

Berg is shutting down - mopoke
http://blog.bergcloud.com/2014/09/09/week-483/

======
zizzer
I wondered when this might happen. You can't really rely on any of these
devices with a 'cloud' based backend to work a couple of years after you've
bought them (As anyone with a Nabaztag gathering dust in a corner will tell
you).

I made my own version of the little printer based on the open source plans
here: [https://github.com/exciting-io/printer/wiki/Making-your-
own-...](https://github.com/exciting-io/printer/wiki/Making-your-own-printer)

It's really easy to get up and running and interfacing with it is simple. I
have mine print out reminders for when to plant seeds for the garden and it
also notifies me when automated downloads via FlexGet have finished.

~~~
userbinator
Beyond the issues of relinquishing control over a service to a third party, I
think another disturbing aspect is all the waste this causes: perfectly good
electronics get thrown out just because some company goes out of business. The
fact that these "cloud connected" devices are often proprietary and locked-
down (for "security reasons") makes it worse.

~~~
sleepybrett
Except the email I just got says if they can't find a way to keep the service
running, they will open source it and open source the firmware on the cloud
device.

~~~
gioele
This is possible, but rare. If your GPS navigator requires "cloud maps", it
will be useless the moment its provider goes out of business or turns off the
v1 servers in favour of v2 servers. This as already been discussed in the Ars
Technica's article about Android and the problem of old phones with "broken"
apps.

(Well, the reality is that it will be useless for 3 years, after which
somebody will finally crack the DRM and put a OSM-based replacement on it that
has 90% of the features of the previous software, but it nowhere as polished
as it.)

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-
android-a-40...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/building-
android-a-40000-word-history-of-googles-mobile-os/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> This is possible, but rare. If your GPS navigator requires "cloud maps", it
> will be useless the moment its provider goes out of business or turns off
> the v1 servers in favour of v2 servers.

I have a 10 year old GPS receiver in a box, with no way to update with maps
from Garmin, not because Garmin went out of business but because they just
choose not to support the device anymore.

Do I want to spend hours trying to figure out how to update a 10 year old
device? Or would I rather spend $100-$200 on a brand new one with the latest
maps?

Obsolescence isn't a bad thing, its how we move forward. We just need a clean
process to recycle the waste that process generates.

~~~
userbinator
The issue is that a GPS navigator is basically a solved problem, and the only
part that requires updating are the maps.

 _Do I want to spend hours trying to figure out how to update a 10 year old
device? Or would I rather spend $100-$200 on a brand new one with the latest
maps?_

The ideal situation would be a device that you buy once, but it's also one you
could use with whatever map data sources you want (OSM, commercial, etc.) -
based on an open format.

(I know GPS is also dependent on the satellites being available, but since
it's government-owned and critical to many parts of the infrastructure, it's
likely to stay around for the forseeable future.)

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The ideal situation would be a device that you buy once, but it's also one
> you could use with whatever map data sources you want (OSM, commercial,
> etc.) - based on an open format.

Like an iPhone/iPad/Android phone/Android tablet? Tomorrow's tech will be
available to me soon, and much cheaper than today's tech. Support = people's
time = expensive.

------
benoliver999
One of those things I always convinced myself I really wanted, but the fear of
the cloud service going down put me off dropping the cash. £200 for a device
that's useless if the business went under was not my cup of tea.

~~~
rjbwork
Ironically this mindset contributed to them going under. Not criticizing you,
just a funny observation.

~~~
mseebach
I'd like to think that charging £200 for a device that has little better use
case than being cute and quirky played a part as well.

Especially considering that you can buy a professional POS thermal receipt
printer for the same price for any viable projects requiring printing in that
general form factor.

~~~
jkestner
They were a leading speculative design studio, not another manufacturer of
printers. Coming from a different place, more similar to how sci-fi stokes the
fires. I'm shocked and sad that they went under given that they had been doing
consulting for years. I wonder how taking VC last year affected this.

But not shocked that Little Printer or the Berg Cloud was commercially
unsuccessful. Perhaps they just bet a little too much thinking that their
excellent design and particular approach would translate to enough value for
enough people.

------
jkestner
Berg has for a while explored speculative product experiences in the vein of
Dunne & Raby (1) - though being design consultants, Berg's work tends to be
optimistic. D&R embrace the dystopian aspects of future products, and I think
they'd enjoy this conversation that's cropped up around what happens when
connected objects lose their parents. (Especially when the objects are
personified!) Hopefully Berg appreciates their inadvertent final contribution
as well.

Does the Internet of Things need a federated model to be as trustworthy and
successful as Internet classic?

1\.
[http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/home](http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/home)

------
purephase
First I've heard that Haitian proverb ("Behind the mountains, there are more
mountains."). Very appropriate for this community.

~~~
christinac
berg also means mountain in german!

------
gioele
Did anybody reverse engineer the Berg/Little printer protocols? OK, I have
found this from 2013, not very detailed though:
[https://github.com/pipt/little-printer-payload-
inspector](https://github.com/pipt/little-printer-payload-inspector)

It think the printer's form factor is very nice, much much nicer than the
other hacked-up solutions I have seen around.

I would pay those £149 for a thermal printer that was so cute and also
completely open.

~~~
avsm
While I enjoy a spot of reverse engineering as much as the next hacker, it's
probably easier just to ask them for the protocols in this case; try
[http://twitter.com/nickludlam](http://twitter.com/nickludlam)

------
salgernon
I hadn't heard of this before but it doesn't seem dissimilar to the adafruit
internet of things printer. No "cloud" to speak of - you consume web services
via scripts run on the raspberry pi.

[http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/02/21/new-product-
adafruit...](http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/02/21/new-product-adafruit-iot-
printer-project-pack-internet-of-things-printer/)

------
brazzy
I did a small exploratory project using it, and my takeaway was that it was a
solution in search of a problem, at least the Cloud aspect, which did
absolutely nothing useful, other than sparing you from setting up your own
endpoints, but in exchange your had to deal with a really limited (and
limiting) API and a more complex infrastructure.

------
tomahony
I'm not surprised. I was really excited when I heard about this device and
although it seemed like a bit of a novelty, I really wanted to try it out.
Then I saw the price - $260. I understand you are paying for added value and
well thought out design, but $260 was an insane price for a niche product like
this

------
jbergstroem
Square or similar should pick this stuff up. The personality the Little
Printer exhibited was a refreshing (and for me, important) distinction. Not
saying that they should put it out there 1:1, but there's a lot to learn in
how this thing was made, branded and communicated.

For me, this wouldn't then just be a receipt printer -- you could just as well
have it push the "opposite" direction. It's essentially a straight tunnel to a
specific business or person from its maker. "Here's your daily summary", "Sara
from London just asked about shipment costs". Push notifications to phones
does that too, but sans this - for the lack of a better word - bond. For the
right business, it feels like a very interesting point of difference.

~~~
JasonFruit
Maybe I don't quite get it, but how does "a straight tunnel to a specific
business or person" differ from e-mail?

~~~
jacquesm
There is a good usecase for devices like these: companies that place orders
remotely with a large variety of suppliers. For instance, if you have a
website where you allow people to order take-out food you could place one of
_your_ printers at their premises. No need to rely on their infrastructure at
all, especially not if the device has it's own cell modem on board.

~~~
semiel
I spent a couple months working at a company that had almost that exact
business model. We just used normal, cheap, thermal receipt printers attached
to a Raspberry Pi.

------
jedc
That happened quickly! They just raised $1.3m eleven months ago:

[http://blog.bergcloud.com/2013/10/28/berg-
raises-1-3m-round-...](http://blog.bergcloud.com/2013/10/28/berg-
raises-1-3m-round-launch-berg-cloud/)

~~~
thegenius
You can see there's 8 of them here
[http://bergcloud.com/about](http://bergcloud.com/about) . They probably
burned through that 1.3 with a year of wage expense.

------
eddieroger
I'm not sure why we're surprised to see functionality disappear from online-
tethered services when it's been happening in other arenas for years now -
most visibly, online gaming. The oldest example I can come up with offhand
(because it's the Dreamcast's birthday) is Phantasy Star Online. That game was
fun, but really only as fun as it could be played online, and the servers have
been off for a long time now. EA has started turning off servers for old games
in the same way. This shutdown is a shame, but hardly unexpected, especially
given how niche Little Printer was.

~~~
Igglyboo
PSO was playable just fine offline and split-screen however. And if anyone is
interested SCHTSERV[1] is a PSO private server that is still up. They have
gamecube, dreamcast, and PC clients.

[1] [http://www.schtserv.com/](http://www.schtserv.com/)

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
Sickeningly me and a few friends each played the Game Cube incarnation of PSO
I & II for over 100 hours offline

~~~
Igglyboo
Yea I've been there, the local co-op was a ton of fun really. The only
downside was that the framerate drops a bit if you have more than 3(2?)
players.

------
deutronium
I've not heard of Berg before, just having a quick look on their front page,
shows its hardware to connect an embedded system to wifi to their cloud.

Isn't this a big worry if you're using anyone else's cloud service for your
own embedded hardware.

Interestingly other platforms exist that perform similar functionality using
the same WIFI chip Ti CC3000 (such as Spark Core). There seems to be a number
of new chips from china which look to potentially give Ti, a run for its
money, such as the ESP8266.

~~~
theoh
Note that "their cloud" (what they called Berg Cloud) was actually primarily a
local wireless access solution, not a cloud in the cloud computing sense. It
was supposed to make configuration and connection of the Little Printer and
other future Berg devices easier. As other commenters have pointed out, you
can have an LP-type device that connects directly to a normal wifi network
(e.g. Adafruit's) and the content doesn't in principle need to come from a
remote web service either: it could be provided by a script running on a local
machine.

The quality of presentation and the user experience provided by Berg (not just
this product but other things the same guys have worked on) is great, but they
show their roots in the design school. The products feel to me more like the
product of brainstorming at an ad agency than a mature response to necessity.
London's design scene is full of this kind of "creative" activity, and it's
super enjoyable to watch but probably a form of decline or decadence in terms
of real manufacturing and craft. The pace of change is so great now in tech
that designers tend to get left behind or reinvent the wheel.

Imagine Twitter redesigned by someone both technically knowledgeable _and_ UX
aware. (No race conditions, URL shortening, or crippled API functions.) the
reason we don't have this is a cultural gap between the hip designers and the
technically informed.

~~~
deutronium
Ah sorry I misunderstood then, what they meant by cloud.

~~~
theoh
No need to apologize... There is a remote element to the Little Printer
service as I understand it, but they created their own concept when they
invented to Berg Cloud.

------
tylerlh
Crap -- I have a Little Printer still in the box that I've been meaning to
play with. Really hope they open source the protocol so I don't end up with a
Little Paperweight.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This is what really hit me one day. I had things in the box unopened from
companies that no longer existed. That really put me off buying cute 'toys'
unless I could commit to using them and exploring them in 90 days.

------
wavesum
I think the biggest problem is that they assumed that people would like to
have this disposable bite-sized information internet spews at us printed on
physical medium instead of being displayed in some corner of a screen
somewhere where it belongs. The kind of stuff that will be irrelevant after
you've read it once. Not economic. Cute thing though. I give you that.

------
ndrake
Looks like they plan to open source the Little Printer backend (if it's not
sold).

[http://littleprinterblog.tumblr.com/post/97047976103/the-
fut...](http://littleprinterblog.tumblr.com/post/97047976103/the-future-of-
little-printer)

~~~
nickludlam
Yep, we're opening up the relevant repos, and writing up documentation about
how to deploy them, and I'm also arranging for a patch to the Bridge unit
which allows you to repoint it at a different control URL.

Also, if I have time, I'm going to make this a shink-wrapped AMI to make
deployment a little easier. There's sadly not a great deal of time left for
this, though, so we'll see what I can get done!

------
anteht
Sad to see that they're closing down, but understandably a nieche area of
business. The Little Printer was such a cute piece of tech, and I'm sure that
they could've done a lot if not this fate was upon them.

------
namplaa
I would be in favor of opening the code., especially if it was opened as FOSS

------
ris
Hooray for cloud-tethered devices!

~~~
parfe
I prefer the term cloud-encumbered device. Tethered does not sufficiently
convey a negative connotation.

~~~
Animats
I'd suggest "cloud-slaved". You're a slave to someone else's "cloud". They can
turn you off at any time. They can even take away features from your purchased
device. They can start charging for a previously free service. They can shove
ads into your device. They can raise your price. They can turn your device
off. (The median life of cloud services is only a few years.) The cloud owner
is the master. You are their slave.

Grovel.

