Google will shut down Dropcam and Nest Secure in 2024
theverge.com
theverge.com
Does anyone willingly want to go ADT? Home of the three year contract, the long-winded-drawn-out cancellation processes, the constant door-knocking and chasing down to sign up for service, the constant glut of fees and charges when things go wrong...
I'm using nest secure now, anyone have any suggestions for a replacement?
At least they aren't killing my smoke alarms, though, they still can't automatically dispatch fire/police if there is smoke/fire, though they will dispatch if an alarm is triggered.
My favorite vendor is https://suretyhome.com/ - they have reasonable costs to get an alarm panel running with monitoring and all the normal integrations.
(I personally use an older Honeywell Vista security system that's been integrated into ADC via a communicator. The sky's the limit!)
Any other alarm.com gear is generally fair game as long as it's been released from any account it's on from any monitoring company.
As much as I don’t think it’s that great, Ring seems to be the best of the bunch now.
That is why you do not see as much activity in Security or Fire Alarms as you to other Home Automation, and most likely why Google went with ADT instead of rolling their own with Nest... Someone in legal look at that and said "Yea lets let ADT lawyers deal with that"
I don’t think it’s as big a legal minefield as you suggest. You just need the right integrations in place, and as you said, figure out the regulations (often at a county level). But it’d a solvable problem.
My guess is that this business is very sticky so it’s hard to get new people started… plus you’re making a lot of SKUs in hardware that you need to keep in inventory, software up to date, once you buy the hardware you don’t upgrade it, it’s not very sexy, etc.
That minefield is a 3 legged stool
1. Actual Legal Liability
2. Perceived Legal Liability
3. PR Liability around the law / legal system
#1 is probably not very big, however if you put a smoke alarm in someones home that does not work correctly or perceived to not work correctly and your a name like Google that the media loves to report on... well #2 and #3 become HUGE.
law suits will be filled, and even if you "win" in actual court, the court of public opinion will not be favorable
Note many alarm companies can still link to it one way or another; in fact I use the nest products with Ring via something that listens for its chirps.
You can also sell alarm service without fire, and vice versa. Or use a third party product whitelabeled, as many do with First smoke alarms.
If you look at their Nest Secure offering, it was always half baked. They didn’t have enough accessories to make a compelling line up. Rather than legal liability, it seems far more likely to be another half-in-half-out product that Google is infamous for rolling out and then killing a few years later.
And I'm one of the guilty ones. Well, the apartment I live at is. Its range hood is one of those things that even after putting in brand new filters and extensive cleaning barely performs better as one of those fake ones at Ikea.
Same with the bathroom fan. When you turn it on it's loud, but it just circulates air. So I open the door. But that sets of the smoke alarm in the hallway...
Either Buy DSC Wired Gear yourself[1] and install it (hard) or do a "less secure" wireless system using HomeAssistance and Zigbee or Zwave devices.
[1]https://www.level1techs.com/video/better-iot-dsc-alarms-whom...
It basically sits on the keypad bus of the system and emulates a normal keypad, so you can integrate it into whatever applications you want like HomeKit, or as my colleagues did, a fully homespun bespoke home automation suite in .NET.
It was hell, and in the end they made us sign a bunch of shit via docusign (!), and even then you're forced to pay for 30 days more service while they bombard you with scaremails.
Never again.
Fingers crossed...
I canceled ADT service about 15 years ago. For the next few years they were mailing open-air ads to my address asking me to reconnect the alarm system.
I managed to reach someone in their C-suite, who told me directly that they were unconcerned about that type of privacy data being made available to anyone who happened to read a literal postcard.
“Look everyone knows you no longer have an alarm, or alarm service”
Telcos, and cable companies will often private label existing solutions that are made for enterprise (B2E) and not really meant for B2C as well, let alone B2B (small business)
You would be better off finding something like Home Assistant and stumbling through connecting something together.
I've been using ADT for 26 years, and in my current home for 23. I have had no issues with them, and have found them responsive when alarms happen or equipment needed to be replaced.
OTOH, some pals have a Simplisafe setup and it's been a darkly hilarious saga of nonfunctional sensors, false alarms, and ongoing chicanery.
With this track record I never plan on using a new google product. Now, I will immediately stop using or sell anything I have that is acquired by google. It seems like they're only capable of leaving a trail of corpses of past good ideas.
This is the crux though. You could be totally satisfied with a non-Googly product, but suddenly become a Googly user when Googs buys the successful company. I feel this way about Amazon buying the Roomba company.
Very, very unlikely. The business model was an illusion.
I think the reason killedbygoogle.com actually exists is because they try to be professional about notifying folks of things they are EoL, and communicate updates along the way.
Ten years is okay.
I wound up going with a security package from my cable company (kind of crappy cameras, tbh), but I'm not thinking in terms of ownership at this level. In the end, it's just disappointing in general how much churn there is in the tech space.
Similarly, I'm not going to buy a fridge, or washing machine with a built in tablet, when they stop receiving updates in under a year usually. It's just really crappy as a race to the bottom. Either start with a rental/subscription model, or be prepared to maintain the product for a decade. Homes and cars aren't churned like phones.
Hopefully someone can figure out a way to do something similar for these devices.
The article kind of made the same point:
> Google previously committed to supporting Nest products for at least five years, and it did meet that standard. If you’ve been holding onto a Dropcam for more than a decade, it’s hard to argue that you didn’t get your money’s worth
Release a firmware update that updates the device to only point to ips/domains in the private range as it's new control/update/whatever server and update any security certs to a new releasable one.
Then open source the server software if not still in use, or roll back the firmware the x number of years to the point were the requirements to maintain the device started diverging and release that version of the updated old firmware/old server source.
There's no ongoing cost to the company and people can continue to use their devices if they wish to put in the effort to maintain it. I mean I'm not up in arms about this case, but it's such a common story about how device/software is no longer usable because finance wants to turn off a server that it should be SOP in every sunset plan. I'd go so far as saying it should be regulated as the minimum.
Also, normal companies would just sell off the tech to someone else or even just spin off a new company that would manage everything but again, no one would get promoted so it doesn't happen.
Hell, standard warranties on new homes are 10 years, and I’d wager if a developer built a bunch of houses that stopped working after ten years and a day, they’d lose badly in court.
Separately, is there any chance that folks here might be able to come up with something like Rebble to give these devices life into the future? I have a lot of sensors and hate to think this will go completely to waste!
UPDATE: If these will still run locally (like they can now when my wifi is down), then I'd probably buy a HomePod Mini and train it on the Nest's alarm sound for use with the Sound Detection feature. [1] I first heard of this feature at an Apple presentation at the CSUN Assistive Technology conference and thought it sounded really useful.
Although it wouldn't let me know what door/window was opened, it would at least send an alert to my phone so that I would know to look into things further.
1: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/01/18/homepod-sound-recogniti...
Wait, what does this mean? Does this mean my Nest thermostat has... another app I can use? I mean, the Nest app is a dumpster fire of deferred features. The only reason I know it's been touched in the past 9 years is because the app was updated to work full-screen on the iPhone X.
>Once you add your Google Nest thermostat to the Home or Nest app, you can easily control it even when you're not at home.
> The Nest Thermostat can only be controlled with the Home app.
> You can control the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Thermostat E with the Home app after you migrate your Nest Account to a Google Account.
> The Nest app also offers full control and settings for the Nest Learning Thermostat and Nest Thermostat E.
Unfortunately, it sounds like the scheduling is just as simplistic and featureless as the scheduling in the native Nest app. (Eg, manually set up each day, with basic copy+paste functionality (probably), no overrides, no ability to do anything different from week to week). So, I probably won't risk the migration.
God, G+ was bad though.
The "Circles" feature was a nice way to address that in theory, but the execution was really half-baked and the network effect didn't help them.
Mastadon seems interresting, but frankly I'd rather go back to IRC, and see some useful extensions to /whois details for better interconnectivity and profiles, but not so closed and walled garden as slack. Aside, I do still use irc for programming and bbs related stuff.
I miss IRC.