OpenSprinkler is free, weather based. Can practically do unlimited zones, as you can add zone control modules…
I purchased Skydrop because it specifically did NOT have a subscription fee. It was more expensive than others, and I presumed the cost of future cloud storage, yadda yadda yadda, was baked into the purchase.
It seems to me the we “early adopters” who helped make Skydrop a successful business should be grandfathered in, rather than changing the rules in the middle of the game.
Secondly, I did not receive an email notification of the change (not in my junk email, either). Was anyone else directly notified?
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Are you freaking kidding me Skydrop !! Seriously are you guys out of your minds. Who ever is the genius corporate exec that came up with this idea needs to be FIRED …one less customer and I am sure the feelings are common. Rachio is where I am headed and trash is where my unit goes. Corporate Greed doesn’t get anyone anywhere …case in point “BlackBerry”
I updated to paid service couple of months ago. Today morning it was raining and sprinkler was on and I went to the app to stop it and it says upgrade to Skydrop Plus. Better to move on to something else soon.
I’ve been looking into smart irrigation for a while before buying. I looked at Rainbird, Skydrop and Rachio. I eventually settled on the Netro system (netrohome.com) mainly because they have a rental scheme. The controller unit (12 zones) is about $180 to buy, or $30 annual rental with full replacement warranty. For me, the idea of spending $180 and getting 12 months of warranty seemed pointless if I can spend $30 a year and get unlimited warranty. Personally, I don’t care if I own it or they do, for 1/6 of the price it seemed like a no brainer. It doesn’t link with Smartthings, but theoretically, it sets its own schedules based on moisture levels and weather predictions, so in an ideal world I won’t need to touch it anyway. It’s not like I need the sprinklers to come on when the air con does. The plumber is connecting the pump this week so hopefully I’ll be up and running in a few days.
I’m not surprised Skydrop “drops” out of the market, following Green IQ last year.
It’s all in the economics: Skydrops (like Rachio), raised approx $13-$14 M to develop an IoT device. Sounds good to investors, who had hoped that they’ll turn into a successful story like Nest. However, the irrigation industry is a small market, and the irrigation controller is an appliance that is considered not that important to most consumers.
Skydrop makes the first mistake by making the hardware look like a Nest. Yes, you want your product to be sexy, but this is a device that is installed mostly out of sight. It’s a piece of art, but you don’t want to hang the Mona Lisa in your garage. Problem is, it costs a lot higher than any competing product, but they have to sell it at the competing price with everyone else.
And then, the cloud service business model. People don’t realize that cloud service costs money, but they want it for free. So, companies have to offer for free to compete. Problem is, if it costs you money, and you don’t collect money for it, it’s not a viable business model. Consider your old dumb Rainbird irrigation controller which most of us used to have. Let’s say it cost Rainbird $50 to build one, and they sell it for $100. The profit is $50, period. But for a could based controller, that profit depreciates every year, and if the controller lasts for 10-20 years like the Ranbird did, that profit will be a lot less than $50. Factor in the increasing cost of hiring engineers to maintain the cloud, provide customer support, it’ll be significantly less. That’s why the only viable model is the subscription model. This shall be true for all cloud base device. Otherwise, the company simply won’t be around. That’s why you see the terms is stated that they may pull it at any time.
Good luck finding someone to buy out, Skydrop. Rachio too. The investors dump money into these companies, in hope that they’ll end up like Nest or be purchased by Nest or at the very least, Rainbird. Problem is, Nest has problem of its own, and the Rainbird won’t even look at their direction because with a $14M investment, investors expect the company to be worth $100M. Rainbird isn’t even a $1B company, they can’t swallow it. The only chance is for someone else to swoop in and buy it at firesale price, much less than what the investors has put in. So you think you have bad luck by losing a few hundred bucks? Think of those poor investors who had lost millions.
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