Stunned that a Ring doorbell doesn't have a fallback mode that at least "Rings" the bell. I wonder if that's a deliberate design, or some oversight/side-effect that happened after V1.
They have one but it sucks. It’s always disconnecting. I have mine hardwired and 90% of the time the doorbell doesn’t ring and neither does the chime. Honestly I think rings are garbage. I’ll probably move to a nest or maybe just go back to a standard doorbell.
And this is one of the reasons I'm wary of all these IoT linkings. We see it in cars, vacuum cleaners, fridges, doorbells and thermostats. Some folks see it as a way to market new items and increase functionality, I see it as a vector of malware and the opportunity to hold items hostage until a fee (subscription or update fee) is paid.
This is why I don't want IoT. Most new robot-vacuums can't even run the schedule if they are disconnected. But even if they can you sure as hell can't change it if the service goes down (or turns off).
I want to know that sparing physical issues, the products I buy will keep working. Not because the vendor decided that it is no longer worth supporting. I purposely bought a couple-generation old vacuum for this reason.
This outage should sever a wake up call for how useless your "smart" devices will be in a couple of years when the company decides that keeping them working is no longer worth it.
The inability for air-gaped devices to catch malware is a nice added benefit.
OK, I get the doorbell thing, video recording and all that. But vacuums? What on Earth could vaccum do with AWS? Calculate the summary length of your vacuuming sessions as a percentage of distance to the Moon? Have a customized ringtones (or should it be sucktones?) for the engine? Have a dance pattern so you could waltz with it if you pat $49.95? Seriously, what does a vacuum do with AWS?
> Roombas can be used without an internet connection, by pushing a button on the device.
> But connected services are used to keep it within a specific room and to remotely activate or schedule cleaning, which is how many owners use the robot.
Why would such a device need to be connected to a network at all, never mind the internet or AWS in particular? A user’s floor is typically contained entirely within their home.
Is there an app shoehorned into the product just to spy on users? Seems like it’s usually that with modern connected crap.
It’s probably robot vacuums. They need to sync schedules, map the room, log their status and location so you can see which areas were cleaned, update themselves, etc,
Certain models can be flashed with open source firmware that can make them run locally. But just as with every other consumer electronic device, the number of people who care about privacy, data control, or even just reliability and fault tolerance is small enough that no companies build products for them.
Yesterday it was smart their smart plugs, I had just put up my Xmas lights and decided to control them using a smart plug from an outlet in my crawlspace.
I spent half the day crawling down there and pressing the button to connect them before finding a reddit thread showing that several other people were having same issue.
During the outage today, my Alexa’s were streaming music. When I said, “Alexa”, they went right into reporting that there was an issue. I couldn’t even issue an “Alexa, stop”. Seemed.... dumb.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 51.6 ms ] threadI want to know that sparing physical issues, the products I buy will keep working. Not because the vendor decided that it is no longer worth supporting. I purposely bought a couple-generation old vacuum for this reason.
This outage should sever a wake up call for how useless your "smart" devices will be in a couple of years when the company decides that keeping them working is no longer worth it.
The inability for air-gaped devices to catch malware is a nice added benefit.
As they say, "S" in "IoT" stands for "security".
> Roombas can be used without an internet connection, by pushing a button on the device.
> But connected services are used to keep it within a specific room and to remotely activate or schedule cleaning, which is how many owners use the robot.
Is there an app shoehorned into the product just to spy on users? Seems like it’s usually that with modern connected crap.
Certain models can be flashed with open source firmware that can make them run locally. But just as with every other consumer electronic device, the number of people who care about privacy, data control, or even just reliability and fault tolerance is small enough that no companies build products for them.
I spent half the day crawling down there and pressing the button to connect them before finding a reddit thread showing that several other people were having same issue.
Around midnight the plugs were back online.
https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo#readme