On 29 May, global peripheral giant Belkin will flick the "off" switch on its Wemo NetCam IP cameras, turning the popular security devices into paperweights.
It's not unusual for a manufacturer to call time on physical hardware. [...]
But this is a little different, because Belkin isn't merely ending support. It also plans to decommission the cloud services required for its Wemo NetCam devices to actually work.
"Although your Wemo NetCam will still connect to your Wi-Fi network, without these servers you will not be able to view the video feed or access the security features of your Wemo NetCam, such as Motion Clips and Motion Notifications," Belkin said on its official website.
"If you use your Wemo NetCam as a motion sensor for your Wemo line of products, it will no longer provide this functionality and will be removed as an option from your Wemo app," the company added.
Adding insult to injury, the ubiquitous consumer network gear maker only plans to refund customers with active warranties, which excludes anyone who bought their device more than two years ago. The window to submit requests is open from now until 30 June.
Customers will also have to provide the company with the original receipt, showing how much they paid for the unit. Though it shouldn't be too hard to fish out an Amazon invoice from an inbox, if you bought the unit from a bricks-and-mortar retailer, there's a chance you won't have that information to provide.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:36PM (4 children)
I bought and used a couple of the WeMo WiFi connected relay switches to control lamps & similar, after about a year I tossed 'em in a drawer and replaced 'em with cheaper Chinese versions (Smart Life) that are physically much smaller and have much better performing WiFi range.
In the recent unpleasantness, my only IoT gear that has flaked out has been my 'murican branded garage door opener (device unaccessible ~20% of the time, for stretches up to an hour, gotta go push the button on the wall instead). The rest has continued to function without a problem - don't know about the WeMos, they're in a box.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:28PM (1 child)
Meh... One day you'll wake up and your bank account is drained, you got fired for a post you didn't make on facebook about your bosses genitalia, your wife left you because of all the goatse porn she found on your phone, and there's 3 black vans with gov't plates sitting in your driveway. All because that Chinese smart bulb hacked all your wifi devices.
(Score: 5, Funny) by OrugTor on Thursday April 30 2020, @05:11PM
Fair price to pay for having shit that works.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Friday May 01 2020, @12:19PM
Do you live near a military base? There have been cases of garage door openers going on the fritz when the feds moved to different freqs. [google.com]
Some manufacturers offered freq conversion kits, IIRC.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @06:15PM
That sounds like you could have interference or range issues. Could be faulty hardware or wiring, but wireless is inherently unreliable and insecure..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Kitsune008 on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:39PM (6 children)
Four things are certain: the three stated, and IoT devices shall never be part of my home network.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Oakenshield on Thursday April 30 2020, @05:08PM (4 children)
You're probably not doing it right. I have a number of devices. I flash them all with Tasmota and point then to my Home Assistant (Hassio) manager on one of my Raspberry Pi's. If I need to make a change while I'm offsite, I run my VPN client on my phone and connect to my PFsense router. No leaks. No exposed services. AND NO RELIANCE on some cloud service that will disappear. There are a number of open source firmware projects for IoT devices that are in the users' control.
(Score: 2) by Kitsune008 on Thursday April 30 2020, @05:39PM (1 child)
I'm not doing it at all, and have no interest in doing so.
But if I were to do it, it would be a similar setup to what you describe.
Before retirement, I did network security for a living, and know how to do it correctly...no cloud or third party services required other than an internet provider.
IoT,Cloud services, etc.... Bah! Thin clients went out of style in the 1980's for good reasons, and I see no advantage for me to go way back to that setup.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:49PM
Thin Clients are not out of style. Just like Timeshare is not out of style.
All web pages are Timeshare.
All web oages are thin clients.
They are not created by your your system, nor are they showing you data from your system (mostly :) ). Now of days "fat clients" are these poor programmers trying to fit more processing by pushing all that work load via JavaScript or other "fucking large webpages" to your local machine to burn (steal) your processing power. That also makes you system more insecure since you are allowing a "foot hold" on your computer, so they can attach your computer and it neighbors.
IoT is nothing more than same game. Thin clients poor security having access to your network to crack your "home".
Los Vegas Hotel had an intrusion in their network by an IoT water heater for a fish tank in a restaurant. The IoT monitored the water temp and turned on an off the heater. Keep a log of the events. --ALL THAT COULD HAVE BEEN LOCAL-- but this was IoT and "BETTER"!!. Instead it was a "foot hold" on the internal network of hotel, and breaking came through it.
If you are going to have IoT, then seperate your network, so those devices are NEVER sharing your home real network. This includes TVs and other entertainment device. And do not let them use DLNA to access your windows boxes.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:38PM (1 child)
We have sent forth one of our precious offspring, to IT college. When they return we shall have the skills (and time?) to play admin to this level. We are people who expect devices we exchanged good coin for to plug-n-work, or be discarded like DRM-injected HP printers.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:30PM
Make more of those and you can start a cloud as a family business.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday May 01 2020, @04:00PM
I have a fair number of them (although I'm always looking for, or building, devices that have no cloud connections... live by the cloud, die by the cloud.) Devices that don't call home or otherwise seek the WAN, I don't mind having on my main network if I built them and so know exactly what they're going to do. Beyond that, you pretty much have to watch the network traffic from commercial stuff, and even then, there's no assurance they aren't just waiting a while to rain on your parade. So what to do?
The key right now, for me at least, is to have them on their own wifi network and that in turn on its own IP. That way they only pose a threat to each other. The cost of another WAN-facing IP will vary by ISP, but here, the cost was negligible, so WTH. 😊
The level of convenience for us is extremely high; we have a large space, and it can be a 60 foot walk to get to a light switch, or 75 feet plus a flight of stairs to get to the thermostat from the bed. It's really nice to be able to set the thermostat wherever we want it right from the bed, likewise kill any light we've forgotten by just saying "turn everything off."
IMHO, the whole cloud thing is 100% "doing it wrong", but for now, that's the way things mostly are. It reminds me of the idiot over-compression of audio - it "just happened" due to a confluence of strange user(listener)-preferences, and now we're kinda stuck with it.
When LAN-based speech-to-text reaches reliable, low-or-zero-cost performance levels, I suspect this will all change pretty quickly. Right now, decent speech-to-text pretty much requires a significant level of computing resources that isn't easily shoehorned into a small device. That's the holy grail of end-game IoT; break required ties to the WAN and things will be much much better.
--
What's the fastest way to tune a banjo or ukulele?
Wire cutters.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Booga1 on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:56PM
Well, would you look at that? Oh wait, they can't!
I am glad these IoT news stories are hitting so close together. I sure hope people who bought these bitch about it loud and clear to everyone they know so they can dissuade others from buying crap like this. If there's anything that makes it clear that you don't own anything that requires the internet to function, it's stuff like this where the company just tells you, "too bad, so sad!"
I noticed in their support page that "Canada and US customers will receive a prorated refund for each Wemo NetCam based upon the length of time left in the 2-year hardware warranty." So, you don't even get all your money back unless you live in Australia or the European Union. The page starts off talking up their "great customer experience has been a hallmark of the Wemo brand since day one" but they're twisting every cent out of you they can while they turn your hardware into trash.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:04PM
Belkin does not support anything that is not currently bringing cash flow, period. They are buy a good name to push quick cash solutions. Like Linksys was a good name in home networking, now another zombie in the Belkin stable.
I had an IoT device, a MONSTER Power Switch, used with my Christmas lights. Belkin bought it up and killed it off. Found out when setting up the next season. No email to notify of the shutdown. No local tool to take over functionality.
I have 4 IoTs in the house now, mainly thanks to wife. The only still working is cheap ($5) Amazon power plugs, for my daughter bedroom. Likes being able to heater (oil with ANALOG controls so can be turned on/off at power plug - now that was hard to find) and Christmas lights as stars on ceiling. These are connect to their own WiFi network, outside of firewall.
The another that in box and dead... Norton "Cloud" Security Router, again NO software update to make it a stand-alone router. I do like the 9" golfball look of the router.
Still using a Netgear Arlo Cameras - works OK, but EATS special batteries. We have it inside a bird feeder/house first to watch backdoor (WHY???) but then found it fun to watch the birds to watch just the birds. Near use to support them on their routers, now you must have a separate custom router just for them. That router is plugged into cable outside of firewall, too.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Subsentient on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:23PM (5 children)
If you buy this kind of crap, and the OEM bricks it, which they will, then you got exactly what you deserved. Don't give me that surprised face. You expected all these little pay-for-creeping services to have honor? This is capitalism. There is no honor here. No, this is humanity. There is no mercy here.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:31PM (3 children)
The Chinese WiFi relays I bought are about $9 a piece, work really well (integrated with Google Home, etc.) and, I suppose if they brick someday I'll still have been better off than attempting to "roll my own" with all the not only cash expense that entails, but countless hours fiddling with it to get it right. So far, I've got 8 devices, less than $80 invested, and they've been working well for a couple of years. All in all better mileage than I got from the X-10 setup I used back in the 90s. One of those controllers and relays worked forever, but most of the others crapped out within a year.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:28PM (2 children)
If you use
https://www.home-assistant.io/ [home-assistant.io]
which does not phone home and is 100% local install, you can install ESP8266 and ESP32 based gadgets using
https://esphome.io/ [esphome.io]
and the two interoperate and plug and play to a level that's actually boring and not very educational in that its too easy, you're not really learning anything. Its cool that it works so well.
I soldered a BME280 temp sensor to an ESP8266 and flashed the code and it just worked, immediately. The only fun you get to have is figuring out which I2C address your highly configurable sensor lives on, although they have troubleshooting systems to scan the bus to help out anyway.
There are no middlemen with this design, its all local. The entire internet can go away and I'll still see and graph the temperature of my lab workbench uninterrupted.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:01PM
And, that's the ideal - I'm perpetually pissed when Comcast takes a dump and my internal systems go down with them. On the other hand, my IoT dependent devices are all basically toys - if I just walk over to the outlet and push the button the switch will switch.
If there's an analyst warehouse somewhere in Wuhan monetizing the data they get out of when I switch my lights on and off, more power to 'em. My real complaint is the dependence on a cloud server that I just don't need - except in that 1/10,000 use case where the wife phones me while I'm away from the house because she can't find the button / figure out the software and I have to do it via my phone.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Friday May 01 2020, @05:58AM
Thanks for the info!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:18PM
The real surprise is I guarantee there will be amazon and ebay 3rd party resellers selling the devices for full list price after the servers are decomissioned.
Personally, I'd buy a device for $2 to $5 just to disassemble and screw around with the camera component. Is it SPI or I2C or something weirder? Is there a jtag connector on the board, maybe? Could be kinda fun. But I'm not going to pay normal list price for a bricked device.
Note that I'm just picking on amazon and ebay for fun; I guarantee there will be 1K legacy brick and mortar stores still selling them too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:32PM (1 child)
Well of course. If you don't want host your own infrastructure, you're at the complete whim of the company providing it. Be responsible. Host your own infrastructure.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:56PM
Amen, look at the "cloud" feeder for your pets. They just shutdown because of "COVID-19". I looks like they were trying to get out of the business after being off-line for a week earlier. Now they have something to blame it own, vs there own mismanagement.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:18PM (6 children)
What's wrong with getting off your sorry fat asses and flipping a switch a few times a day ?
The major causes of morbidity and death in first world countries are obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart failure and stroke, all overwhelmingly caused by poor nutrition and lack or exercise. And what do you do about it ? Freaking no-effort IoT switches.
I love technology. I've worked in technology all my life. Technology can provide invaluable benefits and immensely improve quality of life in a number of ways. But turning freaking light-bulbs on and off isn't one of them.
In a few decades you'll all be turned into fat, gross and disgusting maggots glued to your seats with nanobots continuously uncloging your arteries to prolong as much as possible your miserable, worthless, empty lives, while I'll still be ax-splitting my ten chords of firewood each year, well into my ninethies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:44PM (2 children)
Unless you're already a quadriplegic bed-bound person whose only ability to exert control over one's environment comes from such means. But got it - you're more than willing to give me cancer from secondhand smoke because you insist upon using a fireplace instead of a clean burning alternative. Oh, and you'll be shut out of the workplace because you won't be dedicated to work 24/7 the way the Cheeto muncher will be. Not to mention you will be dead from Covid from touching one too many light switches that a contaminated person did too.
World of grey shades, dude.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:55PM (1 child)
Do you even know what second hand smoke is?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:17PM
I smoke a cigar and my wife smokes my penis....right?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:20PM (2 children)
My grandparents had a wood stove with an electric fan to improve heat transfer in the 80s. 1980s.
Ideally, I could build you an IoT gadget that would flip that fan on when the temp was high enough and off when its cold. Why didn't my grandparents stove have a thermostat? Damn if I know. But I could build one pretty easy. Also if the firebox temp got to 2900F I could call the fire dept WRT your chimney fire. Also if the fire went out in the night I could ping your phone to wake your ass up and toss another log on rather than have to light a match tomorrow morn. And I could gather and sell aggregate data to retailers based on zip code estimating future sales based on actual hours of operation and MTBF figures. And I could sell aggregate data to envirowhacko organizations to predict air pollution based on wood fires and/or enviro benefits of not using clean nuclear and electric heat, or whatever axe they have to grind from either perspective.
The problem is the IoT scene is pretty sick (as in ill) right now. So you'll get underpants gnomes business models of extreme incompetence and the device will get powned by russian hackers and chinese gray market clones will have old buggy security holes and it'll not work out of the box and we'll shut down the servers before amazon delivers the box.
The point is IoT COULD be good, although competent management combined with race to the bottom business practices means it won't be, in general.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:57PM
And nowhere in my post did I claim otherwise. All I said is to use technology to improve people's lives, not to make them even more of a lazy slob than they already are.
But it seems like, whith some people, simply hinting at the possibility that maybe some technologies should not be used in some circumstances triggers a strong emotional, defensive, almost tribal reaction. The other replier to my OP is a perfect example of this.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @04:57AM
Sure you will, you Racist Republican who hates his parents because they make you take piano lessons!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:13PM (2 children)
The problem with this IoT business model is I'm not sure how they ever expected to monetize the PII. I mean... they were not seriously going to upload nudez to pr0n sites where they?
I'm just sitting here trying to figure out how they ever expected to run a profit off the private data that home security cams would generate and they could resell, legally, to ... who?
I mean... you could expect to sell home temperature data to public electric utilities as some kind of predictor for very near future electrical HVAC demand. Maybe not enough money to provide for the infrastructure but at least its a sane sounding business model.
Or you could sell weather sensor data like rainfall to ... retail home garden centers so they could predict and order suburban garden plants for sale based on actual measured rainfall drought killing garden plants. Again maybe not a profitable business model, but a believable business model with a realistic source of (small) revenue.
The IoT world right now is like the dotcom era of underpants gnomes skit from two decades ago where all the profitable low hanging fruit is gone so every business model remaining is all of the form of
1) Do something stupid that don't make no money
2) ...
3) We're all billionaires!
Seriously though, what possible revenue generating legal business model could there be in middleman-ing security cams?
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:27PM
Based on their support page, it looks like they were charging about $10 a month for their "premium" service. I guess that wasn't enough money for Belkin, even though the service stores videos for just 14 days, so there's no ballooning storage costs.
What I suspect really happened is that this iSecurity+ service was expecting a certain percentage of camera buyers would sign up for the premium service which would cover the bandwidth costs for their free customers. That probably didn't work out for Belkin since their customers are almost always the penny pinching types that only buy the cheapest item on the shelf. So, when the people that run the iSecurity+ service found they were losing money on the Belkin products, they terminated the contract with Belkin when it expired. I notice that there are no Belkin products on their current list of cameras that they support.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Vocal Minority on Friday May 01 2020, @06:05AM
I suspect with a lot of this big data stuff it is:
1. Slurp as much data as you can.
2. Merge with whatever else you can get your hands on.
3. Run your analytics over it an see what relationships fall out.
4. Look at what you have and see if there is something you can profit from.
In the olden days this would be a bad idea because you would just end up with a lot of spurious correlations, but if you have enough data and avoid over-fitting...
Just because you and I cannot think of anything doesn't mean it isn't there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @05:27PM
https://www.amazon.com/Clapper-Activated-Detection-Appliances-Technology/dp/B0000CGKLR [amazon.com]