When we talk about a " smart home," people often fall into one of three camps. The first camp is made up of those who love the idea of their home being truly "smart", being able to automate their day in a way that makes life easier. The second camp is simply made up of those who don't care, haven't heard of it, or feel as if it's not worth the money. The third camp, meanwhile, is typically made up of those who vehemently hate the idea, pointing to the invitation of potential tech problems into your home, vendor lock-in, and data collection. Futurehome, a Norwegian-based smart home company, has recently given firepower to that latter camp.
Futurehome was once a rising star in Norway's smart home industry, known for its innovative platform that let homeowners automate and optimize their houses. The company offered a central smart hub and connected devices, enabling users to reduce energy consumption, schedule appliances, and remotely control lighting, heating, EV charging, and more. The company grew so much that by 2023, over 30,000 Norwegian households were using Futurehome's products, but what seemed like a smart home success story has resulted in a story that emphasises the importance of truly owning your smart home.
What happened? Well, in May 2025, Futurehome AS declared bankruptcy, leaving its 30,000-plus customers in uncertainty. Shortly thereafter, the platform and services were acquired from the bankruptcy estate; 50% by the original Futurehome owners and 50% by Sikom Connect. Operations then resumed under a new company, FHSD Connect AS. These new owners then introduced a paid subscription model "to secure stable operation, fund product development, and provide high-quality support" going forward. In other words, the product you paid for that required no subscriptions to use would suddenly start costing you a monthly or yearly fee.
Louis Rossmann, owner of Rossmann Repair Group, a YouTuber, and a right-to-repair advocate, has gone so far as to call it "ransomware," as your previously functional devices will no longer work if you don't pay a fee to keep using them, even when they were originally sold as-is without any expectation of additional costs in the future. From a technical perspective, the entire Futurehome saga illustrates why it's so important to truly "own" your smart home.
Futurehome's bankruptcy has locked consumers out
And you'll have to pay to get back in
After the bankruptcy on 20 May 2025, Futurehome's so-called "resurrection" came with new strings attached. Under FHSD Connect's new subscription model, users are now required to pay 99 NOK per month (billed as 1,188 NOK yearly, roughly $116) to retain full use of their smart home system. The change took effect at the end of June 2025, following a 4-week trial period for existing users, and those who don't pay up then lose access to most of their system's smart features once the trial expires. According to Futurehome, these include:
- The app is locked and most paid features become unavailable.
- You lose access to controlling devices, configuring; automations, modes, shortcuts, and energy services.
- Local devices still work manually, but without app control.
In practical terms, a customer's smart home reverts to a basic "dumb" state without the cloud service. The hub will no longer allow remote commands or scheduling; users can only operate devices by physically interacting with them. The smart thermostat on the wall can still be adjusted manually, but any scheduled temperature changes or app-based control stop functioning. Lights and dimmers can be toggled by their switches, but no smartphone control or automation rules will run.
It's not just simple devices that are affected, either. Even the specialized products, such as Futurehome's EV charger, lose their intelligence. For example, its smart charging feature (which delays charging to off-peak hours to save money) is disabled without a subscription. Instead, the charger will simply start charging immediately when you plug in the car, with no optimization whatsoever.
Futurehome's new management, meanwhile, is trying to justify the subscription as a necessity. They argue that recurring fees are needed to keep the cloud platform running after the financial collapse of the old company. The revenue from subscriptions is intended to maintain stable servers, fund further development, and support the user base going forward, where, in their view, it appears that the alternative was shutting down entirely.
Nonetheless, many users see the situation very differently. To them, it feels like they're being coerced into paying for something they were promised as part of the original product purchase. Before this, Futurehome's value proposition was that after buying the hardware, the associated app and cloud services were free to use. Now, those sunk-cost hardware investments (smart hubs, sensors, connected thermostats, and other devices) are practically useless unless an annual fee is paid. That's where the "ransomware" allegations have come from; if you're locked out of your smart home devices and can't use them without paying, it's not all that different from being locked out of your computer suddenly and not being able to use it without paying.
So, for smart devices like these, when you "own" a smart home product, do you really own it? Who has the keys, really? Truth be told, this situation underlines the reality of many modern digital services. You're not "buying" the product; you're renting it at the company's mercy.
Enter Louis Rossmann
A consumer-rights advocate and YouTuber
A divisive figure, yet always a champion of consumer rights, has recently entered the fray, publishing numerous videos on the subject and talking at length about Futurehome, its practices, and what he sees as an attack on consumers. It all started with a video published in mid-July, titled "Smarthome company goes bankrupt, new owner ransoms everyone's house: $5000 bounty to crack firmware!" Apparently, after hearing from a tipster (claiming to be a former Futurehome software engineer) and seeing the uproar on Norwegian social media, Rossmann decided to take action.
Specifically, not only has Rossmann revisited the topic a few times at this stage to cover any additional developments, but he has also pledged $5,000 of his own money to anyone who can find a way to restore full functionality to Futurehome devices without the official subscription. This means finding a workaround to bypass the new firmware update or cloud checks that enforce the subscription lockout, and the solution being accepted by the community:
Number one, if somebody comes out with a way to get around Futurehome's bulls*** so that you can use those devices again, the way you could before that "f***face" CEO pushed out that ransomware firmware update, you will get a bounty of $5,000. If the community accepts your solution and says, "This works. This is good." 5,000 bucks. I pay my debts.
Rossmann’s offer didn't stop at just a cash reward. Understanding that hacking a device’s firmware might provoke a legal response from the company, he also promised to fund legal defense for anyone who took up the challenge, and extended that offer to any developer who faces a legal challenge from a company after developing a custom plugin to control that device. He further goes on to say that "We're going to set a precedent here that it's okay to hack your devices to get back the functionality that you bought and paid for."
That bounty itself has drawn a lot of eyeballs, and many who support the cause or even own some of Futurehome's devices have offered to contribute additional funds to the bounty. Rossmann's intervention reframes the issue entirely, because the truth is that it's not just a local Norwegian consumer story: practices like these have been going on for a long time, and this is the most extreme example of that.
Rossmann’s bounty puts a lot of pressure on Futurehome in two different ways. In a technical sense, it tests the company's security to see if its systems can withstand attempts to liberate it. And, in a reputational sense, will the company really want to sue a hobbyist developer who actually achieves what the bounty asks? Rossmann complicates things significantly for Futurehome, as there's now an international spotlight placed on the company. There could well be ramifications for the smart home industry as a whole if Futurehome succeeds in its attempts to alter the terms of the deal after the product has already been sold.
Futurehome's response leaves a lot to be desired
A legal threat doesn't look great
Faced with public backlash and the specter of hackers attempting to unlock their devices, Futurehome's management has responded with a mix of public statements and behind-the-scenes defensive measures. FHSD Connect's leadership has claimed that any attempts to bypass their systems are illegal, and in a statement to Norwegian news site Kode24, Viktoria Hafredal, the Chief Commercial Officer of FHSD Connect, stated that the company is taking Rossmann's bounty "very seriously" and has "increased [its] preparedness."
The CEO of FHSD Connect, Øyvind Fries, went even further. In an interview conducted by Tek.no over email (and acknowledged by Rossmann in a follow-up video), the CEO suggested that any hacking of Futurehome devices would be regarded as a crime to be pursued by the police. Below follows a machine-translated excerpt from the article:
– Fries: Although some people perceive this as entertainment, it can have serious consequences for thousands of subscribers who use the service daily, he emphasizes.
– Fries: Unauthorized access to software is considered illegal hacking, and is punishable under Norwegian law.
– Interviewer: If someone were to actually trigger the bounty and the software were to be broken, what legal steps would you take in that case?
– Fries: Any violations of the law are followed up by the police, who have experience with these types of issues.
This threat is nothing short of extraordinary, and also highlights how high the stakes are for Futurehome. If someone does find a way to reinstate levels of access similar to what consumers had before, it could undermine the revenue stream Futurehome is clearly relying on to survive. Yet this stance only serves to drive consumers even further away. Reverse engineering has always been considered protected across the U.S. and Europe, and has specifically been allowed in the U.S. when conducted to improve interoperability, and the same goes in Europe for interoperability and error correction.
Meanwhile, Futurehome’s management has continued to defend the introduction of subscriptions as a regrettable but necessary measure. Hafredal even claimed in that same interview with Kode24 that many consumers actually support the move, and “see the value in the service being continued, despite the bankruptcy of Futurehome AS.”
Futurehome also likes to point out that non-paying customers aren't being left in the dark entirely, though that's certainly up for debate. "Customers who do not want to subscribe to the services can still use the components locally, or choose other solutions that suit them better," Hafredal stated.
To be clear, while it's true that devices aren't physically bricked, the differences between a thermostat and a smart thermostat are completely eradicated when you remove those "smart" capabilities. It's basically telling consumers, "you can always leave if you don't like it," yet the point is that these devices were purchased under the expectation that they would work forever, not suddenly introduce a new subscription charge a couple of years into their lifespan.
From the outside looking in, it looks like a bankruptcy wipe-out of obligations followed by a resurrection that monetizes a captive user base who are already locked in with one vendor.
Controlling your devices is more important than ever
Some even offer a fallback
The fallout from all of this yet again reinforces the idea that the control over your smart devices is only as strong as your independence from any single vendor. When that vendor holds the only keys to your system's full functionality (especially via cloud services), your smart home is at risk of becoming unusable if the company fails or changes course. Yet the idea that you don't truly own a device if you can't use it freely without the manufacturer's ongoing permission is more important than ever to realize.
To be clear, a company going bankrupt and shutting down the cloud services that provide the backbone of its hardware is not a new fear, and the argument is quite similar to the Stop Killing Games initiative. The difference is that these are physical goods. Do we not own the devices in our own home? Do they just become e-waste if a company decides it's done supporting them? Futurehome is by no means the first company to do that, and Google did it with the Nest Secure in April 2024 and will do it with the first Nest Thermostat later this year, but generally speaking, other devices have either lived for a lot longer or even have alternative options available to control them locally.
Consumer confidence is a big issue as well, and when it comes to purchasing a device from a new company, it becomes a lot harder to take the risk on buying from a newcomer given the potential for it to be shut down a short while later. It further entrenches the so-called "too big to fail" companies that dominate the ecosystem, and increases vendor lock-in as a result.
It's not totally hopeless, though. One notable example of a company proactively addressing this issue is TRMNL, which announced an "unbrickable pledge" to consumers that means their devices stay usable even if the company goes bankrupt. They backed this promise with concrete actions: they open-sourced their device firmware and even provided multiple independent ways to run the associated services. The only downside to TRMNL is that people can technically "pirate" their software and run TRMNL on any device, but as Valve's Gabe Newell once put it, "piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem." People still pay TRMNL for the great service that it provides, yet there's a plan B if the worst-case scenario occurs.
This kind of pledge is essentially the polar opposite of what Futurehome did. By open-sourcing and planning for worst-case scenarios, TRMNL aims to ensure that customers retain control no matter what. As the TRMNL team wrote, "Sharing source code is the right thing to do for our customers. Preventing e-waste is the right thing to do for our planet."
The contrast between TRMNL's approach and Futurehome's is absolutely massive. TRMNL took a pro-user, transparency-first stance from the outset, whereas Futurehome (perhaps never expecting to fail) left customers with no recourse when things went south. Of course, open-sourcing a commercial platform isn’t always simple, and companies often worry about intellectual property and competitive advantage. Yet TRMNL's example shows that business models can be crafted to protect customers’ interests, not just the company’s bottom line. An "unbrickable" smart home device is one that will continue to serve its owner regardless of the corporate fate of the vendor.
In the future, consumers may (and should) start to demand such assurances as part of the value proposition, especially as smart home tech becomes as integral as utilities in some homes.
Reclaiming ownership is incredibly important
There are plenty of tools out there that make it possible
The story of Futurehome's bankruptcy and the ensuing subscription mandate is a reminder that the convenience of a cloud-connected smart home can come at a cost, and also serves as a way to highlight the issues associated with digital goods in general. When we fill our living spaces with "smart" devices, we are also tethering parts of our lives to the fortunes and decisions of tech companies that can decide on a whim to change how it works, if you pay for it, or if it even continues to work at all. If those companies mismanage their finances or change their strategies, it's the users who may literally pay the price, either in new fees or in lost functionality.
Right-to-repair and open-source aren’t just niche hobbies for enthusiasts, but fundamental issues that can affect anyone in the modern connected world. Taking back control of your smart home means being mindful of what you connect and who controls that connection. It might mean opting for gear that you can control locally, supporting brands that promise openness or at least a fallback option for customers, and staying informed about what rights you truly have with the products you buy.
This saga highlights the necessity for the Open Home Foundation and software like Home Assistant, which prioritizes local control over devices and interoperability. Futurehome is one of the most egregious examples of a company charging consumers after an initial sale that was meant to provide lifetime access, and the only similar example I can think of is Wink, which gave users a week to pay up or lose access, and workarounds that were shared did not incur the wrath of the company or result in legal threats.
TRMNL got it right. It should be the company's responsibility to offer an alternative way of controlling devices if it's no longer financially viable to continue supporting its products. Even Govee, which I've run into issues with in the past, offers a LAN API that can be enabled, meaning users can entirely block outbound connections from their lights if they wish. It's not hard, yet the move to try and force consumers to pay up to continue using devices is one that emphasises why local control is a big deal.
Use Zigbee, use Z-Wave, use local Wi-Fi, build your own sensors, whatever it takes. Smart homes are fantastic, but very few companies offer a truly local-only solution with complete feature parity to the cloud. Reolink is one that has partnered with Home Assistant and joined the "Works with Home Assistant" program, and TRMNL has bent over backwards to provide alternatives to consumers if it shuts its doors. These are the companies that deserve your money, not the ones that take your money, then demand more.