As a general rule, only commit to supporting things you can fix from your chair. If it requires a site-visit, you'll never make money on it.
--dan On 12/20/2018 1:16 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote: I got my first support request today for a customer hooking up a robot vacuum. I guess people need to check remotely during the day to see how the vacuuming is going? Or the vacuum wants to watch Netflix? Anyway, vacuum company support is telling him it’s a firewall problem. Of course, it’s always your ISP is blocking it. I’m guessing he hasn’t even gotten it to connect to his WiFi. Anyway, what do you guys do as far as support for smart vacuums, toasters, light bulbs, etc.? I can see this getting out of hand real quick, as people buy dozens of little Internet connected appliances, and want to call their ISP each time. A lot of these may be $25 impulse buys, so I doubt we could make it into a revenue source even if we wanted to. Maybe you could charge a flat rate per month for IoT support, but it still seems like a money losing proposition if it takes off, unless you can outsource it to India.
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