Bad news if you bought several Insignia-branded smart devices from Best Buy. The company has decided to shut down the back end systems that make them work — or at least work as a smart device. On the chopping block are smart outlets, switches, a security camera, and an upright freezer. If you bought, say, the freezer, it will still keep things cold. But the security camera will apparently be of no use at all now that the backend systems have gone dark. The company is offering an unspecified partial refund to users of the affected devices.
Best Buy announced this in September, and the shutdown date was last week on November 6th. Not all Insignia products are impacted, just the ones that rely on their app.
Anytime we talk about cloud-based technology, there are always a few people who say something like, “I’ll never rely on anything in the cloud!” Perhaps they have a point — certainly in this case they were right. There are really two things to consider: hardware devices that rely on the cloud, and data that resides in the cloud. In some cases, one product — like a camera — might have both.
Continue reading “Best Buy’s IoT Goes Dark, Leaving Some “Smart” Products Dumbfounded”
What are the downsides, I hear you ask? You might see slower speeds going across the network compared to a high quality SD card, particularly with the Pi 4 and its improved SD card slot. PXE does require an Ethernet cable; WiFi is not enough, so you have that restriction to contend with. And finally, this isn’t a portable option — you are tethered to that network cable while running, and tethered to your network to boot at all.
