Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused
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Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar?
Examples: - Patagonia Worn Wear (https://wornwear.patagonia.com) - REI Used Gear (https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear) - Arc'teryx Rock Solid (https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com)
As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. Could they not recoup their costs and avoid e-waste by simply selling the used Sonos devices into a market that can't afford the brand new ones? I thought this is how most phone trade-in programs worked, which seems like a mature process now.
It’s more like Louis Vuitton getting into the secondhand market. They too would (and do) destroy merchandise rather than let it get sold at a discount and dilute the brand value.
That makes this even more puzzling.
* It was the CR100 Controller they updated to no longer be able to control devices it previously could.
The model for highly disposable luxury technology is Apple. Apple is also the model for refurbished goods. These things aren't mutually exclusive. You can tuck away a refurbished part of the site just out of the eyes of the majority just like Apple does.
Of course there are people who want a new model phone every year but that is their choice, certainly not something forced by the nature of the product.
Not that this makes their current actions ok, but at least they had been trying until now. I think they are now realizing that having a product that doesn't have built-in planned obsolescence may be hurting their profits
The company is not only run on a capitalist basis, it's the reason it exists in the first place.
But yeah, it's true they're more conscious and environmentally friendly than most. And I think they play an important role in pushing back against fast fashion, which is incredibly polluting and wasteful.
These are all things a regular entrepreneur would do whether they were capitalist or not.
Or any of _other peoples' money_ was involved.
Even when the only environment to operate in is recognized as overwhelmingly capitalist, a non-capitalist entrepreneur can still have some unfair advantages.
When you're selling all you can make for a profit long enough, you're supposed to be doing well depending only on business structure after that. Yes, you might have a disadvantage being surely influenced by the forces of capitalism, but it can often be done.
Also without growth as an articulated goal, the pressure of exponential demands can be appropriately moderated and more sustainable growth with better returns can still result compared to alternative leadership approaches which focus on growth most aggressively but still end up wishing they could do as well.
>If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, _This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing._
__Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
Patagonia certainly seems to exist in a world of private ownership, private investment decisions, and voluntary exchanges in a free market.
This story is at best lazy reporting with many facts left out or unresearched.
https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1179459927624036357?...
https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1198204183335309313?...
https://twitter.com/sonossupport/status/1196142002406133761?...
> Do you resell recycled devices?
> No.These devices are permanently deactivated and cannot be resold.
People's ears have not changed, and the ability to reproduce sound has been nearly perfected. If you're not too picky/audiophillic, like most people, the requirements are even lower.
We've hit peak audio (best reproduction, no restrictions on usage) and it's only downhill from here.
I look forward to my 2025 speakers that only work for an hour a day unless I pay for extra time credits.
"Do you wish to play a) music b) music and local radio c) music, local radio and podcasts [BEST VALUE]?"
Modern digital technology makes this so much easier and more. There are excellent digital power amps, where you have power amplification on one chip integrated with the DAC. Just looking at some of the features of a simple Homepod, there are exciting technologies involved, which could improve also higher end audio. First is driving the bass speaker in a feedback loop. In classical audio technology, you would have a power signal and have to rely on the speaker to transfer this into motion with as little as possible of distortion. Which required the speaker to behave like a perfect spring for different frequencies. So this is a very difficult task, making the speaker expensive and often imperfect. Homepods drive their bass speakers in a feedback loop, the desired position of the membrane is calculated and an electric circuit drives it into that position. It does no longer depend on the mechanical properties of the membrane, also allowing for much higher motion range than in a classical speaker. Also, the active monitoring of the room acoustics with several directional microphones is an improvement vs. classical set up amplifiers, even if they had a microphone input for set up.
So I don't see us hitting peak audio at all yet, that makes for exciting times for music lovers.
Distortion levels from speakers are still far from negligible-- by negligible I mean so low as to be extremely likely to be inaudible.
High power amplifiers are just now reaching a point where there are efficient amplifiers with negligible distortion; though they've been pretty good for a fairly long time.
There is a lot that can be done in terms of immersive spatial audio, unfortunately the trouble and cost of installing an array of speakers ... limits deployment. :)
There is also a lot that can be done to use DSP to ameliorate poor room acoustics, this stuff exists, but it isn't super widely deployed.
Nah, there are plenty of other things, like positional audio. I remember (through a pleasant haze of nostalgia) my old A3D-based sound card in the 90s as being even better than modern EAX stuff.
Potential improvement in that area can be both through simply adding speakers, and through tuning per-speaker output to forge better audio-cues. (To wit, Head Related Transfer Functions applied to headphones, possibly even with custom parameters for different peoples' heads.)
The response curve from speakers has also reflected that, a lot of them are bass boosted in the amplifier or are designed with a bass boost in them.
I have some fairly nice speakers from the 70's (a couple of different sets, one homebuilt), and Pink Floyd and Jefferson Airplane sound a lot better from them than Katy Perry or Tiesto.
If you want good speakers, you don't buy a device that's 50% streaming audio circuitry, you buy a same-priced speaker that's actually a good speaker.
If you look at the S/N and distortion specs on a new affordably priced receiver, they won't be meaningfully better than a mid-range unit from the late 70s/early 80s. All the new HDMI and 20.7 Dolby Surround does nothing for two-channel MP3s or CDs.
Because the performance is equal, it's allowed build quality to shine. 15kg of heatsinks, capacitors the size of Coke cans, and big old TO-3 transistors are probably going to outlast propriatery digital doodads and amp-on-a-module designs built to minimize costs.
I'm more of a JVC fanboy myself, but I've been working on a Kenwood KR-6200 recently. 45 years old and one dead bulb. Unacceptable!
I retired many computers in the 80's and 90's in perfect working order. None of them will power up today.
Nothing I've bought in the last 25 years sounds remotely as good as them.
And plugging in a Chromecast audio has given it immortality.
My current living room setup is a Chromecast Audio connected to an AVR via the optical out connection, which powers my speakers, but I'm curious if there's any alternatives. The eBay sellers are really starting to price-gouge, and I'm not naive enough to believe that my Chromecast Audio will last forever.
Btw, Snapcast works great.
Or use a Chromecast Ultra and connect to the hi-fi with a hdmi to audio (spdif, 3.5", ...) or hdmi to vga+audio (and don't bother connect the vga to anything)
A boutique outfit from Shenzhen makes that.
Yep. I picked up a massive old high-end Denon receiver with pre-amp inputs and use a cheap newer receiver to decode surround digital audio and pump it through that 40 pound beast. Sounds incredible.
Many will also support Bluetooth so you can stream to your stereo.
If you want to sell, give away, or otherwise let someone else reuse your Sonos, then DON'T PUT IT IN RECYCLE MODE. Easy peasy.
Recycle mode exists for when you intentionally want to get a Sonos trade-in credit for recycling your speakers for materials. But because you don't send the speakers directly to Sonos (instead to a local recycler), they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it. So the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that. Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
So if you want your speakers to be reused... don't take the credit!! Donate or sell them instead! It's your choice.
It seems to me like overall it's a good set of incentives. The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right? But doesn't prevent people from otherwise selling or donating them. Since it gives the consumer all the choice, this seems like a win for all sides, no?
First, the most environmental form of recycling is for an object to be reused as is. So, if any item is given to a recycling center, if the recycling center can just sell it directly to someone else, then it's much more environmentally friendly.
Second, the credit doesn't encourage people to recycle them at all instead of throwing it in the trash, there's no verification that they've given it to a recycling center. The only thing is that after the recycling mode is enable, the device becomes a useless paperweight.
So it's an extremely environmentally unfriendly policy from a company who pretends they care about the environment.
I think OP's analysis did cover that. You don't have to put it in the recycle mode. You can sell it yourself or choose not to get the credit so someone else can "Recycle" it by reusing it.
I do agree with you that people could still put in the trash, but I also think that's where good recycling programs matter. It shouldn't be hard to recycle an electronic. It should be as simple as recycling paper or glass, especially in an age where almost everything is electronic.
> but I also think that's where good recycling programs matter.
However good your recycling program is, it is still going to be _strictly more_ wasteful than simply reusing the device.
Anyway, what Sonos is incentivizing through their credit is to make people choose the option "recycle or trash". They have no incentive to make people choose one over the other. And as already mentioned elsewhere in the thread, many recycling centres won't take a completely bricked device, so I think it's pretty fair to say that in practice what Sonos is incentivizing is for people to first brick, then TRASH the device in exchange for these credits.
Either way, Sonos is actively dis-incentivizing the "re-use" option, which is the most environmentally friendly one.
And the only reason they do this is their profit.
Just a nit: it’s useful to think of reusing as distinct from recycling. Recycling breaks the object into its raw material.
Recycling effectively is the same as throwing them in the trash in this case. There is no need for this. Sonos could just as easily offer an upgrade discount to people who bought their gear originally but they are scared that this would affect their ability to sell to other people so they create what is called artificial scarcity.
And that should not happen with things that are still serviceable, especially not for a company that claims to have sustainability as their motto.
"To add insult to injury, there are complaints on Sonos' support forums from people who've managed to accidentally put their devices into recycling mode, and been told by Sonos support that there's no way to stop the countdown, forcing them to buy new devices after 21 days."
and
"From what our eBay guy can tell, the bricking isn't even in hardware; you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't."
Madness.
> you can't recover it if you're good with JTAG, because it's blacklisted as "recycled" on their servers. There's nothing stopping these things from working except Sonos says they can't.
These two points are not compatible with each other. If the only effect of recycle mode is that the device gets blacklisted on a Sonos server, then Sonos is trivially able to undo the effects.
You should of course be cautious about assuming a cursory look from a 3rd party is enough to know for certain how the device is bricked, but it's not abnormal or weird for a business like Sonos to use a half-baked technical strategy to brick their devices, and then to just stonewall anyone who calls into support.
Half of the time that a company says, "there's no way for us to do X", what they really mean is, "please go away now."
There is literally no way for them to verify that you didn't just throw your device in the landfill after enabling recycling mode and pocketing the cash. So this "functionality" does no good at all, other than to recruit the customer into their planned obsolescence program while praising the company for their "green" policy.
And it worked like a charm. Just look at how many people upvoted this comment, signifying their praise of the company for this terrible program!
It's a common marketing stunt and techniques with similar harmful effects were applied to other things as well, e.g., nicotine or prescription drug marketing. Public good is only a secondary objective in the american-style capitalism.
And to be clear, either keeping it or reselling it would be better for the environment than recycling the device. It's completely backwards to design an environmental program around making sure that people don't secretly do the right thing behind your back.
The fact that there are multiple highly-rated comments on HN looking at resellers and saying, "well, obviously they shouldn't get Sonos credits" shows how poor of a job our society is doing educating people about how reduce-reuse-recycle actually works. You don't have to check for people abusing the system. The people abusing the system are the environmental success stories. If a bunch of people participate in the trade-up program and then secretly resell their devices, that is a good thing that should be celebrated.
If anything, Sonos should be offering more credit to those people, not less.
The commonly used definition of recycling I've heard is the first one listed on the linked page: "to process (something, such as liquid body waste, glass, or cans) in order to regain material for human use."
That's why the phrase is "reduce, reuse, recycle", right? Yes, technically you could say reuse is a form of recycling, but we distinguish between reusing something outright, and breaking it down into component parts that can be partially recovered -- because we want to point out that the first option is better than the second.
A complete deception to sound green, with zero cost to Sonos with zero attempt to be green, and just causing a waste stream. Nice one Sonos.
As others have commented, the most environmentally friendly way to ‘recycle’ is to reuse.
The purpose of this recycle mode is not to encourage recycling, but to kill the second hand market.
The linked tweet says the recycled Sonos would have been worth $250 on the secondhand market if not recycled.
It's extremely doubtful that the recycle credit is intended to prevent a second-hand market, and far more likely accidental. It does seem like a trade-in credit would work better, but nothing prevents third parties from offering a trade-in credit above $100.
And it's not even a setting they put in to care about the environment, because they don't give a shit if you actually give the device to a recycler or not. So, my conclusion, it's some fucking douchebag manager's idea.
If they actually cared about the environment they'd take the old devices and use the parts for warranty repairs, and even have a refurb store (but noo, we sell fancy rich people toys, we can't tarnish our store with selling environmentally friendly but other people's discarded gadgets).
I wish Greta Thunberg would tweet about this, their sales would nosedive.
We absolutely understand what the intention of the button is.
I do not understand the actual sane incentive for anybody in this transaction.
How would Sonos be worse off if those machines weren't wasted? You get a sale either way; you reward a loyal customer for an upgrade either way. If it weren't a large company, I'd say they do it out of spite - but in reality, it's just the bizarre, surreal method large corporations end up with ridiculous policies through a set of seemingly logical steps.
>>they have to trust you're actually recycling it instead of keeping it or selling it
Why? What is the benefit to them (Sonos)? What is the harm if you DID keep it?
>>The credit helps encourage people to recycle them at all instead of just throwing them in the trash, right?
There's absolutely positively nothing about this mode / button that prevents people from throwing it in the trash. In fact, by any logic I can see, it does the opposite and encourages them to chuck it in the garbage - since it's now a worthless non-functioning brick.
>>the recycle lock is a clever mechanism to ensure that.
Let us please NOT call this travesty "Clever". At least not outside of SV tech-bro blinders culture :O. It does NOTHING to ensure recycling.
>>Otherwise you could "cheat" by getting the credit AND still using/selling your speakers.
Oh noes! Wait.. HOW would Sonos be at all worse off? How would ANYbody be impacted for the worse?
>>this seems like a win for all sides
Sonos didn't get anything out of it. Recycling company got less out of it. Earth got less out of it. And there's no reason I can understand why consumer has to go through that hoop to get an upgrade credit. Seems like a lose-lose for all sides.
----
I'm not going to downvote, because you made a lucid argument and downvotes are for those who do not contribute to conversation, not for disagreements. I'd say your post contributed a lot to conversation, seeing the number of comments:). But I fail to understand the argument you're trying to make and the framework / world outlook where it makes sense. I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise but need a lot more to even begin changing my mind :-/. Just because consumer "have choice", doesn't make one of the options automatically sane.
This is purposeful marketing misinformation. The goal here is to incentivize a naive customer, apparently including you, to make their devices non-reusable and to buy new devices. This has nothing to do with recycling, yet Sonos purposefully uses this word, because in this way they achieve their goal.
This isn't even a new technique. Unfortunately, it's widespread. Yet another example of greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
They literally get nothing, except to make their devices more rare by having old ones bricked. Which is WRONG, in this world of increasing waste.
Your idea that this somehow overall is a good set of incentives seems to be based on two things: One, that people would otherwise just throw them in the trash, which isn't true. Two, that it's somehow a good thing to give customers the choice to brick it for no other reason than Sonos credit.
This is purposeful marketing misinformation. The goal here is to incentivize a naive customer, apparently including you, to make their devices non-reusable and to buy new devices. This has nothing to do with recycling, yet Sonos purposefully uses this word, because in this way they achieve their goal.
This isn't even a new technique. Unfortunately, it's widespread. Yet another example of greenwashing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing
The second hand market is very good for the environment. By going after it, Sonos is actively hurting the environment.
That people have a choice doesn't exonerate Sonos. They are making it a lot easier for people to make the wrong choice.
Many things in this world is a win for both parties involved but still an awful thing to do (due to externalities).
Why?
First gen Ipods were a prime example, but now everybody seem to want to do the same.
We recently had a prospective client who had an idea of very cheap internet connected Ipod clone, who of course had a "genius business model" of jacking the price n-fold after sale under a threat of remote bricking.
I'm very glad we refused.
This is exactly what Cisco has done in the small/medium sized business market with their acquisition of Meraki. Pay forever or your router and wifi stops working. It's abhorrent.
The VM prebuilt with VStudio, Visual Studio Code, WSL w/ Ubuntu and other goodies in a prebuilt image is attractive and a time saver. But, it's immediately on a kill switch timer of about 3 months, if you download while new. Current image expires in Feb 2020.
I was using this to connect to work in a VPN in an effort to keep work and personal separate, but I'll have to burn a Win10 license key from my subscription for a new VM.
Caveat: the expiration doesnt render the image entirely worthless, but it will only stay up for around 90 mins before shutting down without warning.
Unfortunately, you can also make a profit by following the environmentally destructive route of making the user buy themselves a brand new device and bricking it when they don't keep paying the separate subscription.
:(
That’s absolutely not what’s happening here. I paid £169 for my Play:1 five years ago, and it’s still working as well as the day I bought it. I haven’t paid them a penny since.
This eco trade in may be a bit sketchy but absolutely no one’s device is being bricked without their consent.
i won't ever buy another sonos device (even the ikea speakers, which i like otherwise) because of that.
Eh what?
So, you were dead in the water without Itunes that kept the fairplay key for that particular player
FairPlay was never applied to MP3 (or, later, AAC) files you loaded onto the device yourself -- you could pull them back off the device with little difficulty.
I think it wasn't until later generations they made this more difficult.
With my latest MacBook Pro, I already know that there are no upgrades, the keyboard is almost broken, and that its lifetime is determined through policy. Question is; will it be the hardware or software which determines end of life?
They don't make it easy, but you can download older OSX images from apple's servers (Sierra, Yosemite, etc..) and install them with some effort.
Not impossible.
I don’t feel it’s fair to expect a vendor to actively develop major feature upgrades for a seven-year-old computer.
What keeps you from downloading and installing macOS High Sierra or Mojave on your 2012 hardware? Both versions still receive security updates, don’t they?
That's so 2019 :-P
Today it's "consumer as a product" -- you buy a product, they own YOU.
Imagine a virus that looks for Sonos devices on a network and bricks them all via "recycle mode"!
The API probably isn't even locked down. I think it's unauthenticated SOAP/UPnP.
An even dumber attack: guests with your wifi credentials can download the Sonos app and break your gear. It's entirely unauthenticated.
I have been a user since 2014, and I emphatically will not continue to be their customer once my existing devices bite the dust.
But then they started removing functionality from their app, and the Play 1s don’t even work with the iPhone anymore unless you have a streaming service or you set up a music service. The ability to just play music and then play it on your speakers is gone. And they don’t give a fuck. They are completely unapologetic and they just forget about their older speakers like a bad habit and that’s why I will never buy another one again.
And their app is getting worse, they are forcing logging in to monitor your usage, etc. It’s infuriating. Their technology was amazing 5 years ago but now it’s annoying.
Also don't buy soundbars. Speakers don't want to be long and skinny. You'll end up paying a lot more for a lot less sound.
Also consumer grade speakers are often more expensive for crappier sound. Look into professional models, like studio monitors. For example, JBL 305PMKII. You may be able to find a local store where you can listen to studio monitors before purchasing.
Wharfdale Diamonds are much changed and developed, but still a well thought of small bookshelf speaker, though the range now includes floor standing and 7.1 multimedia systems.
In short, look to the budget hifi makes rather than smart or tech gimmicks. Many of the Japanese brands make speakers for the home market, but use Wharfdale, Tannoy or one of the other Western makes selling systems here. The Denon compact system I bought 30 years ago came with a pair of Wharfdale Diamonds, with a Denon badge. Technics used to ship badged Tannoy speakers -- not sure if they still do. When I had to replace it a year or two ago, the comparable modern Denon compact system had no option for included speakers. Mine now uses those 30 year old Denon badged Diamonds.
[1] https://www.falconacoustics.co.uk/ls3-5a-full-bbc-specificat...
A few years ago I bought a TEAC amp[0] + speakers[1] , still very happy with both.
[0] https://www.teac-audio.eu/en/products/ai-301da-117088.html
[1] https://www.teac-audio.eu/en/products/ls-301-117096.html
https://jblpro.com/en-US/products/305p-mkii
I had the 305's one generation before (mk 1, vs mk 2) and they're the best sounding speakers I've yet owned.
Only had two of them (stereo, front left and right), with an old logitech 5.1 system making up the rest of a 7.1 system. Over time I was intending on replacing those logitech speakers with further 305's. :)
but “powered stereo speakers” are speakers with a built in amp. Most have analog inputs and Bluetooth (some even have turntable input). They can range in price up to almost 1000$.
I feel those analog inputs are important in making the device future proof.
Crutchfeild is a catalog seller but has good examples of this class of speaker:
Eg: https://www.crutchfield.com/S-wbA54LW1kow/g_463050/Powered-S...
How could it? It's all server side. If such a virus existed, they'd just undo all the 'recycling' after the day it started circulating.
Edit: I reread the thread and now I'm not so sure. It might be entirely software blacklisting.
But if that's the case, can't you ip blackhole Sonos' servers and still have it all work?
If your Sonos can access the API to mark a device as recycled, so can you. So if you can predict serial numbers or just bruteforce them (depending on how complex they are) you might be able to brick every single Sonos out there...
I highly doubt they assign unique keypairs etc. to every single device...
This would be an incredible public service. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to do it so I won't.
And otherwise it would just piss off Sonos owners?
I just don't understand why people keep buying such things...
Reading up on it, this was achieved only after a community outcry because in the prior firmware versions the switch would have to connect to the Netgear Cloud on every bootup.
Needless to say I would not have bought the swiches if I had knew I needed to register them to Netgear Cloud to have access to the full functionality specified in the data sheet. If I had bought them as a consumer, not as a business, I would have returned them immediately.
Netgear are now on our purchasing blacklist.
⓪ - the switches are Netgear GS-108Tv3
For example, I was looking for a device that would (1) be placeable on my living room furniture[1], and let me use a couple of trusty Monitor Audio speakers both (2) for playing music (e.g. from my phone, computer or streaming sources like Spotify) and (3) for TV audio, as those speakers sound much better than a modern soundbar. And that (4) could be expandable to surround sound in the future.
I painstakingly examined alternatives in the market. There were many devices that covered the three latter points but the overwhelming majority were AV receivers, which looked great from the audio and flexibility standpoint but were at least 30 cm deep. Not useful for me, as the furniture in my living room is 28 cm deep (wasn't the point of flat screen TVs to no longer need deep furniture taking lots of space in the living room?). I found like 5 or 6 devices that would physically fit. But most of them had no flexibility for surround expansion AND no WiFi, only Bluetooth playback.
Finally, only two devices ticked my boxes and physically fit: HEOS AVR (around €1000, 27.4 cm deep) and Sonos Amp (around €600, 21.69 cm deep) which wasn't even out yet.
Since 27.4 cm deep was still quite dubious for my 28-cm-deep furniture, I finally waited for the Sonos to come out and bought it. Sonos wasn't especially on my radar, as a relatively traditional audio amateur it's not a brand I trusted, but there they were, the only ones offering the product I wanted. And indeed, it works well, it powers my speakers nicely enough and it's very convenient. I'm watching the TV, want to stream something from Spotify: TV audio is automatically muted. I stop listening to Spotify: TV audio comes back.
Why no one else has made a device that can provide good TV audio and good music playback in a shallow form factor still escapes me. I don't think my requirements were so weird, in freaking 2018.
[1] Sorry, I'm missing the specific English word for the specific piece of furniture in the living room where one has a bunch of books, CDs, mixed souvenirs and the TV, so I'll just call it "the living room furniture".
This recycle mode stuff is terrible, though.
You can't really tell if the device can be remotely bricked (that easily) or unless someone's already been burned. I miss when companies would advertise their products as "cloud-enabled" so you knew exactly what to avoid.
Since we’re here, does someone have a good opensource alternative? Plug and play multi room audio streaming from Spotify et al?
But for the past year the system has been a mess. Music stutters, some units can't be found, some units fail to upgrade through multiple retries/reboots. I've wasted so many hours relocating them and connecting the misbehaving units to an ethernet cable trying to get them to update.
Eventually things get working again after hours of blind tinkering, but then a month or two later it happens again.
My wife looks to me as the tech guy to solve it, but it is far more opaque to debug then when PCs misbehave. Yes, I know about the secret diag menus and login, but they don't really help me.
The point is: my wife resents that the system doesn't work, and I resent that I've wasted so much time and my wife thinks I'm shirking because every time it comes up I groan and put off the pain of getting it working again.
I won't brick these -- I'll find some use case where they do work, but I'll get some other system to make my wife happy, even if it means spending another $1200+.
Also, I used wifiman on my android phone to sniff out other networks. Finally, I am lucky enough to live on 3.5 acres so there aren't any nearby wifi access points.
Anyway, another comment has pointed me to the apparent solution: the sonos bridge device apparently is not essential -- just connecting one of the speakers via a wired connection makes it the bridge for the sonos network.
I had no idea that the bridge was not necessary. I seem to recall that when I bought the first sonos unit I had to buy the bridge too.
Besides that fact, yeah it sounds like you have some wifi issues instead and is blaming Sonos.
I would have bought a Sonos instead of an Apple Homepod because I thought they were more "open". But if the manufacturer can just make my device useless, I'm not interested.
Audio and Hifi gear is extremely versatile and virtually everything is compatible. High end devices easily last for decades. This feature makes it clear that Sonos has no intention of following that tradition.
I had a complete sonos setup that I rage donated after moving and accidentally connecting it to the internet at which point sonos wouldn't let me play my music until I "upgraded" the software with alexa enabled. Forget about recycle mode, sonos is one of the most intrusive privacy invading companies that I know off and I'm so happy they're getting all this bad press, because when I went to their forums with my complaints the whole response there was "meh" and "how can you run with old software?".
Nope, it’s just iOS updates that brick HomePods.
There doesn't seem to be anything stopping users from selling their speakers on - they just forgo the Trade Up discount.
The poster's point that this cuts down on re-use of perfectly good products is true, but it doesn't seem that much different to other trade in programs, e.g. Apple's. The difference seems to be that Sonos leave the burden of actually recycling the product (or not) to the user, while Apple does it for you.
They basically give you discount to brick your old device as a way to kill off the secondary market.
For high brand value goods, generally no. Goods are crushed to become unserviceable. It's important to do that to maintain brand image, otherwise floods of not-very-old iPhones end up on ebay for $10, and the image of an iPhone as something that lasts and has resale value is shattered.
High end clothing manufacturers will even destroy brand new, never worn clothes to maintain brand image, because they don't want them sitting in the bargain bin looking 'cheap'.
It isn't as bad for the environment as it sounds - the vast majority of the costs in a $1000 iPhone are engineering, IP, licensing, manufacturing, capital and marketing costs. The actual metal and plastic is worth hardly anything, so destroying it isn't a big loss. Even the manufacturing cost is near zero because after launch day of a specific model, the marginal cost to produce one more phone is pretty much zero because production lines are rarely still at capacity.
Of course, the recyclability of the resulting shredded mixed mess is near zero.
This reminds me of a related situation I've seen with electric toothbrushes --- they have instructions on how to remove the battery "for recycling", which is deliberately designed to make the unit self-destruct in the process (by e.g. making the plastic thin and fragile, and the wires brittle and easily broken), but others have figured out how to use those same instructions to open it up and replace the cells at a fraction of the cost of a new unit. The fact that nothing needs to be broken to replace them, and that it could be trivially designed to make that job much easier, clearly demonstrates planned obolescence.
A lot of Bluetooth "beacons" are of such construction, and not so cheap at all medical devices will be coming second.
One of the many reasons I never bought anything from them.
Dunno, if the ID works like an activation key it might not recognize ids that don’t pass some sort of cryptographic signature check. Then you would need the private key to generate new valid ids.
May be they generate new tokens for every request and one set of the key is in hardware itself protected.
Such a waste of tech and resources to not let use the very things which they purchased.
Of course, high-end electric toothbrushes have rechargeable batteries inside of them, and maybe they have more capacity. But on that note, I think I've needed to replace my battery exactly once in the past year. These things don't take much power, that's one of the reasons it didn't feel worthwhile for me to upgrade to a higher-end more expensive model. And rechargeable electric toothbrushes get plugged into cradles -- they don't need enough capacity to run for days and days.
I am mildly skeptical that a non-waterproof electric toothbrush would be dangerous to anyone.
Edit: I just checked my toothbrush to make sure, the only waterproofing is a tiny, easily removable rubber ring where the battery case screws on. This doesn't seem to be something my manufacturer is worried about, which might make sense, because I don't put my toothbrush handle under the water when I brush my teeth; I hold it.
>"Never had a customer decide against Sonos because of that"
as long as customers don’t care neither will Sonos
[1] https://twitter.com/secresDoge/status/1210684264880189441
Which, given the constraints applied by Sonos, realistically just means "thrown into a crusher". Calling this recycling is a sham.
I built my own spotify receiver using an rpi with a hifiberry add on which worked perfectly. If someone built even simpler custom made Sonos play:5 boards I’d be less reluctant to buy more of them as I fear they may be expensive bricks if Sonos fails.
A lot of luxury goods brands destroy their unsold merchandise, and some even go Apple style after their second hand market too.
I don't really understand why Enron traders got convicted for energy market manipulation, while tech company executives intentionally scrapping usable parts and products get to live in luxury in silicon valley.
They encourage you to stick your used goods in the mail and take a store credit for them. They either clean and resell them, cut them up and repurpose them, or they out and out recycle them.
This also happens since probably forever with fruit and vegetables if they're unsold or in overproduction. The reason is to keep prices fixed by artificially reducing the offer.
I myself worked in refurbishment in the very beginning of my career. Even back in 2012 they were already quite militant with the refurbishing industry.
They blackmailed Alibaba into removing refurbished Apple goods from their store under a threat of pulling their goods from Tmall, and suing them in the US.
Iphone 4 started manufacturing using a non-sticky optical bonding gel for the glass, but later they switched to a hard epoxy out of a sudden in the middle of manufacturing run.
People noted that this was a very expensive solvent resistant epoxy that was very hard. They intentionally made it impossible to unbond the display without ruining it.
The post was lacking some context at first but from how I understand this, you can render your sonos device unusable voluntarily and in turn get a new sonos device for a little cheaper. This happens by marking the serial number of your device on the sonos servers as "recycled" making reactivation impossible.
And they're somehow marketing this "feature" as environmentally friendly because it somehow in some twisted sense means you recycle your old device for a new one.
I'm speechless.
Your comment also made me wonder whether there’s such a thing as green hat? It doesn’t seem like there’s much of an economic incentive for a hacking attempt but I’d imagine Sonos would take a very different approach to recycling if every active device was suddenly put into “recycle” mode and this program was in the headlines.
We recently read about Apple devices being bricked in the recycling process because of Find My, but that makes sense, because it’s a personal computer or phone where I intentionally store personal data. And I’d much rather err on the side of that data not getting out.
But seriously Sonos, this is dumb. To intentionally brick devices that could be perfectly functional for someone else is honestly bad for the planet and business.
Glad I’ve never bought a Sonos and now I never will.
This smells like some program cooked up by a hot shot MBA type that the executive team trusts to tweak the business because they don’t shut up about needing to focus on type of numbers investors care about. Never mind they don’t know the first thing about building a decent product. And to make it worse they’re probably actually convinced they’re helping the environment.
I adjusted to that by keeping bulb receipts. Then buying new ones to replace failing ones. Then coming 3 weeks later to get refund or credit for failed ones.
Putting pressure on retailers to stop carrying crappy products.
I know it's not exactly audio stuff but manufacturers engaging in misleading to the point of fraudulent practices need to be dealt with.
It may not be that hard to say that's its for:
- Preventing "counterfeiting" as in people salvaging their PCBs to put on "rogue" devices.
- Protecting their brand name as a "rogue" device may misrepresent what a proper sonos product actually is.
- Preventing misuse of the account that was registered on the device, hence protecting their customers personal data.
- Customers only use this mode when a product is not repairable.
That's the power of having a strong legal departement, pretty much anything can be argued even when everyone knows the real intent. When such things are done properly, it's really hard to prove the intent hence, the risk is pretty low of being fined anything.
If your device cannot boot you can’t put it into recycle mode.
This mode is designed for one thing only and that is to disable perfectly working devices.
IIRC the device also needs to be within its warranty period for you to use recycle mode.
I thought this was obvious.
I always thought they were just wireless speakers that I used locally on my own network...
Apparently, this process would have been 10x easier if they had switched on "OEM unlocking" in the Developer Options setting (which you can't do from the boot menu, recovery menu or via adb), which is off by default for a very stupid reason. We were successful in the end, but it was a LOT of hassle.
So, when you switch on "OEM unlocking", you get a warning that it's "for protection against thieves". Like, a thief would steal your phone and it's encrypted and locked, but because "OEM unlocking" is off they can't simply wipe it and reinstall to re-sell, or something. So to them it's a brick and therefore they wouldn't have stolen your phone I guess. Except if they spend some effort they can totally cleanly reinstall the thing, it just takes more steps.
Maybe I'm missing some part here about how this "OEM unlocking" option supposedly protects against theft, but for me it was a simple sum. Number of times my phone got stuck in a boot loop: 3, number of times my phone got stolen: 0. So I set that to unlocked, now I'll have an easier time if I ever mess up my phone again.
The only real reason I can think of is that they WANT your phone to stay bricked/bootlooped when it's bricked, and be unable to fix and repair it. It has nothing to do with theft, it's just a way to make sure the device stays disabled when it's disabled, and to make you buy another new phone.
Additionally, I got nothing but happy comments about LineageOS from my friend. You can really tell in the feel of the entire system the difference between what it means to be a user (normal software) or to be the product (like in Android or any of the Google/Facebook/Apple systems). Just by what options you're given and the fact that applications actually behave at your service instead of nagging you while you're trying to accomplish a task. I'm not really happy about how Android 9 is running on my moto-g6, so I think I'm gonna make that switch soon as well. You don't even need to root the phone to do this, but it's a choice (I think I'm going to root it though).
I eventually managed to track down the original owner and had them unlock the devices. If I hadn't, these phones would be ewaste.
What bothers me is the solution is simple, when a manual factory reset is done, have the phone ping google and start a 1 week countdown. Google can then email the original owner and ask if they have had their phone stolen. If they reply yes then the phone is locked. If they reply no or have no response then the phone unlocks.
I have a harmony that I bought in 2009-ish, and the provided "batteries included" exploded in the first few days of ownership and made a huge mess. I wrote them a complaint, and they sent me a new remote. When I activated the new one, the old one stopped taking updates.
Amusingly, there is an open source tool that can pull a config from one harmony and flash it to another. The replacement was actually slightly inferior (mushy keys), and so I'd program the replacement, back up the config, and restore it to the original.
Like if you think it's just spiritually bad to throw working things out, fine. But how is Sonos doing wrong by the customer?
"get a discount by making sure nobody could possibly get any use out of your old device even if it's still working fine"
Plus I don't think other vendors are trying to sell such discount programs as some form of recycling.
I found this idea an egregious waste as someone who maintains vehicles, often with serviceable used parts.
It just isn’t a very good product in my eyes. I have cheap Bluetooth speakers that work much better.
So I would be interested in “upcycling” the Sonos with new innards.
Time to watch some teardown videos to see what can be done.
Would love to see the folks at hackaday or somewhere else exploit the recycle mode hardware.
It has been game changing for me.
Yet another reason to never own anything "smart".
I wonder how difficult would it be to strip out the Sonos smart crap from these speakers and connect a Raspberry W to the preamp?
There are a number of people that would be more than happy and able to repurpose an old Sonus speaker that no longer operated as a Sonus speaker.
Literally we would tell the manufacturer to introduce it in specific places to tell us if it is usefull without remote control
1) Customer boxes up device.
2) Customer mails device to manufacturer.
3) Manufacturer hits it with a hammer, ensuring that they don't have to compete with their own used device after the customer has been given a credit for it.
So, instead, we have:
A) Customer starts bricking process.
B) Customer recycles device locally.
C) Local electronics recycler hits device with a hammer because it has self bricked, ensuring that the manufacturer doesn't have to compete with their own used device after the customer has been given a credit for it.
So we've removed disposable packaging and fuel for shipping. It seems like a net win for the environment.
They're going to do their trade in program. They can either do it the traditional way or do it this way, having a slightly lower adverse environmental impact. Leaving the device functional is not on the menu, and acting like it is is intentionally obtuse.
On the other hand: I'd rather like to get hold of a bricked Sonos.
I'd stick a Raspberry Pi, DAC and speaker amp inside it. Be free of the shackles of the cloud, my child!
Then the owner should have sold (given?) them as-is, rather than trying to double dip by telling Sonos they were going to recycle them for parts (for which they pay you $120) then not doing so.
"Recycling" does not inherently imply "for parts".
Consumer electronics are not generally recycled for parts at an industrial scale in the US. (maybe not anywhere?)
Most parts in devices you have are not serious candidates for part wise recycling: The cost to remove the part (much less test it) is greater than the cost to buy a new one... and it's often difficult to figure out what a part actually is.
About the only common part-reusable thing I encounter is 18650 cells from 'dead' laptop batteries. I have a whole drawer of them, scavenged from our old thinkpad batteries. Usually there is only one or two bad ones in the pack. All my flashlights are 18650 powered for this reason.
That's why if you search on the used market today, you'll still see equipment from companies like Aiwa/Sony from the 80s and 90s simply because these speakers can be re-used even now as you can connect anything to them before the pre-amplifier and they'll still reproduce your source (iPod/TV/Computer/whatever). I posses a 40 year old Aiwa system that still functions flawlessly today like brand new. This is also possible today because speakers themselves can last so much longer. More than 40 years as you can tell.
All companies like Sonos do is add just another layer before the pre-amplifier stage - which is to make the speaker "smart". This is usually all those wifi chips and bluetooth and Google assistant and what not. This is the proprietary part of their system. Normally, you are able to throw away this proprietary part and still use the speaker system. But, in pursuit of more sales, to reduce the lifespan of a perfectly fine speaker system to simply increase revenues is the most hardcore, cruel thing one can do.
Sonos' speakers are so bad that many models aren't even serviceable. Meaning, you can't open them like you could on those Aiwa's and Sony's and put them back together. Once taken apart, they're useless. They use tons of glue, proprietary shaped screws sometimes even wire the speakers in such a way that they'll damage the units if you try to take them off. They purposely do this so their speakers can't be used anymore without damaging the appearance.
That's why I will any day buy a mediocre music system from Sony or LG than buy trash like Sonos. First of all, I know the quality of components they use is not that great. They use ordinary stamped steel, sometimes plastic baskets for their driver units as opposed to high quality aluminium construction. Paper diaphragms too. Their units don't even have proper crossover circuitry in some models. And besides, the drivers they use are actually based off rebranded generic Chinese, just tweaked a bit. They're very good at fooling people pretending to be an audiophile company. In reality, they're not even half as close to the stuff from the 80's and 90's.
So, having ranted this, there's literally no reason to support such terrible ethics backed company simply for the sake of their profits. Fuck Sonos and get a Sony (or whatever else you like that doesn't do this). This is not just for the environment, but to set a full stop to such terrible practices. The audio land is already so full of snake oil already that the last thing we need is another snake oil sales man like Sonos.
Emerging, Rising: apologist arguments that equate compromise and degeneration of tools made out of a sense of personal cleverness, finding that one-use case where the trend might 'save the planet' or at least present it as such, winning the debate among like minds.