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Update, Dec 21, 2:47pm: In response to customers' frustration, Logitech issued another statement today with instructions on how to enable private local API controls.
Many users of Logitech's Harmony Hub smart home hub and remote were recently met with a nasty surprise. The device's latest firmware update, version 4.15.206, reportedly cuts off local access for Harmony Hubs. As a result, many users who created home automation and smart home systems using third-party APIs haven't been able to control many, and in some cases, all of their connected IoT devices.
Logitech began pushing out firmware update 4.15.206 last week, its release notes stating that it addresses security and bug fixes. Users immediately flocked to Logitech's community forms to complain once they realized the systems they built up to control their smart home devices essentially became unresponsive. Users with Homeseer and Home Assistant APIs have reported parts of their systems broken, preventing them from controlling things like smart TVs, sound systems, and more using the Harmony Hub and its remote.
Last night, Logitech responded with an official statement on its forums, saying in part that the firmware update addresses "security vulnerabilities" and that those "undocumented" APIs that some have been using for home automation were never officially supported in the first place.
Source: Logitech disables local access on Harmony Hubs, breaks automation systems [Update]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday December 24 2018, @02:08AM
I might be the only one that has a different take on this. Reading into this, a lot doesn't make sense.
The harmony hub is a remote that controls other devices. It's an infrared device, and I'm guessing the hub itself was connected to a network, and you could then send commands to the hub to make it do work, information to the remote for display time notifications, and/or both.
Homeseer lists the Logitech Harmony Hub as a compatible device with their automation platform. Yet, they announced compatibility using unsupported and undocumented API capabilities. Umm, that sounds like a real dick move on the part of Homeseer and any company offering a paid product that uses undocumented and unsupported APIs. Fuck, YouTube made some changes years ago that really fucked things up in their API, but they were supporting the damn thing and encourage development. Sounds like Logitech never once offered documented support of their API.
Additionally, from the looks of it, API access is still possible, it just requires a websocket connection. Considering that Logitech said this was neccessary for security as well, I'm inclined to believe them that using their old API is just not a good idea.
Proprietary vs Open Source doesn't seem to apply here. If I was working on an alpha version of an API for some platform that the maintainers were not officially supporting, and the whole damn thing could be deprecated at a moment's notice, the same thing would happen to whatever product I was supporting. I would've been crazy for trying to make money off undocumented and unsupported tech. That would be something in a disclaimer to the customer too.
I think Homeseer deserves quite a bit of blame for misleading people with Logitech compatibility that was tenuous from the start.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.