Google announced the end of support for early Nest Thermostats in a support document earlier this year that largely flew under the radar. As of October 25, first and second generation units released in 2011 and 2012, respectively, will be unpaired and removed from the Google Nest or Google Home app.
Users will no longer be able to control their thermostats remotely via their smartphone, receive notifications, or change settings from a mobile device. End-of-support also disables third-party assistants and other cloud-based features including multi-device Eco mode and Nest Protect connectivity.
On the other hand, one can understand why Google doesn’t want to continue to pour resources into an ancient platform just to keep it on life support.
Bullshit. “Pour” my ass. Issue a legacy build of the app that controls them and walk away. What horseshit. This is shameful. The only reason it won’t blow up into a huge debacle is that these products targeted wealthy early-adopters in the first place and those folks can afford to upgrade, and most probably already have.
Absolutely fucking correct… You can maintain locks on my so-called smart devices for as long as you maintain your services… You want to pull the plug, you should be forced to open source and expose the tech so that we can keep it working on our own private servers. Proprietary tech is a bullshit excuse as well… The vast majority of these devices are about 10% of in house code riding on 90% of open standards, protocols, and packages. None of them are building the wheel from scratch.
For fucksake most of these devices could easily be implemented on decentralized architecture, if it wasn’t for all the pesky data mining they are doing
There is a
class action“mass arbitration” against Google for this: https://www.classaction.org/nest-thermostat-support-arbitrationAdditionally, the Fulu Foundation has a bounty reward out for anyone who is able to get these working with something like Home Assistant.
The pot is currently at $12,856.00 https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties/nest-learning-thermostat-gen-1-2
In the U.S., since doing so would circumvent measures put in place on these devices, publishing how to do this would go against sec. 1201 of the DMCA. This has a risk of a maximum sentence of 3-5 years in a Federal Prison. You can still privately show the Fulu Foundation how it is done, and they will be able to use this information to help their case in their attempt to reform this law.
If you live in the U.S., you can also help by letting your representatives know about this. Here’s an ActionNetwork page that Fulu set up so that you can easily do so: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/right-to-repair-reform-section-1201-of-the-dmca
If you live in the U.S., you can also help by letting your representatives know about this. Here’s an ActionNetwork page that Fulu set up so that you can easily do so: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/right-to-repair-reform-section-1201-of-the-dmca
Do you still have a representative government where you live? I have a Republican House rep and trying to get him to do anything even remotely consumer friendly is just masochism.