For at least a few hours overnight, owners of Nest products were unable to access their devices via the Nest app or web browsers, according to Nest Support on Twitter. Other devices like Nest Secure and Nest x Yale Locks behaved erratically. The as of yet unexplained issues affected the entire lineup of Nest devices, including thermostats, locks, cameras, doorbells, smoke detectors, and alarms. Importantly, the devices remained (mostly) operational, they just weren’t accessible by any means other than physical controls. You know, just like the plain old dumb devices these more expensive and more cumbersome smart devices replaced.
While not catastrophic (locks still worked, for example), it’s a reminder just how precarious life can be with internet-connected devices, especially when you go all-in on an ecosystem. As of 12:30AM ET, Nest says it’s working to bring all devices back online and restoring full arm / disarm and lock / unlock functionality to Nest Secure and Nest x Yale Locks.
Source: Entire Nest ecosystem of smart home devices goes offline – The Verge
The dangers of centralised cloud based services
Robin Edgar
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