Logitech’s sensible dwelling graveyard claims one other sufferer
It’s time for one more unhappy episode of “Sensible Residence Graveyard,” with Logitech warning customers of its POP line of sensible dwelling buttons that their gadgets will likely be rendered ineffective in a matter of days.
POP Sensible Button house owners started sharing the end-of-line emails from Logitech late final month, which famous that the buttons would stop engaged on October 15, giving them solely barely greater than two weeks’ discover.
“For near a decade, we’ve maintained the POP ecosystem, however as know-how evolves, we’ve made the choice to finish assist for the machine,” Logitech’s e-mail reads. “As of October 15, your POP button(s) and the related hub will not be supported and can lose all performance.”
Logitech added that it will give POP button house owners a promo code giving them a 15-percent low cost on Logitech and Final Ears merchandise (Logitech owns the Final Ears audio model).
Irritated POP button house owners on Reddit didn’t maintain again in regards to the prospect of their gadgets being changed into paperweights.
“This is the reason, ‘native first’” wrote one consumer, whereas one other complained, “12 buttons and three hubs in my dwelling are going to turn out to be stunning ineffective [pieces] of tech. Why?”
We’ve reached out to Logitech for remark.
First launched roughly 9 years in the past, the Logitech POP system consists of a spherical, flat POP button and a hub that connects the button to your native community. Every POP hub may assist as much as 18 of the buttons. A POP package that included a hub and a button price $60, whereas extra buttons went for $40 every.
You might program the buttons to set off as much as three totally different smart-home instructions through a single-, double-, or long-press.
The unique POP buttons had been appropriate with quite a lot of sensible dwelling ecosystems, together with Philips Hue, LIFX, Lutron Caséta, Sonos, Belkin’s WeMo model, and Insteon, amongst others. The buttons additionally labored with Logitech’s Concord common distant hub. A separate HomeKit-compatible model of the POP button arrived in 2017.
Logitech’s choice to nix assist for its POP buttons comes amid the corporate’s rising ambivalence in direction of the sensible dwelling.
Earlier this 12 months, Logitech chopped assist for its earliest Concord remotes, which may nonetheless work however can not be reprogrammed. Logitech bought the Concord model in 2004 however stopped making the remotes in 2021, though it’s conserving the servers on for newer Concord merchandise—nicely, for now, anyway.
Two sensible dwelling merchandise that Logitech does nonetheless promote are the Circle View Doorbell and Circle View Digicam, though the corporate’s comparatively new CEO appeared unsure final 12 months whether or not the gadgets are nonetheless out there. (They’re, The Verge later confirmed.)
