Futurehome smart hub owners must pay new $117 subscription or lose access
72 comments
·July 29, 2025z3ugma
psunavy03
I don't know what needs to happen under the hood, but as someone with a Mitsubishi heat pump, if you could demonstrably make it a Kumo Cloud-beater, you'd probably increase sales. Mitsubishi supposedly has the best hardware out there, but their cloud solution S U C K S . . .
You can't even connect it to WiFi with an iOS 18 device due to a so-called "known issue" with iOS 18's Bluetooth architecture. Like what, I'm supposed to buy a new Android device just to hook up your dongle?
Supposedly there's some secret sauce their proprietary thermostats have that third-party ones don't to increase efficiency, or that's what the sales guys claim.
exmadscientist
There is this guy: https://clima.protoart.net/
It looks to tick a lot of boxes but isn't quite what I want, and is just expensive enough that I haven't pulled the trigger to test one out anyway. It seems to be well regarded if it does what you're looking for.
(I really only want to add wall thermostats to a new-built house that was designed for mini-splits for the beginning, so it has crappy remotes but no wall thermostats, and to have some button I can press for "all off" to make sure all the mini-splits are actually off. Other features welcome, but those are what I'm really after.)
AShyFig
This sounds really interesting! I'd love to see it when you're done.
I wasn't aware that my Nest thermostat was going to be End of Life'd, but I just finished replacing it with an older Honeywell/Zwave combo due to lack of features and general de-googleing. Would be great to do something with the hardware, which is really slick.
z3ugma
The goals have been 1. to help recycle hardware and keep it out of a landfill but more importantly 2. to have an open source thermostat with beautiful design. Nest cared a lot about the aesthetics. as do the people with whom I share my living space and for whom a thermostat has a minimum prettiness acceptable. The Honeywell/ZWave landscape has not shown itself to be "pretty" to me for the most part.
jsiepkes
Sounds cool! What do you think of the opensource smart knob https://github.com/scottbez1/smartknob ?
z3ugma
Oh I love it, I drew some inspiration for rotary encoder options from here actually. It reminds me of the older Senic Nuimo from about 10 years ago with a similar goal.
Reusing the Nest is about keeping bill of materials cost very low by reusing old hardware, and not complicating the supply chain with PCB manufacturing plus 3d printing plus metal CNC.
preachermon
there is also the M5 stack rotary knob (esp32)
https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-dial-esp32-s3-smar...
CamperBob2
Nice. "If you have the enclosure, we have the board."
z3ugma
Even better, I want to do a "swap shack" style where you buy a refurbed, built model and ship us your old model, which we can then refurb into the next user's home.
gchamonlive
Missed opportunity for the article to include the video Rossmann has on this: https://youtu.be/RwSkwh3nWv8
CaliforniaKarl
I think it’s worth noting that the company which is charging the subscription fee is not the same company that sold the smart hubs: Futurehome declared bankruptcy in May; this fee is being charged by its successor.
like_any_other
Are we to understand that it is legal to sabotage [1] products if you buy their bankrupt manufacturer? Do I have to care about the corporate health of the maker of every item in my house now?
And does the bankruptcy even matter, legally? The company had a business/contractual relationship with its customers. Selling that contract/relationship to someone else, even through bankruptcy, does not let them unilaterally alter it. E.g. if they had made promises, contractual or even just in marketing, a change of owner is immaterial to the other side of that contract/promise.
[1] This is not hyperbole, but an accurate description of destroying functionality that did not require company servers.
[2] False advertising is a crime, after all.
Pet_Ant
I mean, I think the answer to 1 is "yes". They wouldn't have bought the asset if they couldn't extort their customers. Now you at least have the option to pay to continue access, versus having no maintenance at all.
Is it ethical? I wouldn't say so, but I do think that is the economic argument.
like_any_other
> Now you at least have the option to pay to continue access, versus having no maintenance at all.
They locked the owners out of their devices, hence the bounty from Rossmann to "hack" them. They gave one option, but took one away.
> I think the answer to 1 is "yes". They wouldn't have bought the asset if they couldn't extort their customers.
It's definitely how the law is currently being applied, and they probably won't have legal trouble from it, but I argue this is a corruption of ownership law, and any kind of update that is against the device owner's wishes (that they are deliberately prevented from reverting) is equivalent to criminal hacking. I can't emphasize this enough - the devices in question do not belong to them. They sold them, these are privately-owned computers they are interfering with.
Especially in the case of bankruptcy - the device owners have no more of a business relationship with this new owner, than they do with a random hacker making printers emit goatse.
kube-system
If you have an sort of a services subscription with a company and they are dissolved during liquidation -- the most frequent outcome is that the service is no longer available for any price. The business is gone.
If you had a landscaper mowing your lawn and they die, nobody expects the person who buys the lawnmower at the estate sale to continue mowing everyone's lawn.
This isn't any different just because it is a different type of service. Cloud platforms are services and like any other business, they disappear... a lot.
like_any_other
Let's not conflate the cloud service, with locking the devices from their users and preventing even non-cloud-functionality.
It's like if the landscaper tried charging me for using my own lawnmower, myself.
tobr
It’s more like if they sold you a lawnmower, but kept the key to start it, and now they’re dead, and someone bought their key cabinet.
duxup
Sadly that demonstrates how you have to trust the first company ... and anyone else who might buy that company ... :(
throw7
The article says "purchased from the bankruptcy estate—50 percent by former Futurehome owners..." So that sounds like the same people/company no?
kube-system
Completely different company with some of the same owners.
bigmattystyles
What about the people? Are they the same?
owlninja
> The platform and related services were purchased from the bankruptcy estate—50 percent by former Futurehome owners and 50 percent by Sikom Connect—and are now operated by FHSD Connect AS.
msgodel
It doesn't matter whether it's shareholders or creditors in charge IMO. Neither party have your interests in mind.
If you don't have the firmware source and an unlocked bootloader you're only renting the device.
gruez
That might work for the average HN user that already has a homelab cluster with a dozen kubernetes services running, but for the average joe it might as well be dead.
fsflover
This is an old argument. FLOSS firmware allows consumer to pay to any external company to fix the device, thus breaking the artificial monopoly of proprietary software.
phkahler
So the company has even less claim to those devices it has damaged.
baq
My smart home actively avoids anything with a cloud sign and tries to avoid anything without a Zigbee logo for exactly this reason. There’s no way a Zigbee device could get flashed with a firmware which requires an external server.
ldng
Same here, but man, it's hard to find devices with zigbee ... manufacturers all want to sell you their f-ing cloud service. They heard it is more monetizable yet they don't really know how and end up shutting down the service anyway. Long live to (literally) programmed obsolescence. Annoying.
norir
It is hard to overstate how wrong they are doing things if it costs more than a dollar or so per year for managed configuration. I previously worked for a cloud managed device company and it was obscene how high the margin was on the mandatory software licenses we bundled with the hardware and we were also collecting a huge amount of data, not just providing configuration.
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patmorgan23
Is that including R&D cost and maintenance? Or just raw hosting cost? These systems are more than just code and need active maintenance and defense.
Sayrus
If the company went bankrupt and just disappeared, people would still be able to use their device.
vlod
Learnt my lesson with wemo and google nest. Google Home assistant seems to give garbage 50% of the time (see r/googlehome).
All in on zigbee and zigbee2mqtt connecting to my local ubuntu server (used for plex as well). I'll write damn custom react-native apps and sideload them onto my android phone then deal with these shitty companies again.
If you have the skills, it might be worth investing some time into this. It isn't as hard or scary as you'd imagine.
nelblu
> “It is regrettable that we now have to spend time and resources strengthening the security of a popular service rather than further developing functionality for the benefit of our customers.”
Based on all the data leaks that happen constantly on cloud connected, data harvesting services, I have zero faith that these companies care about security. These companies couldn't care less if they leak personal data online, but god forbid someone is trying to root our device or flash another OS, now suddenly we need to strengthen our security. Fuck these people frankly.
didgetmaster
It is one thing for a company to discontinue offering a service that they used to provide for free; but it is completely different to take steps to brick a device that would otherwise continue to work, if the user does not buy something not discussed in the original transaction (e.g. a subscription).
null
ryandrake
This is going to become more and more of a problem with all "smart" device manufacturers whose devices rely on them keeping a backend service stood up. These manufacturers will all eventually 1. go bankrupt, killing their service, 2. end/sunset the service in ways that nerf/brick devices, or 3. start charging for what used to be free.
Unlike traditional dumb devices (or local-only smart devices) we cannot rely on these things working as they once did forever. Best bet is to avoid them entirely.
tehlike
Homeassistant + zigbee/matter or local wifi is the way to go...
bshep
This is why if you have a choice you should buy devices that have ‘local only’ option.
Unfortunately the masses dont care or dont have the technical knowledge to taoe advantage of it
codecutter
Other thing I have started doing is to stop doing any upgrade for things that are already working locally. Example: no more upgrades for HP printer software.
duxup
Agreed, although if it has any online management / phone home / software updates, that can be removed.
In the end it's about trust if there's any other party involved. And you hope you can trust the next person who maybe buys the company.
somanyphotons
> that can be removed.
I'm surprised that there isn't more legal action from this behavior
sumtechguy
The thing is that may not have saved them here. They did an update to make it stop working. You would need to be local only and stay there and never use the online features.
kube-system
"Auto-executes code from the internet" sounds diametrically opposed to "local only"
This is one of the reasons I am working on an enclosure-compatible open-source version of the 2nd gen Nest thermostat. It reuses the enclosure, encoder ring, display, and mounts of the Nest but replaces the "thinking" part with an open-source PCB that can interact with Home Assistant.
Nest Thermostats of the 1st and 2nd generation will no longer be supported by Google starting October 25, 2025. You will still be able to access temperature, mode, schedules, and settings directly on the thermostat – and existing schedules should continue to work uninterrupted. However, these thermostats will no longer receive software or security updates, will not have any Nest app or Home app controls, and Google will end support for other connected features like Home/Away Assist. It has been pretty-badly supported in Home Assistant for over a year anyway, missing important connected features.
I've got the faceplate PCB done and working; the rotary encoder and ring working; and the display working but with terrible code with a low refresh rate.
I need to ship by October to beat the retirement date. Plans to get some regular development report-outs and pre-orders are coming quite soon.
It's open source, and uses ESP32-C6 so it can be Wifi, BLE, or Zigbee, whatever software you intend to load onto it.