Smart kettle update bricked my morning coffee routine

So I'm standing in my kitchen at 6am last Wednesday, groggy and just wanting hot water for my pour over. I tap the app to start my smart kettle like I do every morning and nothing happens. The thing just sits there blinking a blue light. I try unplugging it, plugging it back in, force closing the app, even rebooting my phone. Turns out the company pushed a firmware update overnight that totally broke the wifi connection. I ended up boiling water in a saucepan on the stove like some kind of cave person. After that I factory reset the kettle and set up the wifi again, took 45 minutes total. What's the point of a smart gadget if an update can just kill it dead like that? Anyone else have a smart home device get ruined by a bad update?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_wade25d ago

You just reminded me, my neighbor's thermostat locked them out at 2am once.

pat78125d ago

My neighbor's thermostat glitched last winter and set itself to 58 degrees at 3am. They woke up shivering and had to walk across the cold floor in the dark to fix it because their phone app wouldn't connect. @the_wade it's scary how fast those smart devices can mess with your comfort. I tell everyone now to keep a backup analog thermometer just in case. Never fully trust a gadget with your sleep schedule.

king.eric25d agoMost Upvoted

Come on man, that's one glitch out of millions of nights where they work perfectly fine. I've got a smart thermostat and it's saved me a ton of money by learning when I'm asleep or away. Plus your neighbor couldve just pushed a button on the wall unit itself to override it, they didn't need the phone app at all. And an analog thermometer doesn't actually control anything, it just tells you the temperature so you still gotta get up and flip a switch manually. I'd rather trust a quick software update than freeze because I forgot to turn up a dial before bed.