In a little over a month, Nest is going to essentially “brick” your Revolv Hub. The company has announced in a blog post over on Medium, that they are planning to shut down the Revolv Hubs on May 15th, 2016. Now they aren’t just putting it on “end-of-life” status, but they are killing all functionality that came with the Revolv Hub. This hub was essentially the first step into the connected home, and having all sorts of products for the connected home work with each other. Think of it as a central hub for your Nest products, your WeMo and other smart home products. Now, Nest is deciding to kill all functionality for it. The company stated that they “believe that Works with Nest is a better solution” and also noted that they are allocating all of their resources to Works with Nest. This program essentially allows other companies to build products that will work great with your Nest products. Whether that be the learning thermostat, Nest Protect or the Nest Cam.
Back in October of 2014, Nest acquired Revolv. After being acquired, Revolv stopped getting new customers and also stopped selling their devices. However they did continue to support their product for the 18 months following the acquisition. It’s a bit sad to see it go away now, but the founders of Revolv are at peace with that. In a letter from the founders, Tim and Mike, they noted that Revolv “was a great first step into the connected home.” They admitted that Revolv wasn’t perfect, of course back then the connected home was still very, very new to people. Since being acquired in late 2014, the founders note that they’ve been working at Nest on the “Works with Nest” program and that Revolv has been an integral part in that program. Works with Nest is now more secure, and useful, according to Revolv’s founders.
Having said that, this shut down shouldn’t be a big surprise. It’s been a long-time coming, and it’s now inferior to the Works with Nest program. Which was essentially the point here. If you own a Revolv Hub, your days of it working is limited, about 5 weeks from now, it will no longer work.