
Save the CR100 - userbinator
https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/save-the-cr100-6800510
======
amiga-workbench
I'm getting really sick of appliances depending on smartphone apps, they're
brittle as hell and have no longevity as OS updates kill them off (and
eventually as mobile OS's die completely).

I had a right faff on finding a IP security cam that didn't use the bloody
awful onVIF protocol and would connect to a network without a mobile app to
configure it. I take care of remote access myself, so I don't need the
"feature" of having my video streams routed through a server in china so I can
view it on the go.

I had the same issue with RGB lighting controllers for my shelving and
bookcase, in the end I had to settle on a ESP8266 based controller and figure
out the protocol with wireshark, I now have some of my lighting operable from
a webpage on my home server.

I really wish there were a decent, privacy respecting hub that could be used
for controlling all of this kind of gear.

~~~
berryg
Do you mean something like [https://home-assistant.io](https://home-
assistant.io)?

~~~
amiga-workbench
Yeah, that's almost exactly what I'm after.

------
bambax
I bought my first Sonos elements in 2006, and used to love them.

I still use Sonos, for lack of a better option (?) but have come to hate it,
the devices, the company, the whole "ecosystem", with the heat of a thousand
suns.

It updates constantly, you can't ever refuse an update, updates stop the
system just when you need to use it, change the UI for no reason, and every
update breaks something. Every single iteration is a little slower; I used to
keep an oldish ipod touch just to manage Sonos but now it's so slow it's
almost unusable.

Since 2006 my use of Sonos HAS NOT CHANGED AT ALL: mp3s are stored on a Nas
and they're played in various "rooms"; and sometimes I listen to radios; and
THAT'S IT.

Of course Sonos as a company has to support new streaming services and
whatnot, but why does it have to break everything in the process, or force all
users to upgrade? Why can't it leave us alone??

Every 6 months I try to look for an open source alternative, maybe based on a
Pi (+ relay to power up amps on demand) but have not been very lucky so far.
Am very interested in any pointers to something simple to implement and that I
would completely control.

~~~
christoph
I have exactly the same feeling. It feels like every time I go to cook in the
kitchen and open the app on my phone, it brings the update process up.
Numerous times, i've lost connectivity entirely, which seems to only be fixed
by deleting the app from my phone, re-installing, signing back in, going back
through the basic pairing process. It just makes me want to throw the whole
thing out. It's beyond maddening!!

Why can't it support bluetooth without purchasing the stupid bridge? Sometimes
I want to watch Netflix when cooking and have the audio come out the system.
Somebody should bring out a decent competitor to fix these issues. I'd buy it
in a heartbeat.

------
icebraining
Context: the new firmware upgrade for Sonos speakers will drop support for the
CR100 controller.

[http://www.techradar.com/news/sonos-finally-kills-off-
cr100-...](http://www.techradar.com/news/sonos-finally-kills-off-
cr100-controller-and-long-time-fans-arent-happy)

\--

I have to wonder why. Planned obsolescence is an obvious answer, but if the
new "standard" methods for controlling the speakers are smartphones or Alexa,
it doesn't seem like they gain much from the switch. Is the protocol used by
the CR100 that much of a pain to keep supporting? It makes me wonder about
their software development practices.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
They're also claiming in the forum thread it's because of battery issues
(battery getting older, more at risk for device to malfunction, etc). Seems
like a bad reason to brick a device (and was likely made up once it was
decided not to support)

------
eecc
The first effects of a world of end-to-end encrypted media streaming. You
don’t own the content, you don’t own the hardware, you can’t play whatever you
want, you just pay and go with whatever happens to be there. You can change
channels like a Radio, that’s about it

~~~
abraae
Isn't that life anyway? We're only on earth for a short time. You can't take
your music to the grave with you, so why not accept its never really yours
anyway?

~~~
pedrocr
This isn't about accepting it's "not really yours". This is about accepting
it's actually someone else's that then has control about what you can and
can't do. That entity will often be on earth for even a smaller time than you
before it goes bankrupt or loses interest in that product. So you get to spend
your short time on earth dealing with product obsolescence instead of owning
your stuff while you're alive and even being able to pass it on to your
children. It's a terrible bargain.

------
starsinspace
So, end users are now figuring out why it's bad to buy into such proprietary,
closed systems. I can fully understand the outrage. Unfortunately I find that
most people don't care if you warn them about such things beforehand.

Any product that relies on a manufacturer-only provided online service of any
kind to provide its functionality, will simply stop functioning whenever the
manufacturer feels like it (or goes out of business, etc). Oh, and it will
also most likely not care about your privacy, but that's a given these days.

Also, any product relying on a closed-source smartphone app (using proprietary
protocols to communicate with the product) will also become increasingly
annoying as time passes. At some point, the app won't get updates anymore, and
some time after that you'll have to keep a special old smartphone around just
for the purpose of running that app. Sounds great, eh?

On the other hand, many 30, 40, 50 years old electronics products still work
fine today, and can be used, as they were self-contained, and wholly owned
(and fixable) by the user.

p.s. the fact that ageing batteries are cited as reason by Sonos also further
shows what a stupid idea it is to put non-replaceable batteries into products.
I really hope that regulation will finally end that practice soon.

------
bambax
> _due the age of the battery in the controller, it has the potential to
> overheat when left charging for extended periods of time_

This is some argument on Sonos' part! The reason why the battery in the CR100
is "old" is because Sonos chose to build a device with a non-replaceable
battery!!

If they're so concerned about safety why don't they offer to replace the
batteries (for a reasonable fee)??

~~~
ZenoArrow
According to some of the posters in that Sonos forum thread, aftermarket
batteries are available for the CR100. What I'm not sure about is how easy
they are to replace, but it's clearly possible for some users.

~~~
kirb
It’s not hard to replace; probably the hardest part is separating the
adhesived back rubber cover and then sealing it again after. The battery uses
a modular connector.

[https://en.community.sonos.com/advanced-
setups-229000/guide-...](https://en.community.sonos.com/advanced-
setups-229000/guide-to-changing-the-cr100-battery-5216)

------
ohazi
> due the age of the battery in the controller, it has the potential to
> overheat when left charging for extended periods of time

...uh, what? I assume I'm missing something here, because this doesn't make
any sense. Can someone explain?

~~~
jacobush
It's pretty common. It never "finishes" charging, instead however many watts
of the charger gets dumped as heat, indefinitely.

~~~
ohazi
But this is why lithium ion batteries need special lithium ion charging
circuitry in the first place... If you don't have this, the cells will happily
take as much energy as you give them and then promptly catch fire.

It doesn't make sense to me that this would only now be a problem. Either the
circuit was designed correctly, and this excuse is bullshit, or they should
have issued a recall ten years ago.

------
stryk
Their main concern sounds like a liability issue (they cite the aging Li-ion
battery heavily). They're not selling it anymore, so why not bundle together
some internal docs and release some sort of technical manual or detailed
repair guide to give users the option of replacing the battery? Of course this
would be a "you people are on your own if you screw it up" but that's to be
expected.

~~~
usrusr
> Their main concern sounds like a liability issue (they cite the aging Li-ion
> battery heavily)

Gratuitous power autonomy is quite high on my "things I won't buy" list. I was
once scouring Amazon et al for some cheap bluetooth speakers for stationary
use as a "poor man's Sonos", but they all came with their own integrated power
bank. Ended up buying a radio that had BT input just as a secondary feature.
About three times as expensive as originally planned, only to avoid seeing one
more 18650 (or pair thereof) idling into decay under my watch.

I'm not always that eco-aware, but when I get stuck on an issue I tend to get
irrationally zeaolous (probably a quite common form of mild bigotry)

------
filmgirlcw
I’m against bricking devices arbitrarily, but this product was more than 12
years old and hadn’t been sold since 2009 (I had one in 2006 when I was still
in college and Sonos’s killer feature for me was that it worked with the
original streaming music service, Rhapsody). Frankly, giving customers $100
credit seems kind to me. Plus the CR200 still works and they don’t have plans
to brick it, so there is that.

I feel for some of the users, but reading some of these complaints makes me
roll my eyes. I’ve owned lots and lots of electronic devices over my life —
and many audio systems — I can’t recall any other connected system having 13
years of support.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I think what we're trying to rail against here is that why should 13, or
whatever, years be an _acceptable_ figure.

My car is older than that. My toaster over is old, I've had CRT TVs that were
much older before they died.

I'm gonna go with a big fat juicy 'No!' here. We ought to be building for
longevity and serviceability. Don't end support, just open it up. Publish the
relevant source code, documentation etc.

We shouldn't accept that it's ok or _normal_ to dispose of a thing just
because it is X years old.

~~~
filmgirlcw
It’s an accessory. If we were talking about the speakers themselves, I wouldn
be more sympathetic, but in this case I’m just not.

The reality is that the nature of connected devices makes things different.
This isn’t the same as a CRT TV (but also, look at how much it costs and how
difficult it is get parts for a CRT in 2018). And like it or not, your next
car won’t be as repairable as your current 15 year old car, because it will
require custom software and bench access and updates that most mechanics will
not pay for or maintain.

At least these Sonos users have the option of not installing an update. This
isn’t like Revolv where it just stopped working.

The CR100 uses Flash IIRC...it is absolutely ancient. I’m not sure we should
be realistically asking development teams to maintain separate code bases for
old, obsolete software. Google and Amazon changed backends that made the CR100
stop working. Are you saying that that’s a travesty too?

Legit question: how long should any company/service be required to add
backward compatibility to old, obsolete products?

I fundamentally agree that we should be building for longevity and
serviceability, but that isn’t always possible. The platform and stack the
CR100 was built on is not modern and cannot be easily maintained. And even if
the software was open source (which would be great), that doesn’t change the
fact that if the endpoints on the services it relies on change, nothing can be
done.

The only reasonable compromise I can see would be an update that would allow
the CR100 to continue to work only with local files. Otherwise, at least users
can opt not to update if they rely so heavily on a 13 year old controller.

~~~
wwweston
> And like it or not, your next car won’t be as repairable as your current 15
> year old car, because it will require custom software and bench access and
> updates that most mechanics will not pay for or maintain.

Noting that the automotive market is increasingly opening itself up to the
kind of obsolescence problems the software industry has never bothered to come
to grips with (indeed, is to some extent _actively against solving_ , from
incentives at the business level to personal disinclination on the part of
most programmers) isn't exactly a resounding counterpoint to worries about how
software problems are affecting less crucial hardware devices.

> Legit question: how long should any company/service be required to add
> backward compatibility to old, obsolete products?

There's a point in here that's legit: perpetuity is a high bar, most products
don't last forever. But there's also an extent to which this question is
largely a dodge of the real question: what is "old"? Why do we accept or feel
forced to accept a decade or shorter timeline?

> we should be building for longevity and serviceability, but that isn’t
> always possible. The platform and stack the CR100 was built on is not modern
> and cannot be easily maintained.

You know how we talk about code smells? (Or maybe we don't anymore, it was
always a weird term and maybe it's _so_ early 10s now). Pretty sure the word
"modern" when it comes to software should be understood as a "thought smell."

 _Every_ platform/stack _any_ software is built on will be "not modern" by
software standards in well under a decade, and is quite likely to grow more
difficult to maintain over time. An acknowledgement of the value of longevity
and serviceability doesn't mean much while implicitly accepting software-
related value choices that mean longevity and serviceability remain not only
difficult to attain but difficult to _conceive_ of.

> And even if the software was open source (which would be great), that
> doesn’t change the fact that if the endpoints on the services it relies on
> change, nothing can be done.

If the software were open source, when endpoints change, the threshold for
continuing utility is whether there's a developer out there somewhere who
cares enough to work on it. Or could be made to care by consumers bearing
cash.

------
egeozcan
As far as I understand, it all works in the local network. It shouldn't be too
hard to create a server to translate its calls to the new api (that the
smartphone app uses), no?

edit: I don't understand why you'd down-vote this. I'd love to correct it if I
said something blatantly wrong, just tell me. Also, I wasn't dismissing this
as a non-problem, but rather questioning if there'd be an easy solution. My
parents are also affected BTW.

~~~
meschi
Yes, but i don't think this is an option for the people complaining.

~~~
egeozcan
I was asking to see if there's anything I'm missing. I was thinking about
doing this myself. Sorry for not being clear - please see my edit.

------
duncan_bayne
... and once again, Stallman (and the FSF) are proved right.

[https://xkcd.com/743/](https://xkcd.com/743/)

If you buy into a proprietary ecosystem, especially a DRM-encumbered one, and
doubly-especially a streaming one, don't be surprised when the inevitable
happens and your non-ownership of any part of the system bites you.

I speak from personal experience. I lost some of my small Kobo library when
they dropped support for their Web reader, and I closed my account (no support
for my everyday / work laptop).

~~~
icebraining
I'm an FSF supporter (technically FSFE), but I think we should be careful
about these claims. It's not like open source projects never drop features.
You could say "yeah, but they wouldn't be forced to upgrade" \- but neither
are the users in this case, as the reply says.

What the users here want is to continue getting the new features and fixes of
the new versions of firmware, while keeping support for the CR100. Even with
the source, that would require someone to integrate those two parts, which
might be prohibitively expensive.

Don't get me wrong, I think they should have the right to do that if they
wished, but it's not like it would just fix the problem; it would only allow
them to fix it if they could afford it.

~~~
alerighi
With free software no one can shut down a service like they are doing. A
product will continue to function and it will continue to receive updates as
long as there is enough interest by the open source community in that product.

Let's take for example Android smartphone, there are some old smartphone that
thanks to the community are still updated to the latest version of the OS, on
the other side when Apple say it's done you take your outdated iPhone and toss
it in the bin, no one can continue to support it.

~~~
icebraining
They aren't shutting down a service, they are updating a product.
Specifically, they are releasing a new version of the speakers firmware that
removes support for the protocol used by CR100.

All you wrote regarding Android is true, and that's why as I said I support
the FSF and Free Software in general, all I'm saying is that you can't take
that community for granted. Maybe someone would appear to re-add support for
the CR100 to the new firmware - or maybe nobody would.

------
akras14
Death by redesign... [https://www.alexkras.com/death-by-
redesign/](https://www.alexkras.com/death-by-redesign/)

