They made me WASTE $10,000! Pt. 2 

Add this to the "companies that Linus absolutely hates, but cannot change" list, including TeamViewer

not mentioned in this is that PROVIDING FIRMWARE UPDATES FOR SMART HOME STUFF IS *VERY* IMPORTANT FOR SECURITY REASONS!!! think about how much smart home crap gets hacked because it's out of date and has a dumb security hole in it that could have been patched in oh yknow 4 years of updates

They are one bad security breach away from having a really bad day. Why didn't you update the firmware to patch the security flaw? Oh, that's right... they won't let you.

Actually, now that I think about it. Linus's reach could actually affect their sale volume. If enough of us reach out and be like "Well I was going to buy until I seen this video"

With the way Git works, there's NO excuse for failing to have every version available unless it's got known, horrific vulnerabilities. Also, as a professional software engineer, I have a wholly different take on IoT. It goes like this: If the things you /depend/ on, themselves depend on things that are unreliable, or even reliable but subject to change, that's a very precarious situation. The idea is basically that, for some reason, something as simple and well known as light switches ... can be made non functional through software. Everyone thinks about IoT "smart" stuff in terms of the way it changes the interaction when it works. I want you, especially doing labs stuff, to think in terms of how it changes the interaction when it doesn't work. Internet's out? Can I still use my fridge? Company went out of business? Do I have to buy a new toaster? These are showstopping problems that IoT as an industry is sort of ... ignoring, at the moment. I will also say this on the sourcing of firmware: Give GE a call. Seriously. They are the "customer" of Jasco. They sell these switches as their own product. Say what you will about Jasco's PR in that video, but it's GE's name on the label, so GE cares /a lot/ about how this looks. More importantly, it's General fucking Electric. This is /the/ engineering company, period. Their providers can, will, and should do /anything/ they ask, without exception. The contract is /that/ valuable. So if GE says "we need a firmware pipeline" ... then there will be one.

"the squeaky wheel gets the grease" This is the modern business model. This is true of most companies right now where if you dont complain publicly they wont do anything about it.

This reminds me of what my uncle, an engineer in a machine tool factory, said: "Never speak to a Salesman or the Management when you want to know everything about a Product or need Accessories! Only speak to the Technicians who develop or service the Product ! Only buy Products whose Developers you can communicate directly with."

Yeah, Linus's rant is justified because it speaks about idiocy at scale, also smart home devices are notorious with their lack of safety patches etc. not letting people update them is even more crazy if you factor that in. I don't think light switches in particular can cause a ton of trouble, but they just might and it's a matter of principal.

Started with a W and ended with a massive L, Linus really said Jasco pulled a wirtual

Surely the "smart hub" would be interacting with some kind of API to get the new firmware, and you could use wireshark to figure out where it's connecting to so you can manually access the firmware files without the smart hub.

0:30 Luke: “you hired Colton” - best part of the show

TBH I'd be trying to find a consumer protection law to sue them under. The product does not work as described. They are readily able to make the product work as described, but decline to do so.

Cyber Insurance companies adding Jasco to their list of 'dont install these' products right now.

maybe Linus should call GamersNexus to go to Jasco corporate headquarters and pull a Newegg

I use motion sensors throughout my house to trigger a switched automation called business time, that turns on and changes the colour of an RGB lamp in relation to the distance the kids are away from our bedroom. The final warning for my wife and I is rapidly flashing red. I love home assistant 😁

I can't tell you how many times I've been held back by poor website design or gatekeeping software, etc. You are the man for standing up for the little guys.

You’d think they’d just update it through an app that directly installs the update to the device(s) without the customer ever having possession of the firmware. To my knowledge, that’s how Belkin updates Wemo products, the app tells you there’s an update available, and you choose to update or not, but there’s no way to get ahold of the firmware itself.

Regarding Jasco, here are my thoughts on why they initially chose not to provide firmware directly to end users: 1. The firmware is linux based and all libraries in use are only available under the gpl license, not the lgpl license. Which means if anyone looks at that firmware, the entirety of the source code used has to be open sourced to remain compliant with the gpl license. 2. The firmware update process is so poorly written, that the device can be bricked if the wrong firmware is applied because there's no checks done to make sure the firmware being applied is for the correct device 3. The firmware being distributed though hubs is due to them charging for firmware updates, either by the end user paying a subscription fee to the company that makes the hub and the hub then pays Jasco a reoccurring fee for access, or the company that made the hub only supplies firmware updates for a certain amount of time after purchase, and nothing more beyond that. Either way, Jasco gets their reoccurring revenue, and you will own nothing and be happy about it.

I was thinking about getting these switches but now I’m not so sure will have to wait and see what the fall out is

the crazy thing is that in theory the technology for a lot of home automation is actually fairly simple and has existed for a long ass time. it just feels like everyone fucks up implementation

Dbrand has a real opportunity to make a bunch of light switch skins here.

Linus and Luke, I really like what you said about if the send you with an NDA the firmware. You'll find a solution to your problem, I'm sure, but the majority of end users, don't have the publicity to force them to do in similar cases. And that's bad for everyone... The idea behind free and open source looks like the only way to keep something through time.

Good on Linus for saying "fix it for everyone or I'm out".

"You hire Colton" For f@ck sake I was trying to take this video seriously 🤣

I work at a home automation company who uses jasco switches and I find this fascinating. I'm glad this is is causing them to make changes for the better and I hope other companies follow suit

Good to know! I'm having more clients interested in smart utilities, so I'll add this to the "do not recommend" list

My first thought was: They'll want to sell him the firmware update.

Use the Shelly relays and dimmers for this. You can use whatever switch you wish and can use many other things like motion or temperature to control them as well. They have a built in web server and simple api to integrate them to other services. They are really simple to add and manage in Home Assistant as well.

Oh Linus, this is just the tip of the iceburg. I deal with companies like this all the time. Like alarm systems by Insight/InnerRange. They will not give any firmware, installers or even allow me to install the software on a new machine without bringing in an approved installer to do it for me and paying their hourly rate. Allied Telesis have no public download portal. Need to have a support contract to get access to firmware files. Fortigate, need a support contract to get firmware. It just goes on and on. Please use your platform for this good change!

Just curious, but is this even legal? I don't know much, but I feel like selling a product that basically doesn't do what it's supposed to out of the box, and ontop of that, having no way/guarantee of getting it to work, is probably against the law. Especially when they admit and willfully will not help you because "we said so". Again, I ain't a legal expert, but for a 10k product, I'd be looking at options to have em fix it, or court.

It is one of the reason I don't trust home automation stuff in a cyber security perspective.

I like to imagine the Situation in that company right now. Customer Support: "we told you so!" Engineering: "we provided the software... Where did you put it?" Marketing: "we told them about the awesome software they can't get" Some Manager somewhere: doing the walk of shame with the USB Stick that has the Firmware on it. Legal Team: "why did nobody tell us that you wanted to publish this Software?" I'm guessing they are using some Software in there that comes with some Kind of liability. Open source license or paying for something that they are trying to avoid.

I would kill to have a recording of Linus' call with customer support.

Even beyond simply providing updates, the whole reason you need the update in the first place is that the switch does not work as expected, so what you really have is 100 defective switches that should be replaced at their expense 😅

I'am so glad that there is a relatively new law in Germany (and i think EU in general) that demands from manufacturers to provide software updates for multiple years, depending on the product type. On average at least 5 years.

I've experienced this from the developer side when you have management that is non-technical, risk-averse, and views themselves as superior and smarter to their developers. It's infuriating and I know no way around it except leaving and working somewhere else. 🙃

"I am going to try to find a sponsor; maybe someone with, you know, an aditude, chip on their shoulder, someone a little snarky," Oh cool! Is DBrand going to start making light switch skins?

The real question is how did Linus end up with hardware that is so outdated? Have these things just been lying around a warehouse floor?

You spending $10k on broken promises is worthy of a class-action lawsuit. LAWSUIT-UP!

You’ve perfectly described the cellular phone industry in the USA back in the early 2000’s. OS developers releasing new firmware, and manufacturers and cellular providers deciding what firmware you get.

I love that Linus can, and does, call out stupid bullshit. That in and of itself could be a full time job. Thank you.

4:12 Luke, I've been at that position you are mentioning here (not Jasco of course) and it's frustrating to put cognitive capacity to engineer a product be less user friendly. Thank you for bringing this up

Another important feature to consider when having smart switch + smart bulb combination is to be able to configure the switch in detached mode (when you press it won't trigger the on/off relay) so it will always provide power to the smart bulb. Then, have the switch press action tied to call the smart bulb's API for turn on/off. For example, this is how I've got it setup in my apartment with Home Assistant: - normal momentary wall switches with a shelly behind them - smart bulb/light fixture OR dumb light bulb in some rooms - for the smart bulbs I have defined the following switch press actions: - short press -> toggle light state - double press -> toggle between warm temperature & low brightness / cool temperature & high brashness - long press -> toggle relay state (to be able to turn on/off the power to the bulb)

You should do a video about this. Not about Jasco itself, but about how important updates are, and that it should be very easy to updade. Maybe showing people how to update products that are used everyday.

I spent +10 years in consumer electronics at a fairly senior level, the main reason we wouldn't release software for a device like that? It's not security or open source issues, it's because consumers will brick a percentage of them with bad updates. These devices rarely have enough memory and flash to have two images at the same time, so when you're updating you're having to overwrite the image in place. If you have an update mechanism that isn't assured to get it right, first time, and this is over janky wireless remember, then the chances of failure are greater than zero. If you allow a consumer to brick a product then you'll get more resentment and negative claims against you. It sucks, but they're stuck between a rock and a hard place, IMHO.

Solid marketing plan. Keep customers buying hubs in the hopes they eventually get the firmware they need, like those Gatcha machines in Japan. I mean it works for mobile games so why not home wiring solutions. I can't think of any possible negative repercussions to that strategy.

Meanwhile, everything from the TRADFRI (IKEA) Zigbee lineup can directly be updated in Home Assistant via native OTA. They don't produce switches tho. OSRAM, Philips, Sengled, Ubisys, Ledvance, Lightify, Smart+ (and IKEA) are for now the only products supporting direct OTA in Home assistant.

Linus: goes Karen (justifiably) Luke: incites revolution

thank you linus for letting me know to never buy a jasco product :D

Just imagine if this was software that could be exploited and have security issues, on something say like an IOT device... oh sh!t

Excellent video. Sorry to hear about your $10,000 JASCO switch problem, hope they will help you resolve your firmware issues. If not looking forward to a new video with a new manufacturer. Always enjoy your informative and fun videos.

I just bought 5 of these to use side by side with my existing Inovelli switches. There are no other z-wave switches with motion sensors built in. I don't need the motion sensors to turn on or off the switches, mainly want the motion sensors to trigger other things and don't want to have to replace batteries or run additional wires for stand alone sensors. Hope they release the firmware!

man that company is dumb

Surely if they sell switches with nonfunctional motion sensors due to their own sabotaging, you can get a refund or sue them?

i am so happy to have open source solutions here in europe where divices from diffrent manufactures work together in one system and just work.

The lights being able to turn off on you, or turn on when watching TV at night, that's why I have separate motion sensors and use NodeRED to control thr logic for the motion sensors. Set up a virtual switch that can be toggle with voice control to disable motion control for a few hours and you can customize how long the lights stay on before they are turned off.

Zooz and inovelli are prob the top 2 zwave brands for light switches. Bother companies offer great support and respond to messages on their forums plus other forums as well. I have experience with zooz and I can only say good things, pricing is great their switches function as you think they should, they have many different peramiter options, and support is amazing! The main reason I use zooz over inovelli is that they have their products in stock wile inovelli has month long waiting lists.

Here's some perspective from a developer that worked in the building controls industry for 5 years. I've written software for JACE, measurelogic and some other gateways that operate in commercial buildings that use BACnet, Z-Wave for communication protocols since those protocols were designed for those applications. The home automation space seems to be dominated by companies in the building controls space which makes sense; Home automation is like a baby version of commercial building controls with some convenience "smart" features wrapped in. If you have SDLC process centered around embedded devices in the building controls space, going to home automation seems like a good avenue into residential. From the commercial building perspective, there's usually a central gateway or several depending on the floor plan that talks back to these edge devices and they control every thing from the security system, HVAC, lighting, giant room sized boilers and such that, you could totally create millions of dollars in chaos if you override the wrong setpoint. There's a certification process in order to be qualified to work on those devices "properly". I've even heard that in the case of boilers, in worse case scenarios, you can override the over pressure release which, for a boiler the size of a city bus, seems like a bad time. I totally agree from the end-user side, we should get the firmware and be able to flash it ourselves. But from a company that wants to sell similar devices to both commercial and residential, this just seems like a tactic to cover their asses in case a bad firmware is published with some vulnerability that allows it to do something it shouldn't. Also, having smart devices in an office or large building is semi-new in the antiquated building control space where companies have no problem running the same equipment that's been running for 40 years. It's that kind of mindset that had me switch out of building controls even though it was a super interesting space to be in. All these companies are slow to change and it seems like there's new standards popping up all the time with big money behind them so it's really hard to nail down a single way to talk to all devices agnostically. To them, I don't think residential is a big pull since most people have Luke's mindset of "I just get up and turn the lights off."

And this is why I went with Insteon for so long, I'm hopeful that somebody will have a good replacement for their system soon. Even the best Z-Wave switches aren't as good as Insteon ones were. When I do a rip and replace in 3-5 years, it'll be to Lutron though.

So what you're saying is someone needs to intercept the new firmware and provide it for download? 🤔

I’m be used TPLink Kasa switches for a couple of years now and been working retry happy with them. They actually update to the latest firmware when you install them and I think they push more OTA.

I have 2 lamp dimmers by them at the moment. This has solidified me never buying their stuff again. My Zooz dimmer has been good to me so far but I don't think they have a motion variant.

I am sorry Linus is running into so many issues with the new house as moving can be stressful enough. That said, compared to the other videos, I find I learn substantially more about a broader range of topics in videos like this one, the eggshell video, and Gamer's Nexus' video on the NewEgg return scam. It suck to see someone you respect going through difficulty but they turn it into something that is genuinely helpful.

All they need to do is make a plugin that download from a secure channel (certificate protected https?) to update the firmware... There would be no way for the end user to get the firmware file. Chinese hackers would just etch the chip to read the flash and copy it. They wouln't care about the firmware file anyway.

To the ones in command over there. _'You do know what firmware is right? It's those updates that fixes bugs from the last versions, and keeps your product functional and relevant.'_

In the Zwave space, dedicated devices are far superior to all-on-ones. I'd recommend finding a switch you like, JUST a zwave switch, and then a separate set of nice motion/presence sensors (passive it, millimeter wave, etc.) and integrate them via your hub. (I personally use HomeSeer, although I'm always tempted to try switching to home assistant if for nothing else the price.)

Get one out of the wall and keep doing a warranty return until you get it updated, rip the firmware off and then push it to all the other devices, I guess that's what I'd do

idk if anyone has posted or seen this but jasco's website now has the firmware on it

Jasco is like: Mine,mine,mine,mine 😂

First, I do agree that they should have a download available (and I saw the further update that they have made it available - and explained that you do have the latest version). However, Jasco do also open themselves up to unexpected support questions if the hub the user selected mishandles the firmware update: currently they COULD certify each hub provider they work with to ensure it works.

We need to have a top ten companies on Linus' s*** list... Jasco is probably #3 while Teamviewer is #2.

Cats and motion sensors is terrible experience, so I wonder how he will fix that problem.

I currently work as a firmware developer/engineer and one of the very first and critical thing we all agreed in the team to prioritize is ease of update and multiple ways to do so.

I'm sure you can workaround this using Node Red with home assistant. (If you never tried, it makes programming events a breeze, grahically and using nodes). You can make it ignore the sensor even if it fires.

Honest question, what are the safety liabilities of a potentially failed firmware update? What are the odds of the firmware not being encrypted, and readable from the prom chip inside the device?

Ah ha! GE strikes again! I purchased some GE Reveal bulbs last year. Within 9 months all bulbs were dead. I tried contacting support. Never received a reply.

The thing I hate is at my uni most lights have a high, medium, low, off settings as well as a no motion mode(similar to off). The thing is if the system goes into no motion mode it will then turn onto high next time it detects us. Given that we use these rooms from 9:00 till 22:00 for both work and recreation including film watching you can see why this is frustrating. There have been multiple times where we have been watching something and someone leans forward for a swig of vodka and coke then the sun appears in the room.

I love my Inovelli Zwave switches, they have a good firmware updates and an accessable download page for them.

Is there any way to "extract" the firmware file from the z-wave hub that hopefully has the firmware? Then you could update all the switches in HA, and post the files on the forum

So basically Jasco turned their firmware into something soöd through a lootbox. "Exciting firmware inside! 100% chance to contain firmware, including exclusive vintage spftware and limited new releases!"

I feel your pain. I'm building a house and had to pick switches/dimmers without motion sensors because there weren't any great combo options. Sucks that you had to find out about that bad organization after the purchase and installation! I would definitely like to know what motion/etc sensors you end up picking.

Hey another brand you could look into for smart stuff is Shelly! They offer great Wifi Relays you can mount behind "dumb switches" for like less than 10 bucks. Oh and also firmware updates are really easy and you can operate them cloud free. They do play well with Home assistant, I have like 30 of these in my setup.

Smart homes make me fear for the future of renting, landlords are already bad enough, smart devices will just give them a digital back door into the home, and this gets worse once you start including any vision-based devices. Landlords already cause a privacy concern, especially the creepy ones that feel the need to show up uninvited for no apparent reason. If smart home stuff really wants to take off, there needs to be an exponentially larger focus on security, and there needs to be government intervention to have boundaries backed by law in the case of landlord situations; and the landlord situation also extends to apartments and hotels, other shared buildings and rented/leased buildings, as then it's not just a security concern when it comes to the owner of the property but a security integrity concern of when that data gets leaked, of which we already have issues with creepy Airbnb hosts who'll use cameras for the same purposes that 'smart home' security integrity brings up concerns. Then you have all the ecosystem issues, which then introduces their own security issues. Then you have the security issues of all of these devices being based on wireless protocols, rather than being hardwired to a central hub. Etc. Then you get into issues demonstrated here, which is a stem from ecosystem issues, but it's large enough to be a standalone issue. All of this is a mess of bullshit, and, given the capitalist nightmare we live in, there'll never be a good fix for all the issues. Honestly, if I were to ever outfit a building with smart devices, I'd try to DIY as much of it as I could just for security and data privacy purposes, not to mention at the end of the day it'd just be easier, especially if you're looking for a specific kind of product, with a specific feature set, with a specific integration, etc. Considering the team Linus has behind him now, especially with Labs, I'm surprised he didn't eventually say screw it and go with the DIY approach, especially when it'd result being a fairly significant fraction of the cost without all the bullshit involved.

All you have to do to get the firmware up dates is to either contact Savant systems or a savant systems certified installer and they're integration software handles all updates of equipment on the system(assuming that all equipment for the smart home is compatible with savant systems equipment)

The only thing i can thing about while listening to this is that meme with patrick star and a walet -are you Jasco? -yup -and you made that smart switch? -yup -I bought this light switch and I want to update it. -That makes sense to me -then give me the file. -We cannot give firmware files to customers

We need to get Louis Rossmann on this. : ) More seriously, do you have any legal rights to firmware that works with your hardware?

19:20 - Sounds like a plan for a Kickstarter

Working in a company where we use lots of vendor software, I fully understand your frustration with getting up to date firmware (or patches in our case). What I was thinking could be a great video for you, is maybe doing a video on securing a smart home. So, it is obviously on a network and therefore connected to the internet and I would assume someone like Linus would take the security of his home network very seriously. So, I was thinking a video with tips on securing your home network, other than just through a router password would really be a great video that will get a lot of attention. Looking forward to you guys maybe doing something like that

I would love to see Paul Hibbert make a video about this. Nobody calls out corporate greed in the smart home industry like that man.

3:17 Luke carefully looking at Linus' groin.

Sorry to hear those dumb issues, I hope you guys can get the video done, I'm thinking on using home assistant myself.

Sorry for my ignorance, but what kind of "in wall," integration needs to be made for smart light switches? Aren't they just normal light switches with wifi connectivity, or do they all need to run Ethernet or something? Even if some cabling is used, what's preventing Linus from just unscrewing the switches and swapping them out while re-using the wires?

@20:40 "Basically I made a mistake" But did you though? There is value in all of this coming to light. It is beneficial to your community, and ultimately, as you said, with sponsor dollars, maybe the only thing you'll have lost is time (and sanity). Hope it turns out right in the end!

I just have phillips hue. It’s controlled by a single button that turns everything off (I have it by the staircase to turn off all the lights downstairs instantly when I go to bed) and it’s also controlled by your phone with a base app that does colours and presets and brightness and stuff then also a disco app which is pretty self explanatory. U could even just have an old ipad that is set up as just a controller or something

you should have treid KNX its kind of the be all and end all of home automation (i might be a bit biased as i am a professional KNX installer) the only thing is that its quite expensive. we use the Basalte switches for example but they are ~450 eur a piece. and we use Thinknx for the visualisation, just some info since as i said this is probably to expensive.

This is why I'm glad I live in Australia. They wouldn't be able to get away with this here, it goes against multiple consumer rights and they would by law need to refund you/fix the problem and would face a massive lawsuit by the government body that handles consumer law.

In my experience so far jasco switches tend to die every couple years but they are still the best thing out there for my needs.

Shelly has an ok update feature, you can ota-update every product through the forum, they give you a link while configuring it to give the right version for the device that you need to open and then it will update.

This is why I went with sonoff in my home. They will take open source firmware, they function as dumb switches when the network is out and they use the original switch in the wall.

@21:30, RGBWW bulbs + smart switches is exactly what i'm looking for. I do not want to have to teach guests how to use shit. There needs to be a "switch" on the wall that when you press the top the light turns on, when you press the bottom the light turns off, just like a dumb switch. That said, i think it'd be really interesting to do automatic time of day color temp stuff with the lights, especially as someone that lives with someone effected by Seasonal Affected Disorder. Whiter lights during the day (especially in the winter) would be helpful. but you can't do that, even if you get the non-dimmer smart switches because you'd need to wait for the bulb to pair, detect the pair, and then adjust the color temp. That would result in the bulb turning on at the wrong color and then needing to fade to the correct color.