Many devices today are managed / enabled by a cloud service and without it (or the access goes down) you have a paperweight. I’ve seen it happen with the Chumby and the Pebble watch too, but luckily with both hackers came to the fore with alternatives to keep them alive.
Maybe I was spoilt by using LInux for many years (always first checking I could get Linux drivers before short listing a new purchase) but we need to realise that we need an Anti-nuptial contract when marrying into an IoT service. You need to consider what your way out is going to be, or if the investment is not too high, then realise that after a year or three it may well stop working (especially true when a competitor buys a service out with the intention of shutting it down).
But there are devices that are designed to be a bit more open and inter-operable. And it is these designers we should be supporting. Otherwise, we’ll all end up in walled gardens with many devices not talking to your other IoT devices. For example MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) and SOAP support will at least allow you to intercept the messaging and manage or read the device. Beware of an IoT service that only wants to support its own ecosystem.
See The IoT Trap
#technology #iot #interoperability
I’m sure that you’ve heard about the Sonos speaker debacle. (If not, read about it on Hackaday.) Basically, a company that sells a premium Internet-connected speaker wanted to retire an…