Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old smart-home devices

Re:Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old sma... by ocdtrekkie on Monday April 04, 2016 @06:05PM (#11426118)

Yeah, unfortunately, there's a huge middle ground not being tackled. I use INSTEON devices, which are proprietary, but can only interface outside through my PC's serial adapter (or a cloud hub, which I obviously didn't buy). I want consumer-quality switches and such in my house, so this was the obvious choice.

But then the open source hardware stuff is almost entirely limited to 'build it yourself' boards. And sure, I could buy some Arduino and Raspberry Pi hardware (I actually have a lot of it lying around) and spend a bunch of time working on it, but then it wouldn't be a nice wall unit like my switches I have.

There's a huge open space here. It's a market just asking for someone to step in and make products.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old sma... by sokoloff on Monday April 04, 2016 @06:50PM (#11426373)

I have ALC (On-Q/Legrand) switches for the same reason. Hard-wired control, but reasonably nice (at least not clown) looking and operating switches in manual mode.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Google's Nest is disabling some of its customers' old sma... by ocdtrekkie on Monday April 04, 2016 @07:45PM (#11426688)

That's a key thing too that things like Wi-Fi lightbulbs and crud can't offer: Your light switch should still ALWAYS work like an ordinary light switch!

[ Parent | on HN ]