Google pulls the plug on first and second gen Nest Thermostats

Submitted ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.techspot.com/news/110075-google-pulls-plug-first-second-gen-nest-thermostats.html

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.

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CaptPretentious@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Oh how kind of them! They force disconnect an appliance but give you a coupon to buy the latest model.

And the newest model is different how? It’s a thermostat after all.

Whole reason I got one was because of the promised savings (never saw any, from the learning, just bullshit offers that allowed the electric company access…).

Guess it’s back to the tried and true mercury thermostat.

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- a9249@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Yeah if my thermostat starts talking to the internet, its getting buckshot in it.
  
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Sandbar_Trekker@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There is a class action against Google for this: classaction.org/nest-thermostat-support-arbitrati…

Additionally, 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 …fulu.org/…/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: actionnetwork.org/…/right-to-repair-reform-sectio…

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- reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The website you linked to says that it’s not a class action suit, but a “mass arbitration” which I’ve never heard of. It also claims that Google has a “no class action” clause in its warranty/user agreement. I don’t see how that’s legal, but whatever. I also wonder if that clause was there at the time of purchase for gen 1 and gen 2 thermostats.
  
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  - Sandbar_Trekker@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Thanks, I missed that detail. It’s probably because of the “no class action” clause that this is a “mass arbitration”.
    
    Unfortunately that usually means that Google is paying a specific company to decide on the outcome of the case. in this case it looks like American Arbitration Association has a contract with Google.
    
    They’re supposed to be fair for both sides, but it’s been shown that they almost always rule in favor of the company that has pre-selected them.
    
    If anyone is in this situation, they will likely have a much better chance by convincing a judge to allow a different 3rd party to arbitrate the case.
    
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- spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  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: actionnetwork.org/…/right-to-repair-reform-sectio…
  
  Do you still have a representative government where you live? I have a Republican House rep and trying to get him to do anything consumer friendly is just masochism.
  
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  - dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    If you can point out to republican voters how the DMCA fucks them too, you can bury your shitty GOP rep in calls and letters which might make them change.
    
    Maybe.
    
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scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

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.

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- NeverNudeNo13@lemmings.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  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
  
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db2@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is exactly why I didn’t buy one of these or the Amazon version. I didn’t trust that the devices would work as long as they could function and was correct.

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- chillpanzee@lemmy.ml ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I bought one a bunch of years ago. Maybe 10 years. It worked fine. Did it’s thing. Then for no reason google chooses to kill it. Fool me once.
  
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  - AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Then for no reason google chooses to kill it.
    
    That’s kind of their thing.
    
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  - unphazed@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I replaced mine with a Sensi. 4 months with Nest, and it decided to confuse hot vs cold signals. Middle of August, it tried to “cool” my house at 3am, instead turning on the furnace, and just kept on going due to the temperature rising. For a week straight, I awoke to 90 degree temps in my house at 3:30 to 4am, and a nice heating bill. I had an hvac friend come over ad tell me in fact, yep, it’s sending signal to furnace, not ac. He checked the wiring, all good. He admitted he knew little of Nests, but said only an idiot would design a thermostat that could allow for a hot/cold signal switch without rewiring.
    
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- nocturne@slrpnk.net ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I got 11 years out of mine. I had been wanting to upgrade it because it did not accept sensors.
  
  Does it suck that it was still functional? Yup.
  
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  - billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I mean they could just unlock the dang things at let some industrious hacker make them useful again. Hell I’d pay like $10 for a firmware that would work with home assistant.
    
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FishFace@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Dumb thermostats last for multiple decades.

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- spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  As do smart thermostats that don’t rely on the continued goodwill of corporate America to function.
  
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  - tidderuuf@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Which ones are those?
    
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- Damage@feddit.it ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I’ve got one of those with bi-metallic strips, it’s 35 years old, works no problem.
  
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- reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Surprisingly, these still work as dumb thermostats after the cutoff date.
  
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scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This isn’t “end of support.”

This is “loss of functionality.”

Totally inexcusable.

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- spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Samsung did something similar with one of their tablets when they remotely removed an app that provided an IR remote function - a primary reason for my purchase. Samsung’s support not so politely told me, “Too fucking bad.” when I objected.
  
  Even though a replacement 3rd party app was less than $5 I haven’t purchased another Samsung consumer product or service in almost a decade.
  
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  - scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    They were rude to you about it too? Jesus. I’m pleased to say I’ve never bought any Samsung product.
    
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- chillpanzee@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yeah. And even “loss of functionality” makes it sound passive; as if it just happened by accident. They Intentionally broke a working product.
  
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  - scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    Heh I guess this is my work self showing through. I’m a software developer and “loss of function” is a very severe term to me :D it’s only surpassed by loss of data, accessibility/legal issue, and security/privacy breach. On the less severe end we have loss of telemetry, degraded function (meaning there’s still a workaround) degraded performance, and finally cosmetic defect.
    
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- mack@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  As most of our tech.
  
  Being someone that yield to my tech stuff as long as possible I really love to live in a world where a company is forced to opensource everything related to a specific product if they opt to stop maintaining it.
  
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comador@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Jokes on them, I block my Nest from talking to the Internet so my electrical company cannot control the damned thing. They had control even after I opted out and Google insisted they unenrolled me in the energy savings plan. Don’t enroll in these plans [insert it’s a trap gif].

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- spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That “Smart Energy” discount has shown up in mailings for the last few years and I’ve considered signing up despite my general dislike of allowing any company any more control of my life than they already have.
  
  Why do you say they’re a trap? Did they change your thermostat settings far more than they claim or pull other BS you didn’t expect?
  
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  - comador@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Smart Energy Discount issues from the personal view of a consumer.
    
    These plans work by sending you notifications that they will be reducing your thermostat for you when there is an energy crunch.
    
    Sounds good so far, here’s the issues I had:
    
    Let’s say you are a good consumer and let them change your thermostat to 85’F when it’s 100’F every single time… You saved… $5!!! and got to sweat profusely in your own home in the process.
    
    Let’s say you were working in the yard and come in sweaty amd needing to cool off. If you change that thermostat while they are in control of it, you lose your whole $5 for not just that day, but the entire billing cycle.
    
    Let’s say you want to exit the plan. Now you’re on the hook to wait on hold with your energy company for hours waiting for the one department and probably one person who can unenroll you. Chances are likely even then that they can screw it up and like in my case, both Google and my southern California electrical company claim ignorance anything was done wrong yet keep me enrolled.
    
    In short and in summary: It’s a trap because the savings is far, far too small for the sacrifice.
    
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masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There is an open source project to replace the innards:

sett.homes

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- reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  While an interesting idea, that project wants what amounts to the cost of a new thermostat in exchange for a kickstarter project. Might as well just buy a new thermostat.
  
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  - masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨50⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    Omg, an sustainable, repairable, and open source project costs the same as a closed source, non repairable, locked down option … Those are *totally the same thing!
    
    _ /S_
    
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trailee@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This sort of thing is one of the reasons I chose a RainMachine irrigation controller over other options, because they specifically marketed their cloud-independent firmware design. It was vindicated a couple years ago when they started going defunct and grasped for recurring revenue by billing for proxied remote access, but even then they emphasized that everything else would continue to function without their servers.

The onus is on the consumer to reward cloud-independent designs like this. While it has been sad to see RainMachine’s collapse, my device indeed just keeps working. Hopefully it isn’t ultimately killed by firmware or app security vulnerabilities since it’s now thoroughly unmaintained.

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- JasonDJ@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The problem is, the real money is in either the data that it acquires or in recurring monthly costs.
  
  Unfortunately, making a good, reliable product with no MRCs and no spying means fewer repeat buyers. Which is especially a problem for a niche community like selfhosters and privacy-conscious. You sell the product once and…that’s it. Eventually the market is full and some people are upgrading but now your product is selling on the secondary market.
  
  This is business in the 21st century. They can’t survive without forced obsolescence, telemetry, and/or MRCs.
  
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spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
With Google’s track record of jumping into a market and after they have millions of users shutting it down, I’m surprised they didn’t do this years ago.

How long before Honeywell does the same? The company spun off their residential services division (including thermostats) about 7 years ago and at first things were fine, but in the last couple of years the service has become increasingly unreliable. Their servers have gone down quite a few times and settings changes are sometimes delayed even when the servers are up.

Their Z-Wave thermostat is a nice upgrade without concerns about someone sitting in a corporate America e-suite deciding to pull the plug.

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- ilt@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I bought mine before Google bought Nest, but I sure didn’t buy anything more from them after that.
  
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reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Was hoping something like Homebridge could be used to still control these, but no luck. After the cutoff they can be used manually like a traditional thermostat, which is a surprise coming from Google. I still fear they are going to generate a bunch of ewaste from people replacing them.

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TheGoldenV@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Glad I chose not to link my info to it to continue using the feature when Google took over.

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DFX4509B_2@lemmy.org ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If there was ever a better reason to set up Home Assistant if you want a smart home…

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Addv4@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
My father got and installed two of the newer nest thermostats, and they are bar none two of the most annoying tech devices I’ve ever had the misfortune of having to fix. Have literally spent hours debugging them when changing the wifi password, they don’t support wpa3, and the setup app feels like a half assed student project. I know this audience probably isn’t interested in getting one, but if one of your family members gets some for free, do NOT let them install them.

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ThePantser@sh.itjust.works ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Maybe time for home assistant to roll out their own thermostat made with esphome

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