We promised to share the timeline of Blynk 1.0 (legacy) operation and retirement as soon as we have it. We have just released a blog post with a detailed timeline for you to have a clear understanding of the dates and plan accordingly.
As you can see, we are allowing plenty of time for the migration to the new platform, although we do recommend to start that process soon as possible. The legacy app is not developed or supported anymore (per our announcement from May 2021) and unforeseen issues can arise at any time - one example being the Facebook login issue that some users have experienced starting from April.
We are preparing a new promotion for Blynk legacy users as we speak - please stay tuned for more details on that!
It’s a pity that such a beautiful project was sent to the landfill.
Of course it doesn’t make a profit.
But in terms of simplicity and functionality - it is out of competition.
I have to say that I welcome the announcement, but have a few reservations.
Hopefully Blynk will find a way to notify existing legacy users via the app that the servers will stop working at the end of the year, because we know that many people don’t visit the forum and that mailing list emails tend to go directly to the spam folder.
It also seems unfair that Blynk had an initial earlybird offer of additional devices and a reduced subscription fees for early adopters, but those users who have migrated since then have missed-out on these offers.
It now seems that the latecomers will also recieve some sort of promotional offer as a reward for taking it down to the wire
It would be nice to see the in-app documentation for the mobile dashboard widgets improved. Many of the new apps have “This page is in development” displayed when you hit the information button, and some of the older widgets still have outdated legacy documentation.
For me, the reason I still have a legacy project running is that there is no Table widget in the new version of Blynk.
Okay, I could use events to display this data, but it certainly wouldn’t be as neat as a table within the mobile datshboard which displays the data.
Lack of persistence for the Terminal widget precludes that from being used as a (rather clunky) alternative to the table widget. There are workarounds available of course, but the migration process would be simpler if persistence was implemented for the Terminal.
Obviously, with all the horrendous things that are happening in the Ukraine, the Blynk team are doing a great at job despite these difficult circumstances.
A few more tweaks to make the migration process from Legacy to IoT smoother would probably be helpful though, and generate more subscribers to paid plans in the future.
what a pity … unfortunately I will be forced to migrate projects with Blynk Legacy elsewhere … Blynk IOT is not suitable for many projects.
It does not allow me to have communication between devices, even if different from each other (BRIDGE), the automations are not very useful to me
Graphics on HORRIBLE TILES each device is obliged to have its own page so 7 devices 7 horrible BOXES), in Blynk Legacy you can unify different devices on a single page
@seby you should look at Node-Red as a way to combine data from multiple devices onto a single Blynk “tile”. It works extremely well, and means that you don’t have to change too much to achieve the results you’re looking for.
I’ve always used Node-Red as my “rules engine” and Blynk as my UI, so migration from Legacy to IoT was fairly straightforward for me.
Sad times indeed on many levels for Ukraine - the demise of Blynk 1 and of course the troubles.
@PeteKnight, I took your advice on Node-Red and MQTT several months ago. And find it truly brilliant. All open and loads of contributors and free. Just fine for small DIYers. Just like Blynk 1 is/was. I use it as the graphical interface and also the hub for Blynk 1/Alexa/IoT/AWS.
Thanks guys at Blynk for getting me started with such a great product. As I’ve discussed before (and Pete above) unless Blynk IoT is able to replicate some of the Blynk 1 features I will miss and make the pricing and restrictions more realistic for me then I will not migrate.
I’m wondering if the shutdown timeline will be similar to other Blynk announced timelines e.g. Dark theme in the Blynk IoT mobile app?
Good luck with your commercial venture and do from time to time pay tribute to all the Blynk 1 users who helped you along the way with bug testing and ideas. It was a very synergistic relationship - in the true spirit of the internet and IoT.
@PeteKnight that is exactly our communication plan. In the following day or two everybody will receive their communication through the app, we are rolling the news step by step.
We are also working hard on the documentation for the widgets and overall documenting the platform as much as we can, adding new pages on a daily basis to make the migration / onboarding process easier for the new adopters.
I have taken a different path. I have now learnt Kodular with Firebase linked to esp’s. Works a treat. So that will. E the end of my journey with blynk.
Oh no ! Blynk 1 was so simple to use and there are features such as “bridge” which I will miss sorely for sending data to a different device. To me Blynk 2 still looks like a “work in progress” in many areas, example (the mobile dashboard and screens where customization is lacking).
@sri_c focusing on only one platform will mean more resources will be dedicated to the new features and overall improvement. It means moving forward faster with better quality.
We dont ask for further development. Let it be as it is. Let the server run. 99% of us will be happy to be on the old platform. It was such a breeze to setup virtual pins n stuff n much much more.
Today without a computer one cannot get started with. (Create template, datastream etc etc)
Viewing the console on mobile is definitely a bad experience for me.
I think the issue is not so much not having a server anymore. Because with a Raspberry you can make one (at least I think you can). The problem is that with the IOS/Android updates in a short time the App will no longer work.
e.g. Dark theme in the Blynk IoT mobile app?