The Glow video calling device will no longer be supported by Amazon. It was designed to make it easier for children to communicate with friends and family remotely by making games and activities part of the process. In an email to users recently, the company confirmed that it will stop selling products at the end of the year.
The $300 Glow struggled to find an audience, possibly because kids can once again play with friends and family. If you bought one, you'll get a refund by the end of October, and Amazon will encourage everyone to recycle their Glow at no cost.
We must stop building products that rely on a cloud connection.
While Amazon is making good on customers' investments and even throwing in a free year of its Kids Plus subscription as an apology, this is just another example of the dangers of buying cloud dependent hardware
The launch of The Glow was a sign that Amazon was still figuring out if it would commit to the product. People spent money on it. It is now just an expensive paperweight, and those people are angry.
I have to remind myself to think hard before buying a product that is dependent on a cloud connection. If you can only control a device with an app connected to the internet, and if the company behind that app doesn't have a reliable source of recurring revenue, look somewhere else.
Companies run out of money and can't afford to keep their cloud server online. When Insteon went dark, it left its customers without a way to control their smart lights.
The company behind SmartDry ceased operations in June. SmartDry is a useful device that tells you when your clothes are dry and avoid over-drying them, but it is useless because it is stuck in people's dryers.
It can be that the hardware can't keep up. On November 30th, the Glow, Glow-C, andAwair smart air quality monitoring devices will no longer be available. It's because the devices can't receive firmware upgrades. The Glow-C went on sale in July of 2019. You get three years of use out of it if you were lucky. $30 a year is how much it costs.
The devices will still work as air quality monitors, according toAwair. You can't read the data for the Glow-C if you don't have the app.
The Glow isn't too old and the company isn't too cash- strapped to continue supporting it. It saw the writing on the wall and pulled the plug before it turned into a bigger problem.
At least the Glow-C could be used as a smart plug.
The glow was a good device. It had a lot of promise according to my review. I hope we see projector technology used in future devices from Amazon and others in the smart home.
We need to stop building smart home products that rely on a cloud connection. Basic functions with controls that are accessible need to be built into a product from the beginning. I have a lot of dead devices in my garage.
Even if the internet goes away tomorrow, the Nest Learning Thermostat can still be used as a thermostat. If the SmartDry had been designed to connect over a local protocol, it would have been able to alert you when your laundry is dry. At least the Awair Glow-C could be used as a smart plug.
There weren't many reliable local options when these products were designed. The arrival of Matter, a smart home standard that provides a common language for devices to communicate locally in your home, will make it easier for manufacturers to build into products. A newer, low-powered mesh protocol is used by Matter.
When a company shuts down its server, its devices won't work, because Amazon's Sidewalk network uses a low-bandwidth network for connected devices to communicate It seems nothing could be done to save the Glow.
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