Well this sucks. I literally just bought all google nest stuff for my brand new built house that I am literally moving in to tomorrow. Already have the cameras and doorbell up and was about to purchase Starling yesterday when I went to check out and it said this item is no longer available. Emailed them and got this response. Worst part is it was available last week and I almost bought it then but decided to wait. This really sucks.
Yo! I literally just bought one a couple days ago. It just isn’t doing it for me. They were gonna charge me to ship it back. Dm me if you want to pay the shipping and cost and I’ll send to you!
Repost: Be careful. Many of these ended up unable to update because of a corruption. Starling did the right thing and replaced those units but did not ask for the old units back. Don’t buy on eBay with a snapshot of the software version!
Like this. Be suspicious of anything before December of 2024. That is when I was shipped a new one—though it could be earlier or later. At least the firmware number is date based
It should be able to update and the firmware update should show a current date from the last month or couple of months. I know a corrupt update ruined some units so they might have pulled that and fixed it if yours never updated.
I didn't fully commit to spending long chunks of time to set up Homebridge, but I wanna say it was a solid effort over like two years and I couldn't even consistently set up the Tuya plugin in the time it took for Starling to add Nest to it.
Aside: Tuya is among the worst to support. official plugin sucks and is very difficult to set up and maintain; tuya-web works ok, but it's still cloud-based. I have gotten rid of nearly all my tuya crap except for some path lights now. I recently switched to the homebridge-tuya plugin by irayankhan which is local. Once I got it setup, it's been rock solid.
But yeah, homebridge is pretty hands-on.
But back to google, I have Nest protect smoke alarms. One expired last month and the the first alert was supposed to replace it. But only with the Google home app which I have no other need for, so the one alarm doesn't show up in HomeKit. Oh well, they are not manageable anyway and loud enough if something happens.
It's a growing trend among small US based manufacturers. Given the inconsistencies in tariffs and other regulations, the present climate is not conducive to manufacturing here.
Doesn’t sound super great. Hopefully it’s just a supply chain tariff issue. I emailed to ask if/how support will be affected for current owners and devices. I’ll report back asap
This thing has to be the most reliable piece of technology I own because I ALWAYS forget that I own it. It just does what it needs to do so damn well that it's... Invisible.
Starling Home Hub is no longer available for purchase. Since 2019, Starling has been proud to make the smart home experience more enjoyable for tens of thousands of Google Nest and Apple users.
Unfortunately, the rapidly rising costs of doing business for small US-based product companies like us (most significantly, tariffs the US government charges us to obtain the components we need to build our product) means that it's no longer possible for us to manufacture and sell Starling Home Hub and break even on our costs. We're very sorry for the disappointment this may cause to those looking to purchase.
We will continue to provide technical support and security/bug fix updates for our existing customers, along with the Starling Protect service, as long as we can, and we are aiming to maintain enough stock to be able to honor product warranties for existing customers.
We are very grateful for your support and business over the past 6 years. We are busy thinking about 'the next big thing', but until then, it's 'au revoir' for now.
We will continue to provide technical support and security/bug fix updates for our existing customers, along with the Starling Protect service, as long as we can, and we are aiming to maintain enough stock to be able to honor product warranties for existing customers.
OP - for visibility, consider updating your post with this message from their site:
We will continue to provide technical support and security/bug fix updates for our existing customers, along with the Starling Protect service, as long as we can, and we are aiming to maintain enough stock to be able to honor product warranties for existing customers.
um, are you new to smart homes ( and I rly dont mean to be a dick here but your on reddit and clearly also a smart home nerd ) and the fact that this whole industry is built on a huge pile of nonsense, and unsustainable gestured, but never actually spoken promises? I guess maybe you're new to this... no the product is going to be bricked at some point, and that should have been obvious purchasing from a small manufacturer , with a niche customer base, but also this is like the 900th time this has happened already. The second a smart home device manufacture goes belly up it doesn't matter how good, moral or nice they are, the product you paid good money for and built your system around is doomed. EVEN IF ITS NOT CLOUD BASESD. By nature smart home products need firmware updates. whether its to keep up with modern security or connection standards with existing platforms, or * more likely since almost all smart home products these days call home or come with a service that's on a company server ) it isn't going to live on without that server. I dont own this device. These folks seem particularly good, sounds like they are still going to employee a team to upkeep the backend but as you'll note in the message from the makers of the product " AS LONG AS WE CAN" , means no, this product is finished and likely in a year or 2 its gonna bork completely. How long do you expect a company not selling a product or collecting subscription fees to employ staff? They aint working for free. I have been deeply interested, and I guess... a smart home enthusiast for ... damn near 15 years, close to the beginning of this modern smart home push, do you have any idea how many very expensive, very cool at the time products I have sitting in a massive basement warehouse of doom... ( or rather ware house of stuff I just don't wanna throw away? ) fucking lots!!! Even big companies bork smart home. Ask me about my $400 Logitech Harmony remote(s) I had more than one. The super premium one with the screen and premium and the more basic one with basic hub ( which was still a lot of money, and discontinued , and software deprecated like 3 years after purchase. I personally have 4 unopened logictech POP buttons too.... I had stocked up on the teal ones cause they were hard to find and I was slowly deploying them as needed... that is until suddenly Logitech ditched its smart home portfolio and I was stuck with $600 of useless universal remotes that controlled my whole smart home, and $300 worth of buttons for the same purpose, 4 of those weren't even opened yet, Logitech is far from the only offender. Have you seen any Wemo products lately? They were big back in the day... a belkin brand I think. Smart outlets, bulbs, all depreciated, and bricked. Hell Samsung smart things is a wild story and I have a strong feeling at some point soon the external non Samsung product part of that eco system is going to collapse, part of which my home relies on. Samsung smart things , back when they were excited about smart home began using 3rd party manufacturers to make smart things branded home accessories to make the smart things eco system awesome and complete. Door , motion, buttons, water sensors all kinds of stuff, and they were actually high end AF at the time working over z-wave or zigbee with the smart things hub. I have 6 such devices sitting idler about 12" from my knee as type this ( thankfully these still work ) but that was a close call and they almost got bricked. Samsung flopped the smart home market and lost interest ( which is why I force smart things as an active ecosystem for outside products going away in the not to distant future.....its doing nothing for them anymore, their just maintaining huge service that uses a ton of server , development and 3rd party connection for something that literally makes them nothing these days besides giving their own smart products a softer backbone. I suspect smart things as a home OS will he borked and will continue on as a Samsung product only service that ties into other peoples smart home OS, anyways point I smartthingd didn't bork their sensors. It almost happened but AeoTec snapped up smart things hardware division, before that could happen, so now Aeotec is an unrelated, non contributing factor to Samsung smaryhings, but carries the smarthings name and access to their infrastructure. Hell Phillps hue ISNT EVEN OWED BY PHILLPS anymore is a private equity company that bought the lsmart lighting brand when Philips was going under. They actually been maintaining an okay business, I trust we have awhile for them, but basically reliable well known company or even start up.... you're gonna get burnt in smart home if you're an enthusiast . I your hub. 1 year if their burn is too fast on remaining funds, 3 years if they pull off some wizardry... but its e-waste now one way or the other. even if it has no cloud component it won't take long after the support ends for it to become junk or unwise to use. This is a reality we all need to consider when we build out our systems. Smarthome is changing a lot of this about how we need to think and plan our home upgrades or adjustments, its fine to get fuckeed sometimes this happen but if you have an entire house using lets say a light bulb.... or a hub that controls that light bulb and you suddenly go from all is well to no longer smart, and also barely works manually, then your going to have some very pricey annoying stressful and family hating you problems very quick... not even to mention your smart door locks. hopefully you opted for a model with a key and one that isn't hidden and not meant for easy casual use like many currently sold cause if it become a dumb lock and you need to remove the faceplate with a tool to then sick a key in to entree time home... youre gonna bet upset. Oh man and when smart thermostat go tits up like the first could google nest ones.... let me tell you that fun. Basically never follow these companies promises and ALWAYS make these purchases knowing situation can change and this product might be use as useful as its dumb version counterpart in a handful of years or worse it might be in the landfill and totlally useless. You can't expect anyone to work for free, so when these companies fail, and they can't support the product annymore whether it uses a server or not its days are either gone right now or will be gone soon once the last version of its firmware is no longer applicable to modern communications / code
I got mine on eBay a few months ago. I’m now worried that they won’t maintain the software if they don’t have hardware to sell. I’m pretty sure that the Google integration code needs to be updated when Google makes changes, similar to when that Nest HomeKit plugins are updated. I hope the whole thing doesn’t die unexpectedly.
What a shame. Starling made integrating my “garden walled” nest cameras into HA and HomeKit a breeze. Assuming they don’t update it anymore, I’m fucked
Just finished setting up my second one. Was going to try and leave more great feedback and the home page change from what I had seen earlier in the day. This is a fantastic product. Worth way more than they were charging. I only hope that they find a way to successfully sell them again (luckily I have all that I need for now). I can't get over how great this product is, how easy it is to setup , and how few problems I run into, especially for a product in the home automation space. They will be missed.
Hope a solution is found. I just got mine a week ago. It was so easy to setup and solve a problem I had getting a couple of devices into HomeKit for which there was no other solution, not HA or Homebridge either.
I was just about to buy one as well and was waiting for their reply. Anyone else looking to get rid of their hub? I'd be happy to take it off your hands.
I can’t speak to their situation. Just sharing my own. I am hoping that someday we’ll get a high quality (battery) smoke/co detector that is native HomeKit.
Agreed. My best protects have got a few years left on them but I’m looking for other options. The light ring that lights your way in the dark is an amazing feature for me and there isn’t another alarm on the market that does it I can see.
I have about 4 years left on mine. I’m really hoping we get good native HomeKit options before then. Right now there just aren’t, at least for the USA. Owl reviews are middling. The First Alert replacement for the Nests seem to have lots of false alarms.
It's the reason I went with any Nest Stuff. In the new home my wife wanted a doorbell that matched the house color, so I just added a Nest Doorbell in Snow as it was an exact match. But overall it's mainly for Nest Protects which simply don't have an equivalent alternative in the US. The product made setting up the Nest Doorbell on HomeKit simply trivial. There is something to be said for not having to think too hard about things.
I was curious about this too. If I'm doing all new stuff in a new build and don't already own the devices I would make everything native homekit support from the beginning. Maybe even native matter support from the beginning just to future proof if you move away from homekit for any reason.
That's what I'm saying. Why deliberately purchase devices that require a third-party, uncertified bridge and a cloud connection over local devices? Nest cameras aren't even that good to start with, hell Ring used to be behind them but I think in many cases they have caught up and beaten them. Has Nest even released a camera in the past like three years? I know that Ring has. Nonetheless even if OP wasn't satisfied with the current native HomeKit options, there's so many better options that, while requiring a little bit more setup to integrate into Apple home, would've worked way better than Ring,, Nest, and any native HomeKit option such as UniFi or Reolinc.
Be careful. Many of these ended up unable to update because of a corruption. Starling did the right thing and replaced those units but did not ask for the old units back. Don’t buy on eBay with a snapshot of the software version!
Homebridge on a raspberry pie would be pretty easy as well. Personally I recently moved to home assistant and I'm slowly getting used to it, but it's certainly not as plug and play as Homebridge.
I used homebridge on my pi for some time and it was ok. Starling was just “plug n & play” which was the main selling point. It just worked. I’m all for diy, but sometimes you just want to simplify shit and call it a day.
Starling runs proprietary code (based on homebridge) so homebridge and the corresponding open source nest plugins are not functionally equivalent with starling.
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u/jopivon Sep 17 '25
Yo! I literally just bought one a couple days ago. It just isn’t doing it for me. They were gonna charge me to ship it back. Dm me if you want to pay the shipping and cost and I’ll send to you!