Yeow! The 'Massacre at AcuRite Gulch'...
I sprung for a 5in1 Pro bundle with the Access, it probably awaits the same fate in a couple of years
.
A very similar tech parallel with the Smarthub was a Seagate "Lyve Drive" (that I bought) that is/was basically a self-contained local-cloud storage microsystem (like an Intel NUC, bigger than a Pi, an OS w/a 2TB hard drive/WiFi/display/etc).
It was marketed as a local-cloud storage system.
Seagate decided after a couple of years that it wasn't worth supporting, so they just gave a kill notice and later pulled the necessary cloud IP connection, bricking all of the Lyve devices.Seagate was decent enough to give a long warning period, provide a migration exit path, and they sent out
free 2Tb external drives as compensation. I'm still trying to hack my Lyve and turn it into a standalone system, failing that I'll just extract its' internal 2.5" 2Tb HD.
This kind of technological obsolescence is becoming increasingly common. Maybe the most prolific example are the millions (or billions) of cell phones made useless in many cases by tech changes.
Another cell phone scrapper-factor is the use of non-replaceable Li batteries (in many cases, sometimes you can unsolder one and replace it). I now have several of these damned swollen fire traps that lasted about a year or two when the battery died. The phones themselves are still quite functional, what a waste.
I hope y'all work out yet another work around with this latest AcuRite FUBAR.
This kind of stuff sucks. I think that most of us are...errrm...'senior types', we usually have an appreciation for durable stuff, keeping it running, classic cars and whatever. This rapid product scrap cycle is galling. Computer systems too. How many are running the latest absolute 'state-of-art' computers with the latest $1K+ Intel procs, etc? Why? Mine are all 1 or 2 gens behind (mostly HP biz-class), but do OK.