- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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Lame move. That being said, I never use the app. It’s very easy to set the temperature without it.
It is utterly bullshit. But is the app required for using the device?
Also
The subscription fee will only apply to people who make an account after August 21. Those who downloaded the app and made an account before August 21 won’t have to pay. But everyone will have to make an account; some people have been using the app without one until now
I have one and I can use it without the app
Better make an account in the next 5 days
You can set the temperature and the cook time on the device without having the app at all. The biggest benefit of the app is that you get a notice when the water is to temperature, which for certain more sensitive foods is needed to put the food in. (If you’re doing a 24 hour slow cook, it’s not really needed, but if you’re trying to do something with more precise cooking lengths, you don’t want the variance of starting water temp affecting how long the food is in the bath.)
Friendly reminder for others that you can setup this quite easily with home assistant and conditional notification alerts. I do it with my govee. Open. Source. Everything.
Is there a bridge? I’d definitely be interested in that.
Just need to configure Bluetooth and the govee integration.
I looked into that and you need to build a Bluetooth bridge out of a ESP32. Pretty easy once you have the dev platform set up, but not for your average Joe.
There is an anova integration, but depends on their cloud service. When they stop supporting old devices, they will no longer function.
That’s what I understand anyway.
No mine connects right to my pi with Bluetooth already present. Just bridge and go!
So it’s not as bad as it seems, at least.
Unless these people paid a premium for this kind of “smart” device vs. the cost of a basic version.
I think the bigger issue is that they’re bricking all support for the oldest models, trying to force customers to abandon a fully functional device just because they want more money.
The app subscription fee is obnoxious as all get out, but punishing your oldest customers for your profit margins is what’s a bit infuriating.
At least, imo.
Honestly, after a decade of keeping compatibility and stuff, and that the sous vide still works fine without the apk, I don’t really see this as much of a big deal. An apk for a sous vide is nearly useless, anyhow. What are you going to do with it?
It’s more about the principle. Why is it ok for a manufacturer to remotely disable a feature that was bought & paid for by a decades worth of customers?
Now that they’ve done it once, what’s stopping future attempts to gin up higher profits using the same tactics?
I don’t think anyone here is angry enough to go all Kid Rock on their Sous Vides, but I do think there are plenty who will look at a different brand when it is time for a replacement.
Well they’re on v3 now and this ends the version 1, so I doubt they’ve sold the v1 for the past 5 years or so, but again, it’s not an apk that you need to use it. If it were a device like a garage door opener that let’s you open/close or see when the door is opened or closed I’d be bitching up a storm. Same if it were like a door deadbolt to lock/unlock your front door. But a water cooker? What do you need the apk for? It couldn’t functionally do anything over bluetooth to be of any help.
Would you buy a refrigerator from a manufacturer that wanted to make the ice maker a subscription service out of nowhere?
I get that the app isn’t a requirement for the device, but neither is an ice maker required for a refrigerator to function as designed.
They’re both features advertised as part of the original purchase price. Why does one get an expiration date out of the blue?
The people who are likely to be losing Bluetooth functionality are also the most likely to be from the original kickstarter batch.
Even if some-many of them have already upgraded to a newer model, that’s still one hell of a statement to make to your original backers.
Except, prior to this announcement, there was apparently another statement from Anova that you can’t control the first gen ones.
the announcement follows an Anova statement saying it will no longer let users remotely control their kitchen gadgets via Bluetooth starting on September 28, 2025.
Enshittification strikes again. 🤬
Other than my computer, phone and xbox, I own nothing at all that can connect to the Internet. It’s incredibly stupid.
I have a smart TV and a Bluray player as well, but other than that, only phones, computers, and my Switch connect to the internet. My next TV will likely not be smart, because screw ads, and I’ve ripped all of my Blurays.
Why does a Blu-ray player need to connect to the Internet?
Bd players need internet as they only have keys for the discs made before they were made. So if you stick a newer disc in it won’t play until it gets updated.
It can play Netflix and a few other streaming services. But more importantly, I was able to stream videos to it through DLNA.
Oh, that’s cool!
I’ve stopped buying TVs. It’s difficult to find a dumb one nowadays. I watch on my phone or my computer monitor.
I just dont connect the TV to the internet and hook a separate media center up to the HDMI port.
Would be nice, but I have kids, and it’s really hard to watch a movie together on a phone. I need another soon-ish, so I’m going to look into hospitality TVs and projectors.
Why not just buy a TV and not connect it to the internet?
That’s the backup plan, yes. I haven’t looked at newer TVs recently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they still had some kind of ads even if they don’t connect to the internet, or they require connecting to the internet to activate the TV or something dumb like that.
My current TV only connects for Netflix, and I’m this close to cutting that out (just need my wife to finish her series). Everything else is on my Jellyfin server, and if I can get everyone to switch to that, I won’t need any kind of internet connection for the TV.
My last two TVs were dumb ones.
It is getting harder find dumb TVs because the smart stuff included with most TVs subsidizes keeping the initial price low. Manufactures are betting millions of dollars purchasers will sign up for the monthly apps.
Buy smart TV. Open the back. Remove WiFi card.
Purchase cheap Chinese mini PC, put Kodi on it.
That’s all you need
That’s not always easy, sometimes the WiFi is on the board itself and not just an add-in card. Or you get annoying warnings or something on the TV.
Commercial TVs will probably last a lot longer than regular retail TVs, so if I’m not going to be using all the features of the TV, I might as well spend a bit more and get something that’ll last.
I own some things that can, but that doesn’t mean they do.
My bloody dishwasher asked for my wifi password when I first connected it.
I have one of these. The sous vide cooker itself is very nice and easy to use, I’d highly recommend it. The app is a bit clunky and not necessary to use the device. I certainly wouldn’t pay $2 a month for it.
The app lets you set a temperature and cook time, but you can also do this using the buttons on the cooker. Sometimes the WiFi pairing is finicky, so honestly I skip the app half the time. The app also lets you view and write recipes. I guess the big advantage is you can click “start cooking” and it automatically sets the device temp and time, but doing it manually isn’t much harder. I’m also not wowed by the in-app recipe selection, and generally just get recipes from the internet.
I bet the app requires cloud hosting for it to run, and its starting to eat away at the profits they made.
If it needs nothing but bluetooth, then this a pure money grab.
It use to operate only off of Bluetooth, & then they added single band WiFi. They just added dual band WiFi as a new feature & are now removing Bluetooth functionality completely.
Absolutely a cash grab.
Usually, if it needs cloud hosting, it’s because they’re collecting your data. That presumably is a revenue stream for them.
I have one of these, and I haven’t touched the app. Works perfectly fine without it.
For those of us on Android, can’t we download the old APK which still talks Bluetooth and just never interact with the web/wifi for these?
The app phones home to access recipes.
Maybe it works without access to the server, but maybe it just refuses to do anything.
I forgot my ANOVA when I moved this summer. Now, I’m not that sorry I did.
I have never bought an appliance or physical product that requires an app to use, and I never will until our society has deteriorated to the the point where there is no alternative to that in order to get by in it. It’s almost at that point already with smartphones but for now it’s still possible to get by without one.
yeah…ummm…no
Lol. Hell no.
The wifi ones work with Home Assistant so you won’t lose remote features. The bad news is you have to run home assistant and set it up.
As for the BT only version you need more work and a BT proxy. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/anova-ble-control-via-ble-proxy/550295
The original models will. While Home assistant has an Anova integration, it is cloud dependent and it’s the cloud that will discontinue support. As I understand it.
Local control uses a Bluetooth bridge which I guess is my next project.
BT Proxy Bridges are super easy to make. Just flash a esp32 with the premade package and power it. I have one on every room of my house just so whatever I have will just work everywhere.
This is lemmy and so I understand it but flashing an esp32 is not super easy for 99.9% of the population.
True but this was in response to the previous post where they stated that are about to make one. My original post I stated the BT proxy is more work.
Yup! I have the stuff, just haven’t gotten around to flashing one yet. Working on a wind meter at the moment.
Wait
“Our community has literally cooked 100s of millions of times with our app. Unfortunately, each connected cook costs us money.”
The cooker, It’s FUCKING Bluetooth. It doesn’t need to call home, it can’t call home. The App, It has a list of 35 different sous vide recipes that could live on the app. The app has no business calling home, they don’t need a server.
It’s a cooker. Why the hell does it even need bluetooth, let alone an internet connection?
I have something similar, but wifi. Never even tried to connect to it, because you just use the buttons to set temp & time.
I can imagine, though, that an app might have buttons for ‘eggs’, ‘yogurt’, ‘steak’, etc. Or maybe let you program temperature-time sequences. Or let you check how much time is left from the next room. Conveniences. Definitely no need for them to phone home, though, except maybe for an ad-driven ‘recipe of the week’ type thing.
So it can notify you when the water has reached the set temperature or the time you set for cooking is up. Which can be handy. However, I found the BT very weak on my Anova and it would lose connection when I went into my home office a mere 25’ away, so I stopped using it. There’s actually no need for the water to be up to temperature before you put your food in, and food can sit as long as you want; half the point of sous vide is to be able to hold food at temp without overcooking. So you don’t really need the timer either.
And if each did cost them money - they’ve been paid when the stupid thing was purchased!
Yeah, it’s a $200 heater. Probably $30 in parts. You can run a small cluster for the profit in a few sales a month.
They need if they were to push firmware updates via the app that are then installed over Bluetooth, like some headphones do. But that should be a free service, and also optional. I don’t really see any groundbreaking functionality added for a device that’s basically a submerged motor with a temperature probe.
Firmware updates should not cost a subscription fee and could open them up to lawsuits.
Temperature Temperature set point Deadband Heater power Time Display temperature Display time
This can literally be handled with two non-microprocessor integrated circuits and $5 in other electronic Lego components.
It doesn’t need firmware. It’s a $200 oversized fish tank heater.
Even in that case the app doesn’t need to phone home. It doesn’t even need an internet connection on its own. You’d have to download the update yourself and then use the app to apply the patch, which is less user friendly to not-so-tech-savy users but possible. Just send an email with the necessary information to users who have subscribed to receive these kind of updates.
It’s a decade old cooking appliance .
What possible firmware updates could it need at this point?
Honestly the Bluetooth app is dog shit. Haven’t used it in years because it’s far easier to just roll the dial. ANOVA should be paying me for distress.
