Comment by rwl4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rwl4 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I have been incredibly frustrated with how they acquired Dropcam and completely killed not only the soul of the company, but real features the existing devices already had.

The setup process for the Dropcam was absolutely magical. You plug a new one in, open the app and it would configure the camera via Bluetooth 4.0. You could then go back in and change WiFi settings by simply being near enough for the Bluetooth 4.0 connection.

Then Nest bought them, and completely removed that feature. They issued a firmware update that made it so now the camera that used to have this wonderful feature now requires me to plug it into my computer's USB and execute some janky app from a flash drive. Of course, if you buy one of their new devices, you a setup process somewhat similar to the original Dropcam. But existing customers are out of luck. In fact, the Dropcam Pro included a 1080P sensor but they did not enable it for various reasons. When Nest released their flavor of the camera, they enabled 1080P, but not for existing Dropcam Pro customers.

The DVR functionality is inferior too.

I wish I could get a refund. I personally feel like it is a bait and switch scenario. :(

I haven't setup any of the new Nest cameras, they REMOVED bluetooth? Completely non-sensical.

The new Nest app on the phone is just now, finally reaching feature parity years and years later and its still not fully there. The 1080p debacle is terrible as well, they also compress the hell out of video now, it feels far worse than when I first got my cameras years ago (presumably to save on the storage space I'm paying quite a bit for).

It's funny, you rarely know the moment a company goes off the rails but I know exactly when it happened for me, for Dropcam.

I was out to dinner a year or so ago and all of us who had Dropcams got emails from nest about needing to migrate to nest accounts, and found that:

A) our access to our camera's was completely cut-off B) the migration process was completely broken, at first we thought just on mobile but it still didn't work when I got back to a computer, it took a few DAYS before I could migrate my account and access my cameras again.

This was terrible, I was 1000 miles from home and unable to access any of my cameras, I completely lost faith in the company at that moment and I know all of my friends did too.

iirc there were some iot webcams with publicly hacked streams up on a website. either way, removing bt had to be security related.

that said, it is a core component, and basically the innovation/disruption if you even want to call it that, that the conpany was providing. i mean without a clean wireless interface, its basically a webcam/thermostat ect on a hone depot timer

> iirc there were some iot webcams with publicly hacked streams up on a website. either way, removing bt had to be security related.

You can't feasibly stream someone's IoT camera from their home via BT; any kind of hack like that happens over Wi-Fi or Ethernet connections.

You use the BT to get it to use YOUR (the attacker's) wifi.

At that range a malicious actor would be better served by attacking your actual wifi network.

Bluetooth LE for setup was not removed from the camera. Nest Cams and Dropcam Pro's can still be set up via Bluetooth LE via the Nest app.

Setting up cameras was removed from the (un-maintained) Dropcam App, to encourage users to migrate to the Nest app, which has more ongoing development.

The video on cameras is no more compressed than it ever was. I know it can feel worse, but nothing has changes there.

(source: I work at nest)

Whoa, this must be relatively recent. As recently as 6 months ago, the instructions on your website explicitly said that if you had a Dropcam you had to plug into USB. I desperately tried to find another option to no avail.

Can you point me to it? AFAIK, It's always been there.

There is a distinction between original Dropcam/Dropcam HD setup and Dropcam Pro setup -- may be part of the confusion? Dropcam Pro had BLE setup, previous versions did not and require USB setup.

You can still set up using Bluetooth LE from the Nest app. Your existing account can be used to log in to Nest App, and your cameras will be there. https://nest.com/support/article/FAQs-about-moving-from-the-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com