US courts have generally ruled that if there is a defined warranty period, that’s all the company has to cover.
As for “lifetime warranty,” that often comes down to the details. But more than one judge has decided that it’s not the lifetime of the person, it’s the expected lifetime of a similar product.
And some judges have allowed a company to declare a product line “dead” when the company discontinues it, which might be particularly relevant here.
We do have to note that warrantee law can vary from state to state.
All of which is to say “lifetime” rarely means “forever.”
It’s obvious from the questions posted on this forum almost daily, that many (and possibly most) customers are unaware that SmartThings is 100% cloud-dependent and will not function without connection to the Internet (with few minor exceptions which are not even worth considering).
It appears to me that Samsung/SmartThings intentionally obscures the fact that their hub is cloud-dependent. There’s no mention of this on the “How It Works” page, not even in a small print. It shows only three component of the system: the mobile App, the Hub, and the Devices and conveniently leaves out the most critical component, the Cloud, thus leaving impression that you can control all your devices just by connecting your smartphone to the hub.
If Google/Nest can get away with shutting down Revolv, so could Samsung/SmartThings. ST’s customer base is larger, for sure, so it would cause even more outcry in the media, but not impossible.
1 Like
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
67
Rumor is that Revolv is now offering refunds upon request. Regardless, I don’t think Nest or Alphabet is particularly worried about their reputation otherwise they would have been extra proactive with mitigation offers.
Either Samsung’s legal or strategic team is incompetent or they believe that the risk of shutdown or cost of repercussions is not worth the lost sales (??) that could result from more prominent warnings…?
Nobody thinks strategically anymore. It’s all about short-term goals now. Executives, who made a decision to acquire SmartThings in 2014 probably didn’t look further than a two-year term. Back then, Apple made a splash by announcing HomeKit and everyone jumped onto the IoT bandwagon, mostly to show their investors that they’re not “asleep at the wheel”. Google bought Nest, Samsung bought SmartThings. Market projections were madly optimistic (and mostly still are) and everyone was happy.
Now, two years later, not every one is certain that IoT is the “next big thing”. HomeKit didn’t take over the world, no new products came out of Nest in two years and SmartThings V2 turned out to be a flop. What I’m curious about though is where the heck is Samsung’s newly announced ST-enabled SmartTV? Well, looks like 2016 SmartTV are available on Samsung’s website, although I don’t see any mention of SmartThings in the specs.
P.S.
Correction. They do talk about SmartThings is the PDF version of the spec.
For better or worse, this move by Nest is at least getting some notice in the general media… Here’s hoping that this has gotten more notice than Google had hoped.
A somewhat related event. I had(*) a pair of ReplayTV’s. For those who don’t know, this was a TiVO-competitor around 2001. ReplayTV offered automatic commercial skip and unit-to-unit sharing of recorded shows over the Internet. These were great features ahead of their time, and they got sued out of business by Hollywood because of them. It didn’t matter that they eventually wont the lawsuits; by then too much effort had been wasted. It didn’t help that when they switched away from a proprietary OS they went to VXWorks, which had it’s own problems. They eventually got sold and then sold again and dwindled away.
Like TiVO, the unit depended upon getting TV guide updates over dialup (!) or the Internet. You could buy service monthly or buy a lifetime subscription for $300. Without the updates the unit becomes useless (not even the ability to manually record). But the promise was the service would be available for the lifetime of the units. Just like in this case; but what is “lifetime”?
Some time ago (2011) the current holder of the IP announced they would be shutting down the servers. There was a big outcry from the community and eventually they were convinced not to shut them down. The servers were running until last year when they finally filed for bankruptcy.
Although, a number of community enthusiasts worked to make available alternate servers. Doing so required reverse engineering the encryption keys used to lock down the traffic. Because of a mistake ReplayTV made in one of the early releases where they encrypted two files with the same “k” (salt) value, it became possible to compute what the key was. This was being done as the 2011 shutdown loomed in just a few days. At about the same time the community figured out the key, the IP holders officially released it (at the same time they announced not shutting down the servers).
Thus, alternate guide servers were made available and the boxes didn’t become bricks. I’d still be using mine if they were HD.
The thing is, they didn’t make the back-end code available; there were enough enthusiasts around to work on that. They just gave out the keys to allow anyone to talk to the boxes. If everyone would only do at least that when shutting down services.
(*) still have; in a pile of stuff to be recycled
2 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
72
I’d like to add a hypothetical scenario to this discussion:
What do you think would, and what do you think, realistically, should happen if the following occurred?
SmartThings decided to discontinue development of the mobile App that you happen to use the most (i.e., iOS, Android, or Windows Mobile), and the back-end platform changed enough so that eventually (after a month or two) the current version of the App failed to function anymore?
Does your answer change if you are within the one year warranty period of your Hub purchase?
Frankly, nuthin’. For the most part, we based the security, comfort, and convenience of our homes on a “kickstarter” project, OR, we chose a system from a brand with a long standing reputation of “we know some things are broken, but we’re not going to fix 'em… go pound sand, and thank you for being a Samsung customer.”
It’s cheap, infinitely customizable, guided by a company that has demonstrated they can’t tread water, let alone innovate, and owned by a parent with little regard to cutting bait and moving on to the next big thing.
2 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
74
This discussion has now spread to Quora, in case anyone wants other viewpoints or would like to join in:
Revolv was basically a little plastic enclosure with a bunch of different radios in it, and a hacked together app that would let you customize a few rules for basic use cases, but it never really worked and the products it was meant to control were constantly being tweaked to break compatibility.
This description fits SmartThings perfectly, don’t you think?
Back to Revolv - it was inevitable that all these product companies get religion and just start building all their products on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and that’s what’s starting to happen now
When HomeKit has small battery-powered motion sensors that can trigger the lights to come on. (It’s been “coming soon” for a while.)
It’s not impossible. There’ve been a lot of advances in this area just in the last year, mostly for battery powered security cameras, other than those tend to be a lot bigger than the motion sensors used in home automation. And there are a lot of ways to approach the problem: better batteries, better power usage, wireless power. But it’s not easy. And it’s not currently available.
I understand why you’d pick Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – – most homes are already using them in the US. And there are some good Wi-Fi motion sensors, dLink makes some nice ones, but those are plug-ins.
But if you categorize the essential home automation devices(based on market demand) as:
Light switches and dimmers
Pocket sockets
In line relays
Door locks
bp Contact sensors that can act as triggers
bp Motion sensors that can act as triggers
bp 3axis accelerometers that can act as triggers
bp Temperature sensors that can act as triggers
bp handheld remotes
Thermostats
Smart bulbs?
And optionally:
Doorbells that can act as triggers
bp Flood sensors that can act as triggers
Garage door control that can act as triggers
bp Lux sensors that can act as triggers
bp pressure sensors that can act as triggers
Smoke detectors that can act as triggers
Siren
Motion-activated cameras
Voice control (but rapidly moving into the “essential” category
However HomeKit, which uses only WiFi and Bluetooth, only has about 1/2 of the essentials so far. They want the rest of them, they’ve even released marketing materials showing them, there’s a clear demand–but two years in none have come to market.
Hardware is hard.
Solve the power problem, and HA companies will be happy to jump to WiFi and Bluetooth. Until then, they’ll supply what the market demands.
And more opinions flowing in the aftermath …This time Fast Company.
“So the first thing IoT companies need is a fundamental perspective shift.”
“We have an expectation for things in our home—water heaters, air conditioners, KitchenAid mixers—that we don’t have for our smartphones. We expect them to last. And yet Valley companies, with a fail-fast mentality, are building Internet of Things devices without thinking about long-term life spans.”
It may be few years away, but I believe that low-power WiFi is inevitable. Cramming all these protocols (Bluetooth, Zigbee, 6lowPAN, proprietary 2.4G) into already overcrowded and polluted by microwave ovens 2.4 GHz band is just plain stupid.
WiFi used to be expensive, now it’s dirt cheap. ESP8266 WiFi modules sell for $2 on eBay. That’s less than I paid for a basic Nordic 2.4 GHz transceiver a couple of years ago. In large quantities, these WiFi chips probably cost less than a buck. That’s way less than the price of any Zigbee chip on the market. Why even bother? Yes, power consumption is still an issue, but I bet this problem will be solved too within a year or two.
I definitely agree – – three years from now I think we will see low-power Wi-Fi or one of the other options (better batteries or power through the air). My point was just that I don’t think current home automation companies haven’t chosen Wi-Fi because, as the article implied, they’re just stuck in old ways. There’s no bandwagon to get on yet. If you want to sell home automation in 2016, Wi-Fi plus Bluetooth just isn’t quite ready for what the market is demanding. Maybe soon, I certainly hope so.
2 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
81
So… No more need for a mutli-radio hub; the home’s existing WiFi infrastructure (ie, router with access point) will cover it.
But where will the automation logic (intelligence) run? If anything, removing the requirement for a mutli-radio hub is even more justification for having the automation, rules and UI services run in the Clouds.
Sure…routers could easily have excess processing capacity and fill this need locally, but will they? Is this just a matter of needing to evolve a standard inter-device protocol that runs over WiFi (easy…) plus a standard rules processing & UI front end (hard… )?
That one’s easy, and it’s not the cloud. It’s a local phone or tablet on the same LAN. Probably a permanent control panel tablet, but optionally the phone in your pocket.
Both HomeKit and Weave envision this model. Apple TV is not presently a hub: it’s just a security gateway to allow for remote operation. It doesn’t store the rules. It could evolve into one, but my guess is the tablet is more practical as a UI.
Sure, you’ll need an always-on device to act as a controller. WiFi router looks like an obvious suspect, but there’re other options as well. I’d bet a set-top box like AppleTV or Amazon’s FireTV could well assume this role, or even better, Amazon Echo.
removing the requirement for a mutli-radio hub is even more justification for having the automation, rules and UI services run in the Clouds.
Quite possible. When all homes are wired with fiber and Internet connection is as reliable as running water, why not? In 3 to 5 years, perhaps.
What I’m hoping for, however, is a different type of Cloud than SmartThings or Wink, where everyone’s rules and events are pumped through one humongous database. I believe the next generation cloud-based service will be more like a “personal” cloud, where you just lease a virtual server to run your automation rules securely and isolated from everyone else. The cost of virtual servers is approaching the cost of electricity needed to run a local PC, so it makes perfect financial sense, as long as reliability is on par with the local server.
