Replacing Weatherbridge hardware

Ambient Weather WEATHERBRIDGE Universal WIFI IP Ethernet Server for Weather Stations, Compatible with Alexa is pretty sweet for a simple standalone box to upload your weather data to multiple locations. The price ranging as low as  $200 with shipping is pretty reasonable too though if your unit dies after a few years you would probably prefer to just replace just the hub and not a whole new setup including license. Fortunately replacement hardware is pretty cheap look for a TP-Link N150 Wireless 3G/4G Portable Router with Access Point/WISP/Router Modes (TL-MR3020) I found one on Amazon for $28.69

Note you probably have the older v1 version. The one I found was a v3 hub which uses a the smaller USB connector than the V1 and only needs to plug into one USB port on a hub for power.

You just need to follow these instructions after reading the rest of this..
One vital bit is missing. Make sure switch, next to Ethernet jack  is set to AP mode. In other modes the MR3020 is hard coded to come up as 192.168.0.2 and wants to be your router which might cause issues with your network.

If you need to get TFTP running you should be able to google plenty of quick how-tos like this one for CentOS 7.

Be sure and test TFTP is working from another PC like
tftp 192.168.0.225
tftp> binary
tftp> verbose
Verbose mode on.
tftp> get tp_recovery.bin
getting from 192.168.0.225:tp_recovery.bin to tp_recovery.bin [netascii]
Received 8126464 bytes in -5.9 seconds [-11040379 bit/s]
tftp> quit

Note if you do not have a Linux PC to try it from get Cygwin

Now what you might not have caught above is the IP address have to be 192.168.0.225. If you have only a network with addresses in of 192.168.0.X then you should be good. If your network is a more common address like 192.168.1.X then you should still be OK with the ip addr add dev eth0 192.168.0.225/24 instruction to fake the address. Problems arise if you have multiple networks, like you should be doing, and one of them has addresses of 192.168.0.X. In that case both the TFTP server and the hub being flashed need to be on that network.

Now holding the button 15 seconds seems like it might be too long or too short. You want to hold it till the second LED starts blinking to trigger the download of the software. I discovered this by trial and error while watching traffic to the TFTP server port.

All that said when I tried this my network seemed to get royally screwed up. Many of the things on the 192.168.0.X network needed repowered, not just rebooted, to get them back online. Might have been coincidence but happened just as the hub came back up. The flash did seem to work though.

That just left the problem of the MAC having changed. Even though you can spoof the MAC in the underlying OpenWrt code (which might fool your router) the Meteobridge software pulls the MAC directly from the Ethernet card so the Meteobridge license and Ambient Weather Network uploader sees it as a new station. Meteobridge says to email them at info(at)meteobridge.com with the old and new MACs to transfer your license in the 14 day trial period. I'll have to update whether that works. Ambient Weather Network on the other hand I seem to have to add as a new station. That seems to work on their end but when I tell the Meteobridge to upload to it I get
Meteobridge settings successfully reloaded
Error: Ambient Weather Network: EXPIRED
Still trying to sort that.

Update a week later:

Found my email to info(at)meteobridge.com bounced. Seems they use Spamhaus lists and Spamhaus has decided to blacklist Spectrum's network. So I guess if you email them use a Gmail account. Resent email. Still no solution to to the Ambient Weather Network issue but do having it uploading elsewhere

After another week

After sending email to meteobridge from Gmail the license shows good for Meteobridge but not the Ambient Weather Network. Seems the only way to get it working again is to give them $150.  Broke down and paid for a new license but it does not seem to take affect immediately despite having received a confirmation email and rebooted. Will check again tomorrow. If you can get a new WeatherBridge for $200 and need to upload to Ambient Weather Network it might be worth it to get the new bridge instead of saving $20 but having to deal with flashing and getting licenses sorted. As I'm writing this the price diff is only $19.51.

One more day

Finally back uploading to Ambient Weather Network. Which gets me back to where I was before the hub crashed.

Added Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller, 8 Zone 2nd Generation

Rachio Smart Sprinkler Controller, 8 Zone 2nd Generation, Works with Amazon Alexa

I bought mine the end of May when they were $50 off which made it as cheap as any of the other I was looking at and it was a done package unlike many of the others. Though some of the others, like OpenSprinker options, looked like they might do more IF you can put in the time. For instance you will probably want to mount it outside which means getting a water proof case. You can get the Rachio Outdoor Enclosure, for 2nd Generation Sprinkler Controller for the Rachio but will need to use something generic for OpenSprinkler like Orbit 57095 Sprinkler System Weather-Resistant Outdoor-Mounted Controller Timer Box Cover. You will also need from valves and a manifold. You can go with something mostly preassembled like Orbit 57253 3-Valve Heavy Duty Preassembled Manifold but the downside of this is the valves have connectors that are proprietary so you are locked in. I went with Orbit 57280 Female Pipe Threaded Auto Inline Sprinkler Valve, 3/4" that left all my options open down the road. I also used unions to make them simple to swap out. I also added a dump valve at the bottom so I can easily drain the system in the winter.

Some of the other bits:

Dixon BA776 Brass Fitting, Adapter, 3/4" GHT Male x 3/4" NPTF Male
Dixon BMA976 Brass Fitting, Adapter, 3/4" GHT Female x 3/4" NPTF Male
Homewerks Worldwide 1-in dia PVC SCH 40 Union
AMERICAN VALVE 1-in PVC Sch 40 Socket In-Line Ball Valve
LASCO 1-in Dia x 3/4-in Dia PVC Sch 40 Bushing
LASCO 1-in Dia x 3/4-in Dia PVC Sch 40 Adapter (not pic on website is 3/4 to 3/4 as of this writing)
Charlotte Pipe 5-Pack 1-in dia PVC Sch 40 Tees
LASCO 1-in Dia 90-Degree PVC Sch 40 Slip Elbow
1-in x 10-ft 450 Schedule 40 PVC Pipe
Yardsmith Yardsmith Zinc Goose Neck Hose Connector
Blue Hawk 0.6-in x 43-ft Plumber's Tape

In the end 4 zone's worth of plumbing will set you back another $150 or so.

Some screen shots

This is what the web dashboard looks like

There is a ton of info here. The calendar shows the days it is planning on watering, weather info, several types of histories and your zones. clicking on a zone lets you set a bunch of parameters to dial in the best water usage calculations. Note it only calculates water savings with fixed schedules with weather intelligence enabled. Flex gives you the best saving and moisture optimization but it also kind of makes it hard to compare since it has no idea what your old schedule was. What you need to do is look at how much water you are using per minute in the watering history. In my case that appears to be about 2.15 gallons per minute (my zone 4 uses about 1/3 the gallons/minute the others do but lets keep it simple). Say my old system watered each zone for 10 minutes a day every other day. So at the end of 8 days it watered for 40 minutes times 4 days or 160 minutes. At the end of 8 days you can see how many minutes it watered, take the difference and multiple that times you gallons/minute to see what you saved. Granted it would be nice if they let you input that in your preferences so they could calculate it for you.

You can even add a customized sprinkler type. I found the Precip Rate for a soaker hose in one of the forums.

Note it appears you can only edit a Custom Nozzle via the phone app and can not remove them in either interface. Otherwise the phone app has similar functionality though the layout is different.

One thing I should point out is the blue icon in the lower right. This brings up a remote for manual control.

This is mainly useful in the phone app for testing and turning off the sprinklers when you are in the garden doing stuff.

Why would I want this over a simple timer setup?

The big thing is Flex watering that takes weather, soil type, sprinkler type and area covered into account. Instead of watering a zone for a set amount of time then the next, it calculates how much water should be needed given all the factors them divides that into sub cycles and rotates watering the zones to reduce run off. This might make getting accidentally hit by unexpected watering more likely but should reduce water usage and keep the plants at optimal moisture levels.

Then there are all the integrations.

The official list is here.

First off you can link into a near by PWS weather station. If you have one that can upload data to PWS Weather you can tie it straight in. For instance for Netatmo or if you have a Meteobridge. I have my Meteobridge connect Davis Vue linked. They suggest using a pro station near by but out here in the hills that station could be flooding while I'm bone dry and vice versa. There were a few personal stations within a mile or so of me but since I have 3 weather stations online I know how accurate mine are being.

Alexa has a skill to talk directly to it so you can override the watering. With flex watering this can come in real handy. It also supports Google Home.

It talks to Nest which it is supposed to turn on the sprinklers if your Nest Protect senses a fire.

Of course there is IFTTT integration which lets you talk to lots of things. 

Homeseer can talk to it directly with the ultrarachio3 HSPI plugin. The plugin creates 55 devices (with 8 zone Rachio) that lets you monitor and control everything. Note triggering a Homeseer event via IFTTT versus this plugin appears to be about 10 minutes behind the plugin. So the plugin might well be telling you that watering has stopped before IFTTT has told you is has begun. 

It also talks directly to SmartThings. Detailed instruction for that can be found here.

I'm not seeing anyway to make it work Vera. It is a Wi-Fi interface though so that is pretty much expected. Same goes for the closed Lowes Iris system. Rachio does have a public API though so you could probably cook your own if you have the time.

Next step move my Davis soil moisture sensors to match the new zones and get the main unit better sun exposure. That will let me better tweak the settings and monitor for problems.

Monitoring soil moisture

Someone asked on Stacy's podcast about a good way to monitor soil to know when to water.  So I was motivated to finish this and get it posted.

Real Options I've tried:

Davis Soil Moisture station
Expensive but works.
Pros:

• Prosumer grade gear. It still is working 7 years later with little maintenance. 
• You can expend to many units as the the consoles and hubs are coded to each other. 
• I've ran Davis on cables up to 100 feet with chewed wires and ants getting into the hub being the only issues and the hub upto over 50 feet from the gateway/console.
•  Leaf Wetness Sensors come with 40’ (12 m) of cable standard and can be extended up to 200’ (61m) using 6-conductor 26 AWG cable.
• Soil Moisture Sensors come with 15’ (4.6 m) of cable standard and can be extended up to 1000’ (300m) using #18 gauge UF cable.
• Temperature Sensors come with 15’ (4.6 m) of cable standard and can be extended up to 800’ (242m) using #24 AWG shielded cable or up to 1200’ (260m) using #22 AWG shielded cable.
• Sensors can be placed as deep as you want.
• Temperature reading is true at depth and unaffected by air temperature.

Cons:

• Sensors are wired to transmitter though this might be a plus too given only one solar charged battery is needed per 4 sensors.
• $466 to $600 for hub and 4 sensors pairs. Plus you need base / weather station for it to talk to plus more if you want it to upload to cloud services so another $500 - $1000 depending on models and features.

Ambient Weather WS-8482 $87
Probably best on a budget.
Pros:

• Way cheaper. Even with base plus 7 $29 soil moisture sensors still costs less than the Davis base unit with only 2 temp/moisture pairs. 
• Wireless sensors though that also means a battery for each.

Cons:

• Some of the sensors seems to not work all that well while others track closely to the Davis units. So might still be cheaper even if you have to toss some of the sensors but you might need to toss some.
• You are limited to 7 sensors total (plus station temp/humidity) or placing stations out of range of each other as only 7 radio channels. Some of my sensors are over 50 feet away so hard to say how far that separation might need to be.
• Hub needs to be indoors with AC power and WiFi so may not reach to some areas.
• Limited to reading about 8 inches down max since transmitter top needs to be above the ground.

Tried but failed:

Wireless Tags Water/Moisture Sensor and Plantlink both were completely worthless for more than telling when being watered. Neither seemed to last long either. The Wireless Tag you can not even change the batteries in.  Scotts bought Plantlink on 2016 then discontinued it. I appears they used the tech to create a new Scotts' version.  At $99 for a hub and one sensor then $40 for each add on sensor, it seems overpriced. Amazon reviews are NOT good either. Oddly those on their site generally are. That ought to give you pause right there.

Though Wireless Tags indoor sensors are great and damn cheap for what you get (temp, humidity, vibration, signal level, and battery level). Especially if you buy 5+ at a time. I even use them inside the freezer.

Also tried Wimoto SEN001 Sentry Bluetooth Smart Water Sensor, alos no longer available, a couple years back but those kept losing connection on top of the iffy data.

Compared:

Homeseer can link to Ambient and Davis via the Ambient site plugin.
Wireless Tag talks to Homeseer directly through REST api calls from the gateway.

Sample Ambient site screens of my Ambient Weather WS-8482. Note the Ambient site also works with Davis stations. Both also go to Wundergound site. When Wunderground is not having issues. Currently soil moisture is not showing there.

Monthly compares
Rain fall (not including from sprinklers)

A Davis sensor recorded (note only one seems to make it to the cloud)

Note the Davis sensor moisture data is sort of inverted as it really reports dryness.

An Ambient sensor about 6 inches away.

Just for grins here is the chart for the same period for the one Wireless Tag that is still "working".

The sun can really throw off the temp readings. The moisture setting had been adjusted to match a meter but quickly started to vary. Finally just left alone. Note this is outside in a pot and the spikes appear to be sprinkler times.

This is the matching Ambient sensor

Though if you are using Rachio to water an area (no pots) then checking the soil a few times with a cheap manual $10 meter to get it dialed end might make the soil monitoring unneeded since the Rachio takes weather and soil type into account and adjusts as needed.

Things to monitor and control

People often ask for ideas of what to do next. I say if you can count your devices, you need more.

Some of the things I'm doing:

• Smart bulbs and light switches of course mostly controlled by motion and or contact switches
• Alarm system
• TV and other AV gear mainly via Harmony hubs
• Voice assistants
• 61 security cameras (at the moment and not including the Ring doorbell as it is cloud based) linked into HA motion sensors, alarm system and AV controls to mark video and send triggered cams to main stream video dependent alert and alarm levels.
• Indoor and component temperature monitoring, smart thermostat and window AC and fan controls.
• Weather monitoring
• Watering system
• Tons of monitoring, as that is the bit that people always seem to forget, Which tells me is something is offline or a battery is low or is signalling replacement as in the case of a UPS. This ranges to things like shows being short on a TiVo which would indicate the cable company knocked the tuner offline with an update again and over loaded CPUs on PC and updates need applied. I even wrote a program to make adding things to monitor easier.

Still on the to-do list:

• Find smart door locks that can tell me the doors lock status at a reasonable price. The weather is so variable here in central Texas, heat and humidity wise that exterior doors change shape enough that doors tend to need a push or a pull for the dead bolt to align so I've given up on actually being able to lock/unlock them. Wish now I'd wired the dead bolt holes with recessed switches.
• Open garage door on command though mainly for the "Goodbye" routine that puts the site into away mode only after checking the alarm is ready to arm. Seen too many glitches to feel good about it opening automatically on return.
• Smarter motion recognition. Ultimate goal is to be able to have it tell me what is sees moving and tell me where a pet was last seen. Would prefer a Blue Iris plugin or similar but might look at a separate system like YOLO I can send triggered images to.
• Want GPS tracking of pets when practical. Which seems soon.
• Of course wild critters are getting to be big deal here which accounts for many of the cameras. For example I recently added 4 just trying to find a snake that got in the shop. Lately feral hogs are the thing.
• Well and water softener monitor so know if the well has tripped, a filter has clogged or a pipe is leaking / burst.

Other stuff some have mentioned but not on my list:

• Smart or controllable blinds.

Alexa vs Google revisited.

As so many of these this started as a reply to a question on a Facebook group. In this case what is up the Google Assistant and Homeseer? After a rather lengthy response I thought I should flesh it out even more an post it here. I'm just comparing my experience living with them nt side by side features. In my opinion both Amazon and Google are trying to push hard into siloed home automation which is just wrong. Interoperability is the future and local control is a must. Expect to see local (cloud independent) voice assistants REAL soon.

I find I'm using Google Home less and less. Mainly I use Home when Alexa is one of her moods (had another badly weighted update pushed) but things seem to have peaked with Google Home.
For an example it used to be "tell Harmony to turn on TiVo."
Then is was just "turn on TiVo"
But then "Turn on TiVo" got you "Do you want to use Harmony for that?" "Yes". In diff voice "Turning on TiVo".
Then "Turn on TiVo" got you "Do you want to use Harmony for that?" "Yes." "I don't recognize your voice."
Now back to "Tell Harmony to turn on TiVo." and half the time it says it does not recognize my voice. Which is even more irksome considering how often it responds to someone on the TV or a podcast just saying Google without even the hey. Not to mention all the times I'm not sure what triggered it.

Sorry but having to remember which thing this week to ask to turn something on or off on top of the name for the thing I had to give it so it did not sounds like something else, is just is not going to get you market share. Especially if it keeps telling me it will not do stuff cause it does not recognize my voice. Granted maybe if I spent more time tweaking it I could improve it a bit but that kind of misses the point of it and I've not had to mess with Alexa other than adding devices and alias TV to TiVo after one especially bad update. Though I have to admit recently I added my "Good morning" "routine" so instead of just telling Homeseer to put the house in day mode it also tells me some fun fact and the weather.

I should note too Google is more likely to false trigger and to just not respond than Alexa if it does not know what to do. So it might be having trouble listening when you think it is down. Though Alexa is getting more like Home in that respect. I keep the notification sounds on so I know when they think they heard something but ignored it. Which is why I just do not get people that complain about Alexa saying OK. But then I work in IT so I kind of expect a certain amount of errors. Like saying "thank you" to end a follow on sequence it just makes sense from a programmer's mindset.

Anyway contrast the above with Alexa will generally get a voice command at least by the third try if I have not triggered it some other way before that. Some responses just make you go huh? Like the other yesterday when I said "Alexa , turn on video", a command to switch my main video stream from the triggered security cams back to what I was watching and unpause. Her response, "I can not find a device named lamp." Then too I started putting Echo buttons about as backups / quicker response for things like sending OK / Select to the device currently playing video or signalling the house to go into away mode. They light up green instead of saying OK so you know the command got through. Used to have an Echo button for TiVo skip too before they made that automatic. Planning on getting some more Prime day. Note you can only pair 4 to an Alexa and they are only reliable to around 20 feet though a wall. At 2 for $14 (on sale price) hard to beat for when you just need an easy to hit button. Like advancing to the next show while washing dishes with the volume up. Both seem able to pick your voice out of impressive levels of room noise but you can only expect so much.

Note too IFTTT has been having a ton of issues with Homeseer, among others, lately. So I wonder sometimes which end it is truly on. Or if maybe something in the middle is the iffy bit. Which why you always have back methods for every trigger no matter the interface. Even the local ones.

List of other interesting stuff

Links to things I might add later or might be alternatives for others that have not invested in different options already.

Irrigation

Scotts Miracle-Gro smart yard system

Lawn Mowers

HUSQVARNA AUTOMOWER® 450X
Craftsman 490-900-S068 Smart Lawn Connect Kit

Smoke Detectors

Halo+ Smart Smoke & CO Alarm with Weather Alerts

Is the cloud over? (And some related EOL issues.)

I posted the other day how IFTTT has been getting damn iffy lately and services have been changing and going under so I though maybe a list might be in order. At least the ones I know of.

Back on September 18, 2015 I started a Facebook group for the people affected by FitBit deciding to discontinue support for custom trackers and even a couple non custom ones with little notice and no way to export that data. I scrambled and built a scrapper for people to get their data off before they shut down the pages. Fitbit eventually added the custom trackers to their data export a while after they shut them down but everyone that had been using those trackers had to find a new service to use. Generally at a higher cost. 

Since then this what I've seen / dealt with:

Sleep Tracking Startup Zeo Says Goodnight

Awesome device just poorly marketed. Technically they went under in 2013 but people the app still worked and you could still buy them as late as 2016. I got mine from the bankruptcy reseller while there seems a possible comeback. There was some effort buy users to support and enhance the app and make replacement bands. Looks like there might even be a couple bands on eBay yet. Basically dead as a product not though.

Lowes' Iris vapor API and devices that never came 2014

I bought one of the v1 hubs in the home security bundle only to find most of the devices on display in the store and on the website were not actually available. IT also turned out you could not do much of anything without a monthly subscription. The company often talked about the coming API but it never appeared.

Lowes' Iris forced conversion from v1 to v2 2015

A few things that glossed over were:
You had to "upgrade"
You had to give them a credit card and sign up for a subscription to do the upgrade.
A lot of the v1 sensors and devices where not supported by the v2 hub.
And some other things pointed out by users.

Google Drive downsize sort of upgrade 2015

I bought a Chromebook Dec 2014 that came with a TB of Google Drive space. Instead of adding a year of service on they added a second TB of space. I had almost 1 TB of used space on Drive at that point so that was great. Over the next year I added about 500 GB more thinking I could just pay for both after the free year was up. But instead my option was to remove 500+ GB or pay for 10 TB which was alos 10 times the price. So I scrambled to research for the best alternative and then moving ~600 GBs to Amazon. Also about this same time they came out with a new version that you still had to switch back to the older legacy version to use some features.

Safety Recall of all Basis Peak watches 2016

Loved this. You could download temp and heart rate data at 5 minute intervals. But they had a few batteries go bad back before that was such a common thing and they panicked. At least they refunded everyone that sent it back before the service shutdown. I wore mine up about the last day I could. As I recall I kind of made out on this one as I got mine refurbed, wore it a good year before getting more than I paid for it back.

Withings to Nokia and back again. 2016-2018

Nokia acquired Withings in 2016 and then sold it back in 2018 causing ripples in service.

Charter Communications Merges with Time Warner Cable 2016-2019

Being able to log into partnered sites like AMC.com where messed up for a long time.

Crashplan deciding to ditch the home market. 2017

They suggested people either move to a business plan at a higher cost or go to Carbonite which I left for Crashplan because their app kept resetting before I could get my data up there. Fortunately they honored plans already paid for and I had about 2 years paid ahead at that point so it was not total panic but the Home plan had been unlimited for multiple PCs. The business plan wa my the TB. I had ~ 5 TB on there so my prices was going to go up about 5 times.

Amazon ends its unlimited cloud storage plan 2017

Got Drive files moved to Amazon and notified people of the new locations to find their files (house concert footage of local bands I recorded for them). Since the plan was 
unlimited I started backing up files going to Crashplan there too. Was close to getting about 4 TB up there when they announce they would be switching to 1 TB for the same price unlimited had been. So again I was looking at a 5 X jump to stay.

Google Voice half upgrade ~2017

Around this time they also "upgraded" Google Voice. Again you had to switch back to the old version to do some tasks and still need to now in 2019.

Wunderground devolution 2017-?

It seems to have started a bit after IBM acquired The Weather Channel who had acquired Wunderground in 2012.  They started redesigning the site. It seems after a while they decided to start dropping features instead of rewriting them. My first personal issue was not being able to get my Netatmo station linked to my account. Things really went downhill when they tried to shutdown webcam support. The backlash was so intense they changed their mind on that one at the last minute. Since then though they seem to be pushing nightly builds without any testing as bugs will appear, go away and then come back. And features seem to keep going away. The latest announced feature drop, as of this writing, is dropping the free tier version of API key. This really impacted the home automation communities.

G+ shutdown 2018

After jamming G+ into all their apps then ignoring it they decided to rip it back out which required creating profiles in some apps and other issues like circles going away in Voice. Not to mention needing to convert all the posts there to a new platform or lose them.

SmartThings / Samsung merger mess 2018-?

Samsung decided to merge SmartThings account with their by making them convert to Samsung accounts and new apps. This after SmartThings had already required people to start over when "upgrading" from a version 1 hub to a version 2. No migration plan like other hub.

LinkedIn did similar after buying Lynda.com merging users basically by having the Lynda users match up and link their private LinkedIn accounts to the company provided Lynda.com accounts or creating public LinkedIn profiles to use Lynda.com.

Amazon Wand 2018

While technically still alive and even for sale but these were never supported all that well and it is a rare day now they can even get a connection to a server.

Facebook stops automated posting 2018

Affected IFTTT applets made the news but it also hit other third party integrations.

Gmail / IFTTT split 2019

IFTTT being able to trigger on an email was how a lot of things worked so while it was just a subset of features in terms of usage it was major.

Beddit Cloud shutdown 2018

Mine actually died shortly before this so it was not as big a deal but still needed to scramble yet again to save what data I could. On the plus side Withings came out with a similar but better device recently that works pretty good.

Scanadu to shut down support for its Scout device per FDA regulation and customers are mad 2016

Not a great device but had promise. Unfortunately they basic just dumped it on customers then moved on to the next thing without ever collecting any feedback or anything.

Microsoft HealthVault service to end November 20, 2019

Google said it would kill its Works with Nest program 2019

Google acquired Nest back in 2014. Tried to sell it off in 2016. And now appears to be trying to boost their Google Home Hub by make it THE Nest gateway.

Near misses

Things I thought about investing time and or money in but did not really get the chance.

Nest is permanently disabling the Revolv smart home hub 2016 

Fortunately I did not add this one to the hubs I tried.

Jawbone 2017

Mine died fairly quickly so I'd already returned it for refund so dodged this one.

Lighthouse cam 2018

At least they offered refunds

Lowes' Iris v2 shutdown 2019

Since I'd already given up on Iris at this point it made little difference to me personally.

Jibo 2019

Again at least they offered refunds

Stringify shutdown 2019

Was just starting with this one to see if could replace IFTTT when they announced it was shutting down.

HealBe soon

Still sort of around though after Globe 1 shocking people and them dying left and right the company is all but dead. Surprisingly they have a third version supposedly coming out but reviews are not great for V2 and V3

And then there also is

The above of course does not include all the crowd funded things that either never shipped or shipped something late and basically non functional. Though I did originally get some of them via crowd funded projects. 

And all the price hikes. Streaming services spring to mind. Hulu dropping the free (commercial supported) tier for example.

Updates:

Dakota Alert discontinues the 2500 series Jan 19th 2019

They replaced it with a 4000 series that while having a bit more range of course will work with any older sensors and does not have a relay per channel like the 2500 receiver did. I have a whole post on this one.

5/28/2019, Automatic forcing users to get new hardware that requires $5/month or $50/year subscription service by August 31, 2019. 

Also requires new app, works with direct cell service connection instead of your phone and it appears does not support interaction with other apps quite yet. Technically you can use it up to 3 years for free but with virtually no features other than as an OBD2 reader. Reviews of the new model appear to be awful. The one bright spot is that they are cheaper and Automatic seems to be giving a discount to upgrade directly through them. Per emails going out you can get the new model for $60. $40 off the MSRP but just $20 off the Amazon price. ($26.59 if you include taxes in my case.) If you compare the subscription fee to other services like Hulu or G-Suite for example it seem a bit steep for what you get. Sadly compared to similar products it is actually on the cheap side. Of course if you live outside the city limits like me where cell service much less LTE service is spotty any of the cell connect only models may be of limited value. So I'm going to break down like I'm sure so many other will and get one at the "upgrade" to at least try before possible having to scramble in August to find something else. 

Update Just a year later Automatic shuts down all operations.

6/29/2019 Hue app splits into 2 versions along with v1 hub EOL.

I went into the Hue app last night to check something and found it not longer works with my v1 hubs. Seems last April for some reason they decided that creating a new v1 app was the best way to provide support for v1 hubs till they shutdown support April 30th 2020. So to continue to use my 3 v1 hubs with my phone I have to set them up all over again. And next April they may stop working anyway unless I upgrade them to v2s. I appears there is or was a migration option.  Though that seems to need the phone app to see both v1 and v2 hubs. Then too the v1s were only out 5 years so one has to wonder how long the v2s will be supported. I've ordered a v2 hub to try to see if it makes more sense to migrate now or relink the hubs to the new v1 app and wait for the v3s to come out seeing as how the v2 is 4 years old now. After all if it comes down to having to unpair and repair all my Hue devices to upgrade then might as well wait for the v3s. Especially in this volatile market where so much could change in a year. See more about this and follow up adventure.

9/6/2019 Best Buy is leaving smart home users in the cold, but its Wi-Fi freezer will still mostly work

Fortunately I did not get into the Insignia Connect framework. If you did, you will want to file a compensation claim.

9/20/2019 TiVo Rolling Out Skippable Pre-Roll Ads for Retail DVRs

After announcing not long ago they were going to stop making hardware they seem to be trying to make sure the brand goes away by adding adds to shows you record. Though even more oddly if autoskip is on, it is not supposed to show them. So unclear who would ever see the adds. It seems they have also announced a couple new models as well. The new feature seems to be it might stream to a Roku instead of being able to stream more channels like Roku does.

10/17/2019 Yahoo is deleting all content ever posted to Yahoo Groups

Though I have not really used recently, it use to big with the rescue groups.

10/28/2019 Leeo Smart Alert is shutting down and​ "network will stop working"

Had not heard of them before but from posts I'm seeing some are sad to see them go.

10/29/2019 Sony Interactive Entertainment to Shut Down PlayStation Vue

Heard good things and was thinking about switching my cable to them. Oh well.

12/8/2019 20 VPS providers to shut down on Monday, giving customers two days to save their data

Sounds like this one might have been more of a scam than another legit business shutting down.

12/20/2019 Some Under Armour fitness devices lose their smarts on March 31st

Not only is Under Armour effectively bricking some device it seems some of the data will be lost as well. Thankfully I did not buy any of their stuff.

01/21/2020 Sonos will stop providing software updates for its oldest products in May

Basically they are cutting loose anything made before 2016. Fortunately mine are newer though I mainly use mine for announcements and those are getting more and more errors.
Looks like they might be hearing the screams.

4/29/2020 Belkin killing their web cams. 

Yet another reason to not record to the cloud.

5/29/2020 Amazon Echo Look and Spot No More

11/1/2020 Discontinued access to Amazon Drive through Synology Cloud Sync and Hyper Backup

12/20/2020 Saying goodbye to Flash

As the article points out few sites still use Flash but some popular security camera brands use Flash in their camera web interfaces which are required to make changes to the camera configuration. Reolink for example is still saying coming soon as of 11/15/2020 Note in Reolink's case at least there are Windows and Mac apps you can use instead.

Some are even older school and require ActiveX controls so can only be setup via IE browsers.

Running lists of killed services.

Killed by Google

Dying but not quite dead yet

10/25/2019 Wink

While not announcing just yet, it sounds like Wink it about to go down too with reports of employees not getting paid and support calls going unanswered. On 5/6/2020 they announced they were going to a subscription model to cover costs and gave people one week to sign up. On 5/13/2020 they pushed that back a week. On 5/20/2020 they announced they would keep it free for now "because so many had signed up".  Can't be long now till they fold.

And then there are the breaches and accidents

All Data Breaches in 2019 – An Alarming Timeline