Google announced the end of support for early Nest Thermostats in a support document earlier this year that largely flew under the radar. As of October 25, first and second generation units released in 2011 and 2012, respectively, will be unpaired and removed from the Google Nest or Google Home app.
Users will no longer be able to control their thermostats remotely via their smartphone, receive notifications, or change settings from a mobile device. End-of-support also disables third-party assistants and other cloud-based features including multi-device Eco mode and Nest Protect connectivity.
The biggest mistake I made in my home was installing $3k in Nest gear, right before they were purchased by Google and the forthcoming Homekit support was abandoned. I cannot wait to get my Ubiquiti camera drops wired so I can stop paying the whopping $20/mo for cloud storage that was $8/mo when I started.
Tl;dr: Fuck Google
Buy something based on open standards and you won’t need to worry about this.
Problem is, 99% of people don’t even know what open standards are.
It’s me. I have no fucking idea and the time to research it makes me quit before I start.
Couple that with the fact that asking questions from ignorance will most likely get two responses, both of which suck.
First, I’d probably get an info dump of terminology I don’t recognize and have to research each one before understanding what’s being said. That would take me back to my original stance of quitting before I started.
Secondly, I’d encounter loads of derisive assholes that scoff at my lack of knowledge.
EDIT: im one of the unlucky bastards targeted by this google fuckery. Obligatory link because fuck google. www.killedbygoogle.com
Someone should publish a guide or something similar.
Simply, check for cloud dependency; can you set it up without the thing’s app, without internet? Does it keep working when the internet is down?
Thread and matter can have “unique” implementations but it’s better than proprietary.
I can sum it up for you. You won’t go wrong with anything Zwave. Zigbee is also pretty good and cheaper. Matter is an up and coming standard so less fully formed but also good. Stick to those 3 and you should be good. There are some other niche ones like esp32 or KNX but generally those are more advanced or for specific use cases.
Man, thanks for trying to help. I really mean it, no snark.
This is me right now: “Hey Siri, what are Zigbee, Zwave, Matter, esp32 and KNX?”
Matter is more of a higher level IoT coordination protocol.
Zigbee and Zwave are radio protocols (relatively long range, low energy).
The neat thing here is you can bridge a lot of shit into Matter, and then use almost anything you want to control all the different devices. Everything becomes visible in the same control panel regardless of connection type and manufacturer. Everything becomes available for automation tools too!
If you run the software Home Assistant on a computer at home then it can act as your IoT control server, and giving it radio antennas for Zwave and Zigbee will let it act as a bridge to relay commands to devices that use those protocols (like a ton of small lights and sensors and more).
nah, just keep pumping into those corpos. one day they’ll stop abusing consumers, they “promise”.