The AWS failure showed that some devices in our home should never be smart.
Earlier this week, a massive outage by Amazon Web Services hit the internet, grounding half of the internet. Numerous websites, games, instant messengers, service applications, teamwork tools (such as Slack) and even Alexa, Amazon’s intelligent assistant, did not work. It was quickly hailed as one of the biggest glitches in recent months because it prevented a huge number of people from all over the world from working – as many as 8 million reports appeared on the Downdetector website. However, the real nightmare happens in… bedrooms. Owners of smart beds had a bad night because their smart beds started going crazy.
Smart beds versus internet failure
I perfectly understand the fascination with the idea of a smart home and I use devices supporting this technology, but there are some things that should remain unintelligent. This group includes beds, not only because a smart bed seems to me to be an unnecessary exaggeration, but also because such a device can be simply dangerous – or at best, prone to very uncomfortable failures.
Owners of Eight Sleep beds, i.e. devices that the company calls advanced sleep systems, have experienced this. These are nothing more than mattresses or mattress toppers that control the temperature using a water system. Each side of the bed can have a different temperature, and the settings are controlled via a mobile application that also collects sleep data. The system allows you to monitor sleep, wake-up time and sleep phases, and provides reports on the quality of rest. The latest versions include additional features, such as built-in speakers and a cooling mode for hot flashes, but most functions require an Internet connection.
And it was this Internet connection that became the source of problems, because due to an AWS failure, the beds rebelled.
The dark side of smart beds – do we really need them?
Spending over PLN 2,000 dollars for a smart bed, you expect a comfortable sleep like in an IKEA ad, but not this time. The AWS failure caused Eight Sleep products to struggle with a whole host of different problems because… the creators did not provide for an offline mode. In the most mild cases, they simply turned off and did not respond to commands from the application, but in the most hardcore cases, they locked themselves at a temperature 9 degrees higher than the room temperature – so you can imagine the heating that sleeping users had to deal with.
Users have also reported other cases, such as the bed getting stuck in an inclined position, but it is the lack of ability to control the temperature that seems to be the most dangerous – it could result in dangerous overheating. The manufacturer states that the device can heat up to 43°C, so comparisons between angry users and sleeping in a sauna are absolutely justified.
“We are currently securing the operation of your Pod beds in the event of a failure and we will be working on it all night, 24/7, until the process is completed,” said Matteo Franceschetti, CEO of Eight Sleep, in a statement on X.
Of course, after AWS returned to normal operation, the problems disappeared, but this does not change the fact that such situations should give us food for thought. Not everything should be smart and not everything should be connected to the Internet.
Stock image from Depositphotos
