ZTechnical

Lingering thought (and their outage is now over after an embarrassingly long time)…

Belkin has such short-term thinking with this. They can either burn enthusiast customers, or they could invest in loyalty. If they would provide documentation and work with some open source entity (like Canonical), who could write a self-hosting server and possibly spin up one to assist us. Then they should release a final firmware update that talks to these servers and also provides a feature for installing third-party firmware in hopes that the open source community will step up and create it.

Although they are dropping support, that way we wouldn't feel totally abandoned and insulted.

there was no regex in ancient rome

At the time, these seemed good because Belkin has been around forever. They're not top-of-the-line, but they're ubiquitous.

I do have iOS devices in my home, so having it work with either their cloud or HomeKit seemed like a good backup in case something like this happens.

Devices configured with Apple HomeKit before this date will continue to function via HomeKit local control without requiring Wemo cloud services or app.

This worries me though. What if my light switch needs to be reset after that date? Will it connect again?

I'm savvy enough that I have these on their own firewalled VLAN, and I can get to them via Wireguard when I'm out (though I mostly use the app when at home). If they really are garbage now, I'll try to be optimistic about it since devices don't last forever, and I would have wanted to upgrade/replace these eventually. It's just terrible that it is so soon.

Since my friends and family do come to me for technology questions, I'll help them steer clear of Belkin in the future. It's a harder sell to get them to use non-proprietary tech. They are willing to pay more and replace sooner just to have everything in one app with no setup.

Even if the devices had continued to work, it was a pretty pricy endeavor. Knowing they’re obsolete in less than a decade means the cost spread over that few years is ridiculous.

https://www.belkin.com/support-article/?articleNum=317601
I unsuccessfully tied to get ahold of someone via chat on this page.

How hard is it to run servers? How much data does turning on or off a device even use?

They should have added one last feature to support community servers, so anyone could host them. Companies really don’t care about burning bridges.