive ($150-$200) kit. The point was a sub$50US board, and another $50US for power, storage, case, etc. Which I am wondering, what are the guts inside this Monitor-IO? Anyone have one opened? Or alternative that could be like a color status, emoji indicator with info scroll?
Upvote
10
(10
/
0)
They were, but then... SQUIRREL! and they forgot everything you said.
Upvote
11
(12
/
-1)
It didn't just change the color of the display. They collected the stats from the device and emailed you a regular summary that listed your outages and slowdowns in some pretty tables.
I bought one based on the 2018 Ars review and was very happy with its abilities (and angry at my ISP as I had no idea how often my internet service was dropping out when I wasn't actively using it). I haven't installed the new image yet, but I can connect directly to the originally device over my LAN and see in the current internet connection status.
Last edited:
Upvote
15
(15
/
0)
As problematic as Microsoft can be, they also retired their Harman Kardon Cortana speaker similarly to this company and that’s just great, it still works as a Bluetooth speaker.
Upvote
16
(16
/
0)
Upvote
11
(11
/
0)
IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
There's definitely a niche for it: small businesses with no in-house tech staff. If they have to call somebody like me in to diagnose the problem, it's going to cost them more for me to walk in the door (and I'm cheap compared to the competition because it's just a side gig) than one of those units would. It's a whole lot cheaper and easier to drop one of these boxes in place than setting up a Nagios monitor would be, and it's simpler for the onsite business people to read and interpret.
Upvote
22
(22
/
0)
I really wish that it would be a common upfront promise of IoT device makers (and especially crowdfunded ones) that if they were ever winding down, they'd hand over the reins to the user community. I would probably be willing to pay more for that sort of assurance, and it would definitely be a significant selling point when choosing between competing providers/ecosystems.
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
I fully agree, but the trouble is it's not hurting their business enough for them to care. If all the major players are doing the same thing, they'll just continue their bad behavior.
So far I've been addressing this by not buying IoT devices, but large companies won't notice that either.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
Totally agree it's a good way to go out, kudos to them!
A mini linux server doing this seems total overkill, though, just to periodically ping a remote IP and show the results... could do the same with an arduino/ethernet shield/LCD display (lots of examples on google in various forms/pieces). Or some esp32 module with a build-in LCD , running over wifi (which could then be left on a coffee table
)
A mini linux server doing this seems total overkill, though, just to periodically ping a remote IP and show the results... could do the same with an arduino/ethernet shield/LCD display (lots of examples on google in various forms/pieces). Or some esp32 module with a build-in LCD , running over wifi (which could then be left on a coffee table
)
Last edited:
Upvote
-2
(1
/
-3)
They didn't forget, they just couldn't care less. Some analyst probably crunched the numbers showing that they can provide better shareholder value in the long-run by bricking those devices versus providing them with a cloud-free option during discontinuation.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
This makes it sound like a passive occurrence. For big players, planned obsolescence is usually part of a corporate strategy to drive new sales. If all your old stuff stops working every 5 years, you have to buy new stuff every 5 years. Corporate economics 101.
Upvote
2
(4
/
-2)
Yeah. Super-easy. Get back to us when you have that firmware written and debugged.Totally agree it's a good way to go out, kudos to them!
A mini linux server doing this seems total overkill, though, just to periodically ping a remote IP and show the results... could do the same with an arduino/ethernet shield/LCD display (lots of examples on google in various forms/pieces). Or some esp32 module with a build-in LCD , running over wifi (which could then be left on a coffee table
Also. You wouldn't want to run a network monitoring device behind wifi. Kind of hard to figure out why wifi keeps going down if the device is unable to monitor what's happening on the network every time wifi goes down. It's a backbone device. Ideally, it would be plugged into the same physical switch as the router. Internal performance is monitored by pinging* wifi-connected and/or wired LAN devices while upstream performance is monitored by pinging* external hosts.
A mini-linux server running on a lower-powered MCU is honestly a great way to take advantage of a well maintained professional networking stack ... not to mention a full application framework. That's how Pi typically does it, but you'd be hard pressed to put together a Pi-based system to do this for $100 even before the supply-line issues ... hell, for that matter, you'd be hard pressed to put together an Arduino with all the needed bits to do this for $100.
(*in addition to ping tests, such devices can often test for http,smtp,etc responses to monitor service uptime as well).
Upvote
11
(11
/
0)
It's been almost four hours and there STILL isn't a custom RPI build yet. What is the internet coming to?
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
Right, this is the problem. If you're an ongoing concern, then it benefits you to brick old products and require updates. And of course, with everything becoming cloud-connected, we're going to iPhone-ify cars, washers, dryers, HVAC systems, TVs, etc. Stuff that used to last thirty years will last five because of software-implemented planned obsolescence.
And, if the company is going out of business, then why do any work at all? As one poster said, "common decency" but heh well---there's a reason that this story is newsworthy.
There's no fix here besides legislation. The incentives simply aren't aligned in any way that makes sense.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
Not only is this the Right Thing to do, it makes selling out any remaining inventory tremendously easier. Wonder if I could now find one at firesale pricing..
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
Well, the colored lights is one little reason for that to exist as a hardware device, in case you have a need to check whether your Internet is up when you're not working at your computer. Other than that it's just software that could run on any computer, so it's not surprising if there wasn't enough demand to make their business plan take off. Maybe they thought users would be more willing to pay for a tangible gadget than for a program to install on their computers?
Anyway, I agree that it's nice of them to shut down gracefully.
However, this is inaccurate:
Journalling filesystems have been the norm in Linux for many years. Perhaps this gadget used a simple non-journalling filesystem, but in that case the cause of its vulnerability to power outages was their choice of filesystem, not the fact that it ran Linux.
Upvote
-2
(1
/
-3)
SubWoofer2
Ars Tribunus Militum
Thanks Ars for having the Reader Comments button at the foot of the article (on this article).
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
If the gadget required a subscription, then the centralized service was the justification for the subscription fees that were meant to make the company profitable. Otherwise it's a mystery.
Upvote
-2
(1
/
-3)
It didn't require a subscription (at least when I bought one). The price included lifetime* data collection and generation of reports.
*Obviously now that it was the lifetime of the company.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
Oh, it was anything but. The key to this was the nuanced understanding of networking enlisted by the system along with clear color-coded feedback about the testing.
It used less data in a month than 30 SpeedTests, while providing 15m resolution. I used the measurements to prove problems to my cable Internet provider a dozen times since buying it. With the service refunds, the device paid for itself.
Also, the clear visual feedback was great. If I was on a video call that got glitchy, I could look over to see the screen color, and switch to a new device or ride out the jitters on the other side.
I had also trained my non-technical housemates to look at the device before calling me if I was out; a red screen meant the Internet was down and there was nothing I could do remotely.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
I have asked the owner repeatedly in support tickets for some point of community focus--a GitHub, Discord, or something. The response was "it's just a bash script and a binary to change the screen color". Which, yeah. But the bash script and the binary have no license attached to them that I can find.
I'm hoping someone out there can create a SPA that will read the accessible CSV files and provide a better view of the data. But in order to make that happen, "the Monitor-IO fan community" needs a focal point.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
The original device wasn't just doing ICMP/TCP pings. There were two sides to the UDP datagrams that were being sent and received, so both sides (especially the server) could analyze the data received, show differences between Eastern US and Western US latency, etc. I don't understand it all, but it was more than just the simple ping it is now.
Partly the above. And partly because the service provider can update the graphs and data presentation without having to push code to the device. And partly so the service could be configured to alert you via email or app if the Monitor-io device went off the Internet.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
I was sad when I got the email from Monitor-io about this. I bought the device based on the Ars article in 2018 and have been a VERY happy user all this time.
Also, I've asked but he doesn't seem willing to create a GitHub or anywhere else semi-official that a community can form. I'm sure there are people out there who will be willing to create similar devices for themselves out of RPis and other small boards. I'd love it if someone could create an SPA to provide some analysis and graphs out of the CSVs the final image creates.
One issue with this is that the owner has not provided an open source license for the components of the new image so we can't modify them.
Also, I've asked but he doesn't seem willing to create a GitHub or anywhere else semi-official that a community can form. I'm sure there are people out there who will be willing to create similar devices for themselves out of RPis and other small boards. I'd love it if someone could create an SPA to provide some analysis and graphs out of the CSVs the final image creates.
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)