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Nest 1st gen and 2nd gen thermostats no longer supported from Oct 25

(community.hubitat.com)
280 points RyanShook | 1 comments | 05 Sep 25 21:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.244s | source
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briHass ◴[06 Sep 25 01:31 UTC] No.45145753[source]▶
I got burned recently by Ecobee in the same way. The problem with 'smart' interfaces for traditionally mechanical devices is that the useable lifetime (support period) of low-end microprocessors and software, especially online APIs, is often far shorter than the mechanical device it's attached to.

Similar to how people that keep cars around for 10+ years are stuck with dated and worthless 'infotainment' systems, Google and Ecobee can't even honor their product for long enough to outlast the HVAC units.

What burns me is that it wouldn't be much of an ask for them to push one final (optional) update that would open LAN-only access to core functionality. I and many others in the HA/ESPHome community have written hardware integrations to devices over RS485/UART with unpublished/black-box protocols, so a simple HTTP API would have an integration within days.

It would maybe cost an engineer at Nest/Ecobee a day or two of work, and the goodwill would make me far more likely to purchase a newer model. As it is, I've committed to avoiding (where possible) devices that aren't local-first.

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1. JustExAWS ◴[06 Sep 25 08:44 UTC] No.45147650[source]▶
> Similar to how people that keep cars around for 10+ years are stuck with dated and worthless 'infotainment' systems, Google and Ecobee can't even honor their product for long enough to outlast the HVAC units

I would never buy a car that doesn’t support CarPlay. The four protocols that Apple created to interface with non Apple devices - the original iPod protocol, AirPrint, AirPlay and CarPlay haven’t had any breaking changes. As of at least three years ago, I could use an old first gen iPad from 2010 (the first to support AirPlay/Airprint) and use it with modern Roku TVs with AirPlay support and modern printers.

My old 2011 Sonic that I had with a USB port that supported the iPod protocol for displaying titles for audio and controlling iPods still worked with every iPhone I had.

But I would never trust Google not to kill a device.