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Vent: dropped $340 on a 'smart' zone expander that fought me all afternoon
Spent 3 hours chasing a ground fault on a 16-zone panel install in Sacramento because that fancy wireless board kept dropping zones 9 through 12, and the old hardwired can I almost bought for $90 would've been done in 40 minutes. Turns out the firmware on the thing was two revisions behind out of the box. Anyone else getting burned by 'upgrade' kits that need a laptop just to boot up?
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schmidt.eva17d ago
This whole thing feels like the direction everything is going now, where stuff that used to just work when you plugged it in suddenly needs a firmware update and an app and an account. I bought a "smart" thermostat last year that wouldn't even turn on until it downloaded a patch over wifi, and my fridge has a software version number now, which is insane to me. The old dumb stuff didn't care, you flip a switch and it runs for twenty years. Feels like we traded reliability for features nobody asked for.
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