4mo ago

Google announces 1st and 2nd gen Nest Thermostats will lose support in October 2025

arstechnica.com

Hacker News @lemmy.bestiver.se

RSS Bot @lemmy.bestiver.se

BOT

4mo ago

First and 2nd gen Nest Thermostats will lose support in Oct 2025

arstechnica.com /gadgets/2025/04/google-ending-support-for-older-nest-thermostats-will-stop-selling-nests-in-europe/

25 comments

We desperately need laws for stuff like this.
Why not force companies open source the server code when they kill an online only service?
This will affect IoT, cars, video games, toys and a whole bunch of other devices in the future.
- They dont even need to open source it
  Just make a binary availible
  
  If the binary has bugs or vulnerabilities then they stay there.
  If open sourced the community or a third party company can step in and fix stuff, expand compatibility etc
Oh. Neat. Literal planned obsolesce.
- I'm so glad I couldn't afford one when I wanted one and eventually ended up with a generic ZigBee thermostat
Nest released the original Learning Thermostat to almost universal praise in 2011, with the sequel arriving a year later. Google's second-gen Euro unit launched in 2014. Since launch, all these devices have been getting regular software updates and have migrated across multiple app redesigns. However, all good things must come to an end.
As Google points out, these products have had a long life
14 years for a thermostat that still works? What has really changed in that time that the servers can't support sending commands to them anymore. Seems like this is just part of the switch to Gemini and planned obsolescence to get people to buy new devices with terrible Gemini features that will stop working in 5 years, and result in more e-waste.
- What has really changed in that time that the servers can't support sending commands to them anymore.
  The discovery of the higgs boson changed everything we thought we knew about the notion of room temperature. It's just not the same world those old thermostats were designed to operate in.
- More likely than not they can't upgrade the crypto to be able to talk to the backend or there's a CVE they haven't announced yet.
I'm done with Google.
They ruin everything good they create, like Google Music, in the name of profits.
Putting GrapheneOS on my phone this weekend. I already started migrating all my files to Proton.
Yay. Can't wait for my car systems to go obsolete because of some arbitrary manufacturer standard.
Edit: it should be a rule that when manufacturers stop supporting something they should also publish the design documents. Better yet, open source it so some enterprising person can take over the reins.
I don't really mind when a cloud-connected device gracefully falls back to an offline-only device. It seems like it retains all of the non-cloud functionality: reading and setting temps, including on a schedule.
It'd be nicer if they gave the option to let people run their own servers for the the networked functionality, but it doesn't seem like they've reduced or otherwise held back on the offline functionality one would expect from a thermostat.
- The whole
  That means you won't be able to control them from the Google Home app or via Assistant
  Is pretty fucking criminal IMO
- Not when so many basic features were forced onto cloud apps in the first place.
I wonder if HomeBridge will still allow for remote control despite local only mode without Google Cloud.
- I don't know anything about these devices. Can someone explain what functionnalities remain after the fact?
My thermostat came with the house and is older than me (before the birth of MTV)
I keep thinking I should update to save energy and whatever but why get on that treadmill?
- Well, you can go digital without going "smart". The digital ones still carry cost savings, without trapping you in a cycle of buying one every few years like these companies want you to. I switched mine from the old school mercury ones to digital, about 15 years ago, and they are still going strong.
nests are so dumb for a smart thermostat. why does it seem like a smart thermostat is so hard for companies to make? I got a levoit one after ebaying my nest and its a ton better but still not as good as I would imagine they can be.
- It only needs to be smart enough to grab your data to sell. The rest is done by marketing.
- What would you like to see?
  
  As a Nest owner I agree for a smart thing it's remarkably dumb.
  I love the way it looks and the UI is really good, for something you can only turn and push, the thing is very easy to operate. However when it comes to actual functionality, the "smart" thermostat I had in the 90s had more options.
  Features I think it should have but simply doesn't:
  Differentiate between setting a temporary temperature and something permanent till I tell it otherwise. Or with a preset end time. Now when you manually set a temperature and a scheduled temperature comes up, it overrides the set temperature always.
  Multiple profiles and schedules. Including different eco temperatures. I operate my house very different in the different seasons, this makes having a single schedule annoying. Or for example with work from home where I want to switch for that day.
  Being able to schedule temperatures on an actual date instead of in the set schedule. When I know I normally don't have the heater on because I'm at work, but due to a holiday or something I'm going to be at home and have friends or family over, I want to make sure the house is set to the correct temperature.
  More UI customization options, it's fine I guess, but why aren't there like a dozen themes I can choose from? And why can't I choose what information is and isn't displayed?
  Better integration with outside weather services, for example displaying the weather, but also driving the heater based on the weather.
  Because I'm a nerd, more control over things like ramping speeds and technical integrations. For example my heater thinks a certain parameter is set by the thermostat, but the Nest thinks it's set by the heater. So it doesn't get set which can lead to weird behavior. I needed to set an override on the heater to set it from there. But I've also seen people put in special gateways to control it.
  That said I'm still happy with it, mostly because of how it looks and it works well enough. I have it setup in Home Assistant and that can do a lot of what I mentioned.
  Also the whole "smart" thing they advertised with saying it learns your schedule and perfectly automatically manages your home optimally didn't work for shit. At least for me it was just a mess.
  The thing is so nice and can do so much. But then in the software they just did the bare basics and called it a day. Probably different teams that worked on the different aspects and the people doing the design, hardware and software on the device did a much better job than the people who did the test of the software.
Almost bought one of these years ago. Glad I didn't!
In Google's defense, my Nest outlasted ~~two~~ three! AC units. I'll upgrade to a gen 4 because it's a well made device and the people who worked on it deserve the credit
Glad I bought an alternative when that one came out. As far as I know they never really updated it, or their lineup since. Just additional compatible radiator valves and such.

25 comments