Tech that stops working when the company kills it

invaderzim

Super Member
Several years back I bought a PlantLink setup to monitor the moisture level in our garden. It has a sensor that you stick in the dirt and a base station that it reports back to. Of course the only way to use it is to go through the companies website though. When I bought it there was talk of a water valve that could be controlled by it to allow it to water the garden whenever it was needed.

It never really worked that great; awhile ago there was news that the company was bought up by Scotts/Miracle Grow. That gave me hope that they'd get it working well and finally offer things like the water valve.

Today I got the email from them saying they are discontinuing service and support for it. Which means it is now a paperweight. Someday I'll learn but there is just something really stupid about tech that can't, under any circumstances, be accessed locally through your system. It always sounds good "access it from anywhere", "no need to install or update software" and then "We've decided to discontinue support (access)"
 
happens all the time.

google apps. apple hardware with built-in obsolescence (try upgrading to High Sierra on MBP 5,5)
Microsoft Zunes, old Nikon film lenses, old Canon FL/FD lenses, and thousands others.

now beware of today's new modern thingies that require you to spend hundreds for, say, a doorbell
video cam, and charges you a monthly fee for storage. or a security service for a monthly fee and
no video cam, or a car cam that needs you to be in the car if an event occurs.

ever buy gardening/lawn tools? just after you buy they change the 18V to 20v models, then 24v
models, and increments up to 80v. meanwhile they change from NiCd to NiMH (not too bad)
then Li-ON. then there's the recent lawn mower with three lead-acid batteries in series and
absolutely NO replacements in North America.

the rule is that you buy only things you can control. no web servers, no web storage from
the vendor. use your own NAS in the garage, hotspot wifi if you have to, your own cloud
storage (box.net, dropbox, oneDrive, GoogleDrive, etc - ABSOLUTELY NO LAPTOP
cloud services)

so don't pay extra for anything that could ruin your future use.
 
wifi is fraught with danger. there are two bands and lots of optimization based on the upper
bands. there are already thousands of devices that do NOT use the upper band. so
you must use dual band in the entire chain.

Just wait til 5G. and their planned enhancements. BUT look for what features they drop
as they upgrade.
 
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