This is unfortunate. I have their alarm and find it quite useful. It's nice being woken up at a decent time in my sleep cycle rather than having to hit the snooze button so often because I was woken from a deep sleep. Are there any alternatives?
I'm probably hoping too much if I want them to give me a way to root my Sense as well as an open source version of their server software I can run and point my Sense to.
Not the GP -- I've been using Sleep Cycle for exactly 852 nights. It was of immense help developing sleep hygiene. Now I'm waking up before the alarm, which I believe might make more sense if your take an evolutionary perspective. I'm still using the app, as I've wondered if I could do something interesting with this data.
It's unfortunate that Hello are shutting down. I was thinking into buying Sense for my bedroom, despite that I'm using different app, mostly because the aesthetics.
Aren't you afraid of radiation at all? I've used this app for a few months, but actually stopped because I didn't like having the device so close to my head for such a long period of time.
This is a bit of a blow - I love my sense, both for the insights into my sleep pattern, but also for the alarm. It's also nicely designed and unobtrusive on my bedside table.
I'm with you on hoping that they open it up to allow for a private server. If that happened then I'd be tempted to write a new iPhone app for it, it won't be long before the existing app will need updating to work with new iOS versions (Although it seems to work fine with 11). That being said, I'm not incredibly optimistic of a release of either a rooted firmware or protocol spec. It's a shame, it had real potential, it makes me wonder if it failed due to poor marketing or just too shallow a customer pool for this sort of device.
I don't believe so. Alarms etc are (I suspect) stored locally, but to enact a change on the device I believe it has to send it upstream via the phone app and the device then retrieves the changes.
So when the service is shut down my expectation is that I won't be able to change any of my device settings. Not to mention that the room data and sleep data will be unavailable.
This is the exact reason I don't really like cloud connected IoT devices. For instance, while I'd love to have a Nest thermostat, I refuse to us it due to requiring a connection to function fully. So I've opted instead for a 'dumb' thermostat with WiFi and an open and well-documented local API. About the only current exception to that in my house is my Amazon Echo, and that will be replaced as soon as someone comes out with a viable local-only alternative.
Yeah, I agree. I will always give preference for devices that fully function without internet access. For instance, the Venstar thermostat I use has a cloud component where you can track stats and remote control the device if you want, but it's 100% optional and the device loses no functionality, beyond the on-device weather, when there is no internet access. The local APIs allow me to easily integrate it with my HA controllers as well.
Apparently not. You need their app to set the device up (i.e. connect the device to the WiFi, and pair the bluetooth sensor(s) to the device).
The app only communicates with the Sense device via bluetooth when setting up its WiFi connection, everything else goes through a web API to the company's servers.
I haven't tried, but now I wonder if the alarm even works without an internet connection.
I've been using a Pebble Time and the "Sleep as Android" app for this. With the addition of Tasker, my setup also auto-pauses anything I might be listening to when it detects I've entered REM sleep. Great for falling asleep to audiobooks or podcasts.
There's an unfortunate conflict of interest going on. IOT developers have a strong incentive to create a "platform" that evolves around a database of users and their data because if they don't have that, some copycat will appear in no time and take their market. However, for the consumer this means that if the company dies they effectively loose their device.
That's a pretty weak conflict of interest. I guess it is more a poor alignment of interests, which could be described as a bad business to try getting into.
(in a strong conflict of interest they wouldn't find a way to make an initial transaction)
I think for things like sleep tracking the real problem is that people don't care about it in the large numbers required to lose money on the devices and make it up in the spying.
This is not "conflict of interest", this is their very business model. The device is only a bait to take your data and/or sell you a service.
This business model is why I avoid IoT startups and actively discourage people from buying their stuff. Until IoT becomes "Intranet of Things", most of those devices are best considered as scams.
Beddit has the same features, and was recently purchased by Apple so it likely won't be going out of business. It might however only work with iOS going forward.
I have a Beddit. As guptaneil wrote, they were recently bought by Apple. Shortly before the acquisition, they brought out a new model. They dropped support for the 1.0 version but did sen a free upgrade to everyone. I guess they decided that was cheaper than supporting the 1.0 model in perpetuity for some reason.
Mine was a review model. I found it was OK for what it was but I never really did anything with the data. Oh, I went to bed too late last night? Well, I kinda knew that.
Huh. If Pebble had done that from the start, I'd have stayed a customer of theirs. Still, good on 'em. I choose to believe it was the engineers finally getting a say after being forced to do all of the creepy spyware stuff.
1) Basically piped everything through their own servers, including a huge amount of personal information, and
2) Had very careful weasel-wording in their privacy policy which gave them carte blanche to store and then sell any data they had about you.
It's possible that they didn't track this stuff and were just covering themselves, but I had quite a long email conversation with one of their lawyers about it, and despite me explaining clearly multiple times what my concerns were (data collection, resale of personal info) and them having multiple opportunities to simply say "we don't store your personal data beyond X days and we won't sell it", they never gave any meaningful response to either concern.
After that experience I have no choice but to assume the wording in the privacy policy is deliberate and that they weren't operating in good faith (from a privacy standpoint).
So many things are being made today with WiFi connectivity and an app. So long as the app is just an optional add-on feature you can use, I suppose it's harmless enough. But so many devices don't build in setup etc. functions that you can use in the absence of an app. How many smarthome/wearable devices being made today does anyone think are going to be supported in 5-10 years, assuming the companies are even still in business?
Open APIs etc. help to some degree, but realistically very few people have the expertise or the inclination to setup a home server for some sensor.
IoT devices are one of those things that make me wish for governments to start banning sales of particular product groups. Seriously - the moment I see another IoT startup selling a cloud-connected device with propertiary protocol and a shitty, bare-bones app, I know this will only turn into huge and completely unnecessary waste of energy. Just thinking about all that plastic and electronics being intentionally destined to a dumpster within two years breaks my heart.
Too many useless startups are out there. I don't wonder at all why is this one shutting down, but what I do wonder about is why people even get started on such ideas.
Why consumers buy this stuff? I'd say hype & marketing. Why do people start those startups in the first place? Because it's the current trendy way to make money selling useless shit by turning what should be a product into a service.
That's a shame. I have one. Its sleep insights are totally worthless, but the alarm clock seems to work reasonably well, the device is attractive and the alarm sounds are nice.
How do devices like this, handle data analysis of two people in a bed?
The latest crop of devices have been single-person-only, for example Alexa, so I assume it doesn't work at all for non-single people, but maybe there's some interesting magic going on in there to support multiple people.
I wonder what this kind of hardware thinks of pets.
You get a married couple, a housecat or two, maybe a dog, the data stream must be very interesting to filter.
The sensors cover about a third of the bed so theoretically you could start it and use it in a way that mostly tracked individuals. In practice? I leave that to your imagination and experience.
It's timely that you mention this - I was thinking of hacking together my own sleep sensor but I'm married and I keep going round and round trying to sort out a system that if doesn't work for two accounts for one in spite of two. It also needs high wife acceptance factor (waf).
Here's what I emailed Hello in December 2016 (twice, tickets 45372 & 47913). No reply (https://twitter.com/troyd/status/814588368814125057), so I didn't buy one. Sounds like my statement "Sense is very well capitalized right now" was wrong.
If you're considering buying a device that depends on a service, send an email like the one below first. And if you're starting a hardware company, start thinking about this from the beginning. Even just explicitly stating that the device will stop working if the company ceases operations is better than not telling consumers anything.
Subject: Provisions for Sense devices if Hello fails
First off, congrats on making a fantastic-looking device. I have a somewhat unusual question about Sense devices, in the wake of Basis's failure and shut down.
Obviously Sense is very well capitalized right now. What provisions has Hello made for the continuation of the product if Hello the company fails?
For example, have you committed to at least open-sourcing the protocol specs, if not necessarily your implementation of the server? https://twitter.com/hello/status/603941261201043456 doesn't inspire much confidence that the device is meant to survive Hello's failure, nor that Hello is considering this at all.
I think it wouldn't be too difficult to diassemble/modify the Hello Sense App to redirect your data to a custom server that at least logs the received data. Would anyone else be interested in making this happen to have an option when the servers shut down? Otherwise, the app won't work at all.
If your device was built to need a "cloud," it's pretty safe to assume it will be bricked long before you'd expect. Because who doesn't want to continuously buy $150 smart devices.
The sad thing is the cloud is totally unnecessary for product function in 90% of these cases. I had a Coin. I never put any actual credit cards on it because I didn't trust a hardware startup to keep my financial info secure "in the cloud." I only used it for magstripe loyalty and gift cards. Now I can't even use it for that because the phone-app no longer works, because they failed and they shut off their servers. The hardware still works perfectly, though, it's just nearly useless.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 98.3 ms ] threadI'm probably hoping too much if I want them to give me a way to root my Sense as well as an open source version of their server software I can run and point my Sense to.
It's unfortunate that Hello are shutting down. I was thinking into buying Sense for my bedroom, despite that I'm using different app, mostly because the aesthetics.
I'm with you on hoping that they open it up to allow for a private server. If that happened then I'd be tempted to write a new iPhone app for it, it won't be long before the existing app will need updating to work with new iOS versions (Although it seems to work fine with 11). That being said, I'm not incredibly optimistic of a release of either a rooted firmware or protocol spec. It's a shame, it had real potential, it makes me wonder if it failed due to poor marketing or just too shallow a customer pool for this sort of device.
So when the service is shut down my expectation is that I won't be able to change any of my device settings. Not to mention that the room data and sleep data will be unavailable.
Open APIs and the option to run a private server are great, but the device should retain some bit of functionality if there's no network.
The app only communicates with the Sense device via bluetooth when setting up its WiFi connection, everything else goes through a web API to the company's servers.
I haven't tried, but now I wonder if the alarm even works without an internet connection.
(in a strong conflict of interest they wouldn't find a way to make an initial transaction)
I think for things like sleep tracking the real problem is that people don't care about it in the large numbers required to lose money on the devices and make it up in the spying.
This business model is why I avoid IoT startups and actively discourage people from buying their stuff. Until IoT becomes "Intranet of Things", most of those devices are best considered as scams.
Mine was a review model. I found it was OK for what it was but I never really did anything with the data. Oh, I went to bed too late last night? Well, I kinda knew that.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getpebble....
I don't think engineers are as innocent in that regard as we'd like to believe.
1) Basically piped everything through their own servers, including a huge amount of personal information, and
2) Had very careful weasel-wording in their privacy policy which gave them carte blanche to store and then sell any data they had about you.
It's possible that they didn't track this stuff and were just covering themselves, but I had quite a long email conversation with one of their lawyers about it, and despite me explaining clearly multiple times what my concerns were (data collection, resale of personal info) and them having multiple opportunities to simply say "we don't store your personal data beyond X days and we won't sell it", they never gave any meaningful response to either concern.
After that experience I have no choice but to assume the wording in the privacy policy is deliberate and that they weren't operating in good faith (from a privacy standpoint).
Open APIs etc. help to some degree, but realistically very few people have the expertise or the inclination to setup a home server for some sensor.
The latest crop of devices have been single-person-only, for example Alexa, so I assume it doesn't work at all for non-single people, but maybe there's some interesting magic going on in there to support multiple people.
I wonder what this kind of hardware thinks of pets.
You get a married couple, a housecat or two, maybe a dog, the data stream must be very interesting to filter.
If you're considering buying a device that depends on a service, send an email like the one below first. And if you're starting a hardware company, start thinking about this from the beginning. Even just explicitly stating that the device will stop working if the company ceases operations is better than not telling consumers anything.
Separate but related: https://twitter.com/hello/status/603941261201043456 was someone requesting an API back in May of 2015, then many more responses requesting the same thing.
Subject: Provisions for Sense devices if Hello fails
First off, congrats on making a fantastic-looking device. I have a somewhat unusual question about Sense devices, in the wake of Basis's failure and shut down.
Obviously Sense is very well capitalized right now. What provisions has Hello made for the continuation of the product if Hello the company fails?
For example, have you committed to at least open-sourcing the protocol specs, if not necessarily your implementation of the server? https://twitter.com/hello/status/603941261201043456 doesn't inspire much confidence that the device is meant to survive Hello's failure, nor that Hello is considering this at all.
I think it wouldn't be too difficult to diassemble/modify the Hello Sense App to redirect your data to a custom server that at least logs the received data. Would anyone else be interested in making this happen to have an option when the servers shut down? Otherwise, the app won't work at all.
Edit: Someone has done a hardware teardown: http://lyndsaywilliams.blogspot.ch/2015/07/hello-sense-sleep...
The sad thing is the cloud is totally unnecessary for product function in 90% of these cases. I had a Coin. I never put any actual credit cards on it because I didn't trust a hardware startup to keep my financial info secure "in the cloud." I only used it for magstripe loyalty and gift cards. Now I can't even use it for that because the phone-app no longer works, because they failed and they shut off their servers. The hardware still works perfectly, though, it's just nearly useless.