Like I said earlier....there are many internet devices based on someone's services that are now orphaned because of shutdown/buy out/etc. There is a risk. Also internet connectivity is not guaranteed these days. If you like to see weather trends and the service goes offline....well you can't. There are cases of cloud service providers that have gone out of business without regard to the users' data. One in particular was a parking garage whose software was cloud based. There was a contract dispute which ended up trapping peoples cars in the garage for a month or more. However, for the beginner who wants a no fuss plug n play device and the cost is affordable...go for it....just keep in mind that they may not be there tomorrow. You get what you pay for. As for the cloud providing an anywhere ability to see the weather station......we can all do that with our websites. Should our web providers go out of business....we have the data locally on our computers and can find a new host to upload to. We are not locked in. Same goes for the software. You don't like WL....there are many other packages to choose from. The new XYZ weather station (or whatever) that is cloud based with its own software may be closed loop. Without their software it is a door stop.
Like y'all are saying, there's a lot of risk with all this "cloud" crap. Software apps, devices, email, all those cloud-based IoT's are vulnerable to the needs and whims of the sometimes nebulous operators.
On a large system, corporate in-house environment (whether sublet/leased or not), it has benefits, flexibility, and cost reductions.
For individuals, not so much, or not at all.
For an example, I got a nice (I thought) Seagate
wireless 2T hard drive, a Lyve device (wireless drives are pricey). It had come up on sale on Newegg a couple times at a very attractive price
, so I finally couldn't resist and jumped on one before they sold out again (yeah, I know to be suspicious of things suddenly getting 'moved').
When I got it I found out it wasn't quite what I thought (the item info online was a bit misleading).
Instead of being a freely accessible external drive,
it was bound to a Seagate cloud app, and that was dedicated solely to 'managing' your image files, via the cloud. Bull. This Lyve app would (if you let it) spider through whatever machine you connected to it, save a thumbnail of all image files (trust issue?), and 'manage/classify' them for you. More bull.
Last fall, after I'd had the Lyve for almost a year, Seagate sent out a notice (to registrants) that they were pulling the plug on the whole thing in December
.
Seagate was pretty good about it though,
they gave out some nice 2T external USB drives as compensation.It was a good idea, but terribly implemented (I hate "proprietary" crap)
Now to the Lyve device itself. It internally has to be an
ultra-small SoC computer system like an Intel NUC, et al., or a very upscale Raspberry Pi. All in a very attractive, small package (see poor pic below).
It has a full complement of I/O ports, including HDMI, wireless (and Bluetooth too IIRC).
It has a nice display screen on one whole side, a decent processor/graphics system, RAM, and a drive, 1.8/2.5" hard, or SSD(?).
No idea what operating system it runs on, but a custom Linux would be a good guess.
So it has to be a very nice ultra small system, if it can be HACKED and made to run Linux or even Windoz.FYI: Microsoft offers a FREE basic Windows OS for small devices, check a search engine or microsoft.com (forgot the name of it, it's mentioned on the Win10 Wikipedia pages; Windows Embedded or something)
I haven't yet opened it up and pulled the drive out for examination and reload, repurposing it, but this should be doable.
Anyone else have one of these orphans, or heard of a hack to make them run a usable operating system?I'm also assuming that the Lyve I/O, etc., is off-the-shelf stuff, and drivers will be available. Otherwise it'll take some dev work.
Hey,
parts is parts. One can rejigger almost anything.
If that doesn't work I'll just cannibalize it, it still has a 2T drive inside (~$80+-), plus what else? And it only cost ~$99.Hate to waste stuff, but such is modern obsolescence.
http://www.seagate.com/support/software/apps/lyve/Best Lyve device image a quick search turned up:
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