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Wink slowly starts coming back online following week-long outage
The company is trying desperately trying to retain customers
Wink has been battling a severe outage for about a week and a half now, but it finally looks like its servers are slowly coming back online. The company has updated its status page, saying, "A fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results. Most Hubs are back online." However, many customers are ready to cancel their mandatory subscriptions due to the events, and there's not much the cash-strapped company can do about it.
The Wink smart home platform may be finally circling the drain. For the last week, customers have been reporting connectivity problems, and the Wink status dashboard has made a note of those issues since January 25th. The last update from the company was on Thursday, at which point it claimed "We have identified the issue and are implementing a fix." And yet four days later, Wink is still down.
Wink smart home platform continues its downward spiral with day-long outage
Wink also appears to have lost control of its website
Wink sells smart home hubs that can connect to countless products, including thermostats, door locks, fans, and lights. The company's hubs were a popular option for enthusiasts until last month, when it switched to a subscription requirement for most functionality. On top of all that, Wink is now suffering an outage that has lasted nearly a day, and it seemingly has lost access to its primary wink.com domain.
Wink is giving its subscription another try starting July 27
Appeasing those unwilling to pay with a laughable amount of free features
Wink recently caused an uproar when it launched a mandatory subscription plan out of nowhere, hindering anyone unwilling to pay from controlling their smart home hubs after a meager 14-day heads-up. The troubled company since backtracked and gave an indefinite extension of its free service, but of course, the business still wants to tap into a recurring income stream. It has announced that the $4.99-a-month subscription will become mandatory starting July 27, though this time around, free users will be able to retain some extremely limited functionality — if you even want to call it that.
IFTTT is the cloud-based service that links together hundreds of smart home and web platforms, enabling you to automate tasks across ecosystems. The service regularly adds new connections and removes non-working ones, and this time around, IFTTT has done some (late) spring cleaning and added a few more connections.
Wink further delays its mandatory subscription, confuses users even more
This soap opera is getting ridiculous at this point
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Earlier this May, Wink announced out of the blue that it would charge customers $4.99 a month to continue using its services, or else their hardware would stop working. Following understandable customer backlash, the company first extended the cut-off deadline by a week, and has now indefinitely back-paddled, saying that it'll look for a new start date of the subscription.
One of the biggest trends in consumer technology over the last few years has been the rise of the smart home. The number of different device categories that now make up the 'Internet of Things' (IoT) has grown immensely, with connected appliances now found in many households across the US and beyond.The smart home was once an expensive hobby for tech-fiends only but has now become an affordable aspiration for normal people. You can get started for less than $30 these days, with some lights or a smart switch that can connect to your Wi-Fi network and be controlled with your phone. If you want to go all in, you could end up spending thousands on the connected home of the future.With so many different products available, the smart home sector can be a little daunting. So let's break down the key categories and take a look at some of the best options in each one.
If you're looking for an easy way to get into home automation, then this deal alert may interest you. The Wink Hub 2 is currently on sale, dropping down to $69.17 on a few websites. That's about $30 off of the MSRP, which is pretty decent.Wink's second-generation Hub received a very nice, favorable review from Rita, which you can read here if you're interested. There are plenty of features, a simple setup process, and a wide range of supported devices. Wink doesn't have the diverse custom integrations that you can get with SmartThings, but the Hub 2 nonetheless remains a solid competitor with its ease-of-use and reliability.A few different retailers have the Hub 2 on sale, so you have some options from which to choose.Source: Amazon, Jet, Walmart
Wink is a well-known name when it comes to the smart home space, and in a blog post today the company announced support for a bunch of new products. It supports five new lighting solutions, seven new security products/sensors, and three motorized window solutions (fancy words for automated window blinds). Connecting all your smart home devices into one seamless solution has never been easier. The full list of newly supported devices is just below.
Wink is a name that's decently well-known in the smart home space. Previously owned by the ill-fated Quirky, the home automation company got pawned off to Flextronics. Now, Wink will be joining i.am+, the firm founded by entertainer will.i.am. The sum of the acquisition is unknown right now, however, i.am+'s PR has confirmed the purchase.
There are increasing numbers of people looking into smart home products and services, and Wink provides a pretty robust option for them. "Powerful, but fun and easy to use" was how we described the Wink Home Hub 2 in our review late last year. Since then, compatibility for a variety of products and services has been added, including control of lights and thermostats through Google Home. Now, Wink is introducing a new light bulb starter pack and two new automation features in the app.
We have an interesting deal for you today, courtesy of Wink and Amazon. You can get the Wink Hub 2 for $80, a savings of $20, if you order through Alexa. This sale is good starting today and goes through 9:00 AM PST next Wednesday (3/15). You will need Amazon Prime and an Alexa-enabled device to take advantage of this. To get going, just say "Alexa, order a Wink Hub."The Wink Hub 2 received quite the favorable review from our very own Rita, which you can check out here. But if you want to know what Wink and Alexa can do together, here's a small breakdown:
I bought an apartment in October. You can imagine the joy at the thought that it'd be my future family's home, terror at the sight of the mortgage value on the signed contract, and all the excitement about getting to set up a house from scratch. I could pick everything that I loved from design to materials to colors to organization, and yes, also automation.I wanted lights that turn on when the doors open, A/C units that cool the place when I'm coming home and the outside heat is too much to bear, cameras that catch intruders the moment they are detected, a washing machine that notifies me when the load is done, colored lights that coordinate with whatever I'm watching on TV, blinds that open and close with the sunset and sunrise, and much more.But soon into my research, I hit a wall, then another wall, followed by even more walls. Metaphoric walls, mind you, because hitting my apartment's walls would be very damaging and expensive. Despite the promise and allure of smart homes, despite us hearing about them for years now, despite what seems to be a huge collection of IoT devices on the market, and despite everything we own becoming smart in some form or another, home automation is still in its infancy. Nay, its fetal state.Putting aside the issues with security which everyone is still trying to figure out, there are so many problems that home automation has to overcome before it becomes as prevalent as we would like it to be: ease of use for the non-techies in your life, interoperability between different devices, affordable prices, and most importantly protocols.There's Bluetooth (and its many variants and sub-protocols), WiFi, ZigBee, and at least two different Z-Wave frequencies for North America (908.42 MHz) and Europe (868.42 MHz). When you factor in the different voltages between countries, plug types, light fixture sizes and shapes, and lamp screw types, you're looking at soooooo many things that need to be compatible for just one product to work in your house. Ouch.If you live in the USA, you have it easy... kinda. Plenty of companies are US-based and are building products that simply work there. If you live in Europe or somewhere else, your home automation life is going to be a lot more complicated. Each product you look at will have to go through rigorous research to make sure it is compatible with what your country uses, and odds are that you will find a limited selection of products that do fit the bill.After realizing the limitations with home automation, I lowered my expectations, then lowered them again. I didn't want anything that was permanently affixed in my house because technology changes very quickly, nor any indispensable product that doesn't work without power or connectivity (both are finicky in Lebanon), nor anything that demands modifications to the walls or ceilings or house wiring, and whenever possible, I wanted products that didn't require their own hub because who has 20 Ethernet ports on their router? Plus, whatever I bought would have to work with as many other products as possible.It's about that time in my research that the Wink Hub 2 was announced. The number of connectivity protocols was appealing, especially the upcoming Thread (Bluetooth) support, and the Wink website felt inviting and clear. Supported products are neatly laid out and the requirements for each (eg GE Link bulb page) are so clearly labeled with superbly detailed support pages (eg GE Link support page) that it made things a lot easier to parse and understand.So I jumped on the chance to review the Wink Hub 2, despite the fact that it supports Z-Wave at the North American 908.42 MHz frequency. I knew this would make finding compatible Z-Wave products that operate at 220V (voltage in Lebanon) almost impossible, but I liked the challenge. The Cree bulb and Leviton plug pictured at the top, for example, only work at 110V and are useless for me. The GoControl sensor suite, however, uses batteries and thus caused me no issues. I thought the GE Link bulbs would work at 220V but they didn't. I had more success with the Aeon Labs ZW096 smart switch, which supports Z-Wave 908.42 MHz, both 110V and 220V, and only needs a US-EU plug to work with my appliances. Add a Canary camera (read my full review) and an Amazon Echo Dot 2nd gen (read my full review) and I was ready to get started.
The Echo is Amazon's little smart tube that perks up whenever you say "Alexa" and proceeds to do whatever you say. Well, as long as what you say is something it has the capability to do. If you have a house filled with Wink-compatible products, that list now includes telling Echo to take control of your home.Try, "Alexa, turn off the fan" or "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights." Then watch as you never burn calories getting up to flip switches yourself.