Smart home company Insteon finally breaks silence after turning off the lights on users
One of the biggest fears you can have when you start to invest in smart home gadgets (outside the concern of privacy invasion) is, “what happens if the brand I chose ends support or shuts down?” For customers of Insteon, this is a fear that’s just been made all too real. Following a sudden shutdown of the company’s forums and the suspicious distancing of key executives (including the president and chairman of Insteon’s parent company), Insteon has finally issued a statement that seems to confirm that it’s going out of business.
Many of our readers may not be immediately familiar with the Insteon name, but it’s a smart home company that saw early popularity for its extensibility, speed of operation, and automation tools, with many early adopters investing in it quite deeply. The company offered basics like smart switches, outlets, sensors, and remotes, but it also had a complex ecosystem of additional gadgets like computer interfaces, range extenders, and embedded devices that could be used in plenty of novel, custom ways. Its productsworked with the Google Assistantand were one of the first adopters of Apple’s HomeKit.
Insteon uses a hub-based system that communicates over a proprietary 900MHz protocol paired with wired powerline-based data transmission, with each device serving as a repeater for an expansive mesh-based smart home system. While it integrated with many other services, Insteon never made use of the more universal smart home standards that have since taken off, and the coming rise ofMattermay ultimately prove to be one of many nails in its coffin.
Various Insteon products, including keypads and remotes that were popular for triggering “scene” automations.
Customers first noticed something was amiss when Insteon’s services went down over a week ago, interfering with some automations, digital assistant integrations, and even basic app-based remote control in many cases. As pointed out byArs Technica’s Ron Amadeo, the protocols used by Insteon have been reverse-engineered, and customers do havesomerecourse in the form ofHome AssistantandOpenHabto plug the gap, but this requires a little work on their part. In at least the case of Home Assistant, customers are further warned, “Do not factory reset your device under any circumstances as it will not be recoverable.” A remote connection to Insteon’s servers is apparently required for setup to complete successfully.
Stacey Higginbotham of Stacey On IOTpointed out in the early days of this mystery that Rob Lileness, president and chairman of parent company Smartlabs, removed references to Insteon and Smartlabs from his LinkedIn profile, and that various other executives associated with the company either listed their roles as having ended or similarly excluded Insteon from their employment history. Higginbotham also noted that a phone number associated with the company was no longer connecting, and no one at Insteon appeared to be responding to inquiries. Android Police reached out to Insteon for more information at the time, but there was no immediate response.
That radio silence from Insteon continued for a few days, when all of a sudden the companyupdated its website with a statementthat at least obliquely addresses these developments. The company explains, in part:
In 2019, the onset of the global pandemic brought unforeseen disruption to the market, but the company continued to move forward. However, the subsequent (and enduring) disruption to the supply chain caused by the pandemic proved incredibly difficult and the company engaged in a sales process in November, 2021. The goal was to find a parent for the company and continue to invest in new products and the technology. The process resulted in several interested parties and a sale was expected to be realized in the March timeframe. Unfortunately, that sale did not materialize. Consequently, the company was assigned to a financial services firm in March to optimize the assets of the company.
While Insteon stops short of outright saying “we’re out of business,” it’s difficult to read this statement of “asset optimization” with the feeling that Insteon intends to come out of this stronger than ever on the other side. If anything, this feels like confirmation of the end.
As for what recourse users have, some reports indicate that certain Insteon hub-types may still be working reliably even with the company’s servers no longer responding, andcustomers in the /r/insteon subreddithave been debating different solutions and workarounds for their issues — if you’re among those affected, it might be worth a look. (More like Insteoff, amirite?)
UPDATE: 2022/04/23 13:52 EST BY STEPHEN SCHENCK
Insteon responds
Updated withInsteon’s public statement, spotted byRon Amadeo at Ars Technica.
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