Why no decent sales on Insteon devices?

[jonsmirl]

What's going on with Smart Home? All of the decent Insteon sales have stopped. No President's Day sale this year. Now they have a Memorial Day sale for 10% off. But they removed the multi-packs from the website and turned off free shipping. So it is a non-sale. I have a few dead devices that need replacing, am I going to have to wait until Black Friday to get a decent sale?

Hard to justify $45 for Insteon dimmers when TP Link is selling wifi based ones on Amazon for $11 shipped. I could convert my house over but I need keypads in a few locations and TP Link does not sell them.

[lilyoyo1]

59 minutes ago, jonsmirl said:

What's going on with Smart Home? All of the decent Insteon sales have stopped. No President's Day sale this year. Now they have a Memorial Day sale for 10% off. But they removed the multi-packs from the website and turned off free shipping. So it is a non-sale. I have a few dead devices that need replacing, am I going to have to wait until Black Friday to get a decent sale?

Hard to justify $45 for Insteon dimmers when TP Link is selling wifi based ones on Amazon for $11 shipped. I could convert my house over but I need keypads in a few locations and TP Link does not sell them.

The same reason why you don't see many sales on a lot of electronic items....short supply. 

Unless something changes in regards to this silicon shortage, I doubt you'll see much bigger sales come black Friday either.

Since you're ok with the TPlink, you could always buy the TPlink switches you want and then use keypads where you need them. 

 

 

[jonsmirl]

Not all chips and experiencing shortages and Insteon using some very common chips. Do we know for sure this is shortage related?  Or is something else going on with the private equity firm that bought Insteon? Maybe new owners trying to raise prices?

TP Link is a complex change. I will need to sort out which lighting groups don't interact with each other and then switch the entire grouping. I am already forwarding some Insteon keypad presses up into Amazon for processing so that they can trigger events in a different vendor's wall gardens. TPLink is also inside a walled garden and you have to interact with it via the cloud.

So my dilemma is to buy seven Insteon dimmers at about $50 each, or start switching parts of house over to TPLink which would let me free up some Insteons.

Next year https://buildwithmatter.com/ should make this problem easier to solve by eliminating the vendor wall gardens inside your home. But Matter based devices aren't shipping yet.

[lilyoyo1]

4 minutes ago, jonsmirl said:

Not all chips and experiencing shortages and Insteon using some very common chips. Do we know for sure this is shortage related?  Or is something else going on with the private equity firm that bought Insteon? Maybe new owners trying to raise prices?

TP Link is a complex change. I will need to sort out which lighting groups don't interact with each other and then switch the entire grouping. I am already forwarding some Insteon keypad presses up into Amazon for processing so that they can trigger events in a different vendor's wall gardens. TPLink is also inside a walled garden and you have to interact with it via the cloud.

So my dilemma is to buy seven Insteon dimmers at about $50 each, or start switching parts of house over to TPLink which would let me free up some Insteons.

Next year https://buildwithmatter.com/ should make this problem easier to solve by eliminating the vendor wall gardens inside your home. But Matter based devices aren't shipping yet.

Actually I do know for certain this is related. It's affecting more than just them. 

 Do you know that it's not? With many companies struggling right now and all saying the same thing, what position are you in to say what a single company is doing?

If they were simply trying to raise prices they would have already (not to say it won't ever happen). Even their new line is delayed due to the shortages. Going off your reasoning, if there wasn't a chip shortage wouldn't they have already released the new line to make money off it vs. holding back?

[jonsmirl]

For sure there is a chip shortage, but it is uneven. Some chips you can't get any and others are easy to get. The problem is that if you can't get one of the chips needed to make a PCB, you can't make the PCB.  Which chip are they unable to get?

Edited May 28, 2021 by jonsmirl

[lilyoyo1]

3 minutes ago, jonsmirl said:

For sure there is a chip shortage, but it is uneven. Some chips you can't get any and others are easy to get. The problem is that if you can't get one of the chips needed to make a PCB, you can't make the PCB.  Which chip are they unable to get?

Does it matter? Unless you can supply them it's a moot point. 

[MrBill]

There's also a Kasa nodeserver.  The light switches aren't yet on the list of known devices that work. However, per the nodeserver README

Quote

All other simple plug and bulb devices should work, the nodeserver attempts to figure out the capabilities of the device instead of hardcoding based on the model. But if you have an issue please add to UDI Poly Kasa Issues Feel free to Fork this repo and add support as you like and send me a pull request.

they might work.  

If you have at least one Kasa switch already perhaps you could check if you also have Polyglot running on a Pi or Polisy.

 

Edit to add:

Quote

2.5.0: 04/28/2021

• Added HS220 support Thanks to @albrandwood

from the release notes.

Edited May 28, 2021 by MrBill

[apostolakisl]

Are the Kasa switches any good?  Do the feel nice or cheap?  Also, can they be linked in scenes or 3 ways?  Or would you have to use ISY to create virtual scenes and 3 ways?  The nodeserver mentions that Kasa could change the api and break it.  That doesn't make sense to me since it also says it runs on the LAN, so it seems like all you have to do is refuse any updates.

EDIT:  Just read a review.  Forget it.  They are that crummy push the bottom to toggle type switch.  

Edited May 29, 2021 by apostolakisl

[ctviggen1]

I'm about to do some additional wiring where I would need to add some controllable switches. Insteon has gotten very expensive and also hard to find.  I can buy Zwave for a lot less, something like this:

Possible Zwave switch

I'm unsure what to do, since some of these would be mixed (Zwave AND Insteon for the same set of lights).  Not sure I can even do that. 

Any recommendations?  Just stay the course and pay $50 for Insteon switches? (I just gasp when a single room with 4 switches is $200.)

 

[lilyoyo1]

1 hour ago, ctviggen1 said:

I'm about to do some additional wiring where I would need to add some controllable switches. Insteon has gotten very expensive and also hard to find.  I can buy Zwave for a lot less, something like this:

Possible Zwave switch

I'm unsure what to do, since some of these would be mixed (Zwave AND Insteon for the same set of lights).  Not sure I can even do that. 

Any recommendations?  Just stay the course and pay $50 for Insteon switches? (I just gasp when a single room with 4 switches is $200.)

 

If you're not using zwave already and do not have a zwave board, you will end up paying more than 200 to swap to leave since you'll need to get the board in addition to additional devices to build up your zwave network. 

You can mix zwave with insteon but the experience will not be the same. Depending on what type of things you want to do, you'll probably miss out on the strengths of both systems by combining the 2

[Goose66]

Chip shortage or no, there's no doubt that Insteon is in flux. I think UDI sees it as well. I haven't invested any more in my system in 2 years. I have nearly 100 insteon devices and switching to ZWave or something different now would be overwhelmingly expensive. So at this point, as Insteon goes, so does my home automation system - 2 years of no forward progress (for lighting, at least).

[ctviggen1]

I have a zwave board and 4 zwave devices (three ceiling fans and one lock).  I'm about to get some plugin modules to help strengthen my zwave system (ISY and lock in basement, ceiling fans on second floor...need something on the first floor to bridge the gap).

I still have two rooms to do.  I could do those in zwave, perhaps.  They wouldn't be "mixed".  (Hmm...these rooms on the first floor, so I could use Zwave here and not worry about the plugin modules; will have to think about this.)

I am about to extend some wiring.  We have switches for lights on the "left" side of a 2-door basement door.  We now open the door from the "right" side.  (The door leaked and had to be replaced, and the company gave us a good deal on this one, since it was incorrectly ordered.)  Both of those switches are Insteon.  I was going to wire in two more switches on the right side of the door.   I should probably keep these as Insteon, since the current switches are Insteon.

Hard to know what to do.  Hopefully, Insteon will come back to its normal self again.

[jonsmirl]

If you are buying new devices going forward I would recommend Zigbee or Wifi based devices. That is because Matter is going to be announced at CES 2022 and it is really going to shake up the smart device market since Apple, Amazon and Google are all supporting it.

Zigbee or Wifi devices you buy today won't support Matter, but it is likely they can be reflashed to support it. Zwave is not part of Matter.

https://buildwithmatter.com/

[ctviggen1]

I may have to think about Zigbee, thanks. I assume this works with the ISY 994i?

Though I guess this still doesn't solve my weak Zwave problem, though I guess some plugin modules will fix that.

[jonsmirl]

It is the ISY994iZ but I am not sure if it is sold anymore.  I also have no clue how ISY is going to work with Matter.  The obvious solution would be for it to proxy all of the Insteon devices out onto the IP network as Matter devices.  With Google, Apple and Amazon all behind Matter there is going to be no stopping it in 2022.

[lilyoyo1]

41 minutes ago, jonsmirl said:

If you are buying new devices going forward I would recommend Zigbee or Wifi based devices. That is because Matter is going to be announced at CES 2022 and it is really going to shake up the smart device market since Apple, Amazon and Google are all supporting it.

Zigbee or Wifi devices you buy today won't support Matter, but it is likely they can be reflashed to support it. Zwave is not part of Matter.

https://buildwithmatter.com/

Being that ZigBee HA devices do not work with the Isy, he'd be wasting time and money trying to go that route.

Can we hold off on touting how great Matter is/will be until it's actually released and implemented throughout a multitude of devices. There's been at least half a dozen attempts at the next big thing but yet here we are with things still being limited in how they work together. 

[lilyoyo1]

41 minutes ago, ctviggen1 said:

I may have to think about Zigbee, thanks. I assume this works with the ISY 994i?

Though I guess this still doesn't solve my weak Zwave problem, though I guess some plugin modules will fix that.

ZigBee HA DOES NOT work with the isy. Not directly anyway. You would need to add another interface such as hubitat to use ZigBee. 

Edited June 8, 2021 by lilyoyo1

[danbutter]

Just to throw my two cents in...I would look at zwave to compliment insteon.  I started with insteon and think that they are great for lights, but since there was no available locks I started with zwave.  Now I still have more insteon than zwave, but zwave is catching up.   They are much more reasonable cost wise (had pretty good luck with zooz) and are still ALL LOCAL communications.  If this matters to you, then you need to be careful with things like TP link.  They had local control, then took it away, then gave it back sorta, then...who knows what is next for them....or any of these other companies that have cloud requirements.

I know I'm in more of the minority in this regard, but do you really want your house to stop working if there is an internet outage?  Or if a company pushes a firmware update that removes local control?

Zigbee and wifi share the same RF which is already overcrowded while insteon and zwave are in a much clearer space RF wise.

[ctviggen1]

Thanks, All.  I thought about this for a bit, and also decided to stick with Insteon/Zwave for now.  It was expensive enough as it was to get where I am with mainly Insteon.  Insteon has worked really, really well for me.  Only issues:

-The ceiling fan controller wasn't great, and I don't like the type where a box has to go into the ceiling fan box; I prefer solutions (like Zwave) where the switch does everything.

-The new motion sensors aren't great for Insteon. Or at least I found the old models better.

-The plugin Insteon boxes can cause issues.  Not sure why, but if I have a random on/off, it's always in plugin boxes.  If I replace that plugin box with an in-wall controllable outlet, no issues.  Odd, but has happened multiple times.

[Goose66]

29 minutes ago, ctviggen1 said:

-The ceiling fan controller wasn't great, and I don't like the type where a box has to go into the ceiling fan box; I prefer solutions (like Zwave) where the switch does everything.

The Inteon ceiling fan unit is really nice when adding a ceiling fan where no ceiling fan wiring already existed. Don't think the ZWave switch could handle that scenario.

30 minutes ago, ctviggen1 said:

-The plugin Insteon boxes can cause issues.  Not sure why, but if I have a random on/off, it's always in plugin boxes.  If I replace that plugin box with an in-wall controllable outlet, no issues.  Odd, but has happened multiple times.

My Insteon plug-in modules are constantly breaking. Even being aware of the issue and working them gently out of the wall socket, I have to replace at least two a year when taking down all the Christmas lights. They are just so cheap!

[smokegrub]

14 minutes ago, Goose66 said:

The Inteon ceiling fan unit is really nice when adding a ceiling fan where no ceiling fan wiring already existed. Don't think the ZWave switch could handle that scenario.

My Insteon plug-in modules are constantly breaking. Even being aware of the issue and working them gently out of the wall socket, I have to replace at least two a year when taking down all the Christmas lights. They are just so cheap!

 

[oberkc]

19 hours ago, jonsmirl said:

With Google, Apple and Amazon all behind Matter there is going to be no stopping it in 2022.

I hear such predictions regarding apple homekit.  We will see, I guess.

[asbril]

For sure there will be more and different options over the years and this will matter (pun intended...). Right now I would not be a fan of a wifi based home automation system, but it is likely that wifi will evolve as well and not be susceptible to easy overcrowding.

My choice remains entirely with UD and ISY as they have shown to adapt to a quality integration of new products and technology. Polisy is only at its very beginning.

We all started our home automation at a certain moment, with what we considered the best cost/benefit efficient product available at that time. Then a new option arrived and another one later on..... Most of us did not dump all we had and started all over again, but we tried to work with what we had while as much as possible taking advantage of new options. That is the genius of ISY, first X10 + Insteon + Zwave, and now much more with Polisy.

[smokegrub]

16 hours ago, smokegrub said:

 

Unfortunately, I didn't finish my comment. I have found Insteon devices incredibly reliable. My device failure rate has been extremely low. I am hopefuly that Insteon will emerge stranger than ever before and with an incredible new product line. 

[asbril]

13 minutes ago, smokegrub said:

stranger

stronger ? ?