They are like most companies amoral - they will lead by what management thinks is profitable / in the best interest of the company. I'm not sure how you can monetize a cloud service by just selling devices... you need to do something else like collect and sell data (if valuable), maybe push ads (uncertain if really works), or offer value-add subscriptions or some such.
THIS SUCKS....... Just when @adamkempenich had a bitchin app that worked awesome we get this stab in the back... I'll never buy another osram/lightify product again.
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Year and a half actually but I wonder if the lightify bridge will be bricked. They didn't say it would so maybe....??
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I'm not sure that is totally fair, but some certainly fall into that category. We expect the things we buy to get forever updates for free. What if the company you (meaning anyone reading this) work for had you do a project and paid you for it. Then any time they needed changes, they expected you to make those changes without getting paid.
Quite honestly, I think we need to stop expecting free upgrades for everything. Without ongoing revenue, manufacturers are forced to release a stream of new devices to generate new income. New devices mean old e-waste.
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+1
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On the one hand, I agree. It is foolish to expect perpetual support on a cheap device like these.
On the other hand, that is how they advertise it, or rather they omit saying how long they will support these devices. In that case, isn't it implied that the cloud will work forever? If they were to say "we will only support this for 1 year" would people still buy it? (probably not) How about for 10 years, is that more reasonable to give free cloud access and updates?
Of all the laws we have for disclosure, and all the many pages of fine print lawyer talk that come with everything from food to automobiles, how can these companies get away with this vague support?
To clarify a little - while I think all companies are amoral by definition I believe their leaders and personnel should not be.
With this stuff I also differentiate between products and services. I have no expectation or trust that a given service will be available in the future. On the other hand a product I purchase I expect it to function for as long as the equipment holds up and not be subject to the whim of some company's bottom line..
Any cloud component that is critical to the functioning of a device should be viewed with suspicion and not be an irreplaceable part of your system.
I may be overly paranoid about this though..
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They have a FAQ that talks about functionality, seems the local integration will probably still work, but the things that have me most concerned are 1) the lack of adding new devices (Eg I have a failure and grab a new device from my ‘extra pile of replacements’) and 2) lack of any reseting/gateway
Better section off a VLAN for that device to block any future updates if that's the case. I sure hope it's not. No reason for them to kill anything that's not cloud dependent...
I am going to do some serious packet sniffing on these in the next few months if OSRAM doesn't want to share their info. If anyone wants to get a jump start and decompile the android app for me, we may be able to learn some very valuable info from there.
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Have you contacted Osram to see if they will give out this info ?
Response of the year.
Yes, and no. It always takes 3 or 4 emails to get the right department there 
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AH HA, That's why I've been getting these devices on the cheap. 6 bucks for an RGBW zigbee bulb, 9 bucks for a BR30 RGBW zigbee,
and I hope prices continue to drop as they clear out inventory.
Mostly solid zigbee devices, outside of my gardenspots, which I had to exchange like 5 times for LEDS losing a color. Guess after 2021 I'm S.O.L.
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I know! I picked up strips for $17. I wondered why.
I thought it was odd that they were still maintaining the cloud for the lighting division they sold off. The lights are all manufactured by LEDvance, which isn’t going anywhere as far as I know.
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May have been included in the deal ....
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Here is what Lightify Support responded with. I’m glad they’re open to publishing everything!
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That is a very encouraging response. Hopefully they follow through and release it.
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Last chance to get your updates.
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I've been trying to update my hubs for the past week (all 20 of them) and none of them have taken the FW update. Anyone know if they will offer some offline method to update the FW?
