gregkinney Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 The Smarthome forum appears to have been taken down.
MrBill Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 21 minutes ago, gregkinney said: The Smarthome forum appears to have been taken down. dead for me as well.
Techman Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 Not only is the forum offline but the local phone numbers for both Smartlabs and Smarthome are no longer working. The Smarthome 800 number tells you to contact them via email. Over the last few weeks I've sent them several emails and never received a response. Has anyone received an email response from them?
MrBill Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 (edited) Even if smarthome/smartlabs closes up shop... the technology will surly be up for sale. Like happened to X-10 (how many times?) someone will likely buy it and bring Insteon back to market. Corporate world doesn't flush assets down the toilet they instead will get what they can get on the investment. It actually could be a good thing in terms of pricing, a buyer that bought at a huge discount can bring the technology back to market at less cost, allowing it compete against lower priced products. I also visited nokia.com this morning... those smarhome pages seem to be gone too... Edited April 11, 2022 by MrBill
Techman Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 The Nokia products are still showing online, with a "mail me when available" https://nokia.smartlabsinc.com/collections/all
Techman Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 Here's something interesting. Smartlabs released an app on the Apple store, updated February 2022, to control the (currently unavailable) Nokia product line. Go figure that one out. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nokia-smart-lighting/id1540152104
MrBill Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 1 hour ago, Techman said: The Nokia products are still showing online, with a "mail me when available" https://nokia.smartlabsinc.com/collections/all those are smartlabs pages however... they were linked from nokia.com. Nokia.com has wiped it's smarthome products from it's pages there.
lilyoyo1 Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 2 hours ago, Techman said: Here's something interesting. Smartlabs released an app on the Apple store, updated February 2022, to control the (currently unavailable) Nokia product line. Go figure that one out. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nokia-smart-lighting/id1540152104 That's been in the so store for a year now
Techman Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 26 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said: That's been in the so store for a year now I just tried calling the local phone number listed for the app developer, seems to be disconnected. Their 800 number has a recording saying to email them. I guess everything hit the fan this month.
apostolakisl Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 (edited) Website works, but as far as I can tell, everything is either sold out or sends you to amazon. We shall see who comes away with the technology. I assume someone will. In the meantime, I have plenty of spares. Wonder where Nokia comes out in this? Nokia website for the switches looks to be taken down. Edited April 11, 2022 by apostolakisl
lilyoyo1 Posted April 11, 2022 Posted April 11, 2022 (edited) 49 minutes ago, Techman said: I just tried calling the local phone number listed for the app developer, seems to be disconnected. Their 800 number has a recording saying to email them. I guess everything hit the fan this month. I don't know. I've never used their support lines. I thought that change happened a while back in regards to email only. Update: That's it. They're done! Edited April 11, 2022 by lilyoyo1 1
Techman Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 3 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said: I don't know. I've never used their support lines. I thought that change happened a while back in regards to email only. Update: That's it. They're done! Sure seems that way. I think Michel mentioned a while back that they were trying to sell the Company. Does anyone with installer or developer access to Smartlabs have any updates?
lilyoyo1 Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 20 minutes ago, Techman said: Sure seems that way. I think Michel mentioned a while back that they were trying to sell the Company. Does anyone with installer or developer access to Smartlabs have any updates? That is the update. They're done
Techman Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 48 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said: That is the update. They're done Looks like their whole operation may be shut down. All the 3rd party products they sold on the Smarthome website are either "out of stock" or they refer you to Amazon. I wonder what will become of the Insteon patent. Being that they pretty much ran the company into the ground I would assume its value is minimal. It's certainly a sad state of affairs.
Brian H Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 (edited) As of this morning. Both the Smarthome and Insteon forums are still off line. Years ago under the old management. One day with out notice the Insteon Developers Group just vanished. With no advanced warnings. For the present. The main Insteon web site can still be accessed. Edited April 12, 2022 by Brian H Add information
jackman Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 Does anyone live near Irvine? I wonder if there's an out of business sign on the front door. 1
upstatemike Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 Who will be the next to fall? I expect Z-Wave because their implementation of keypads and virtual 3-way switching is kludgy and they are in direct competition with the Apple/Amazon/Google vision for Matter/Thread/Zigbee/Wi-Fi.
asbril Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 17 minutes ago, upstatemike said: I expect Z-Wave I doubt that Zwave will fail. There are too many manufacturers and devices for Zwave to disappear as what appears to be the case of Insteon. However, new technologies come and go and Zwave may fade away over time. Right now Google Home , Alexa and Apple Homekit seem to focus on the unsophisticated market but that could change with better user interface Apps. And will Matter not matter, or will it ? Interestingly I saw that Inovelli is coming with a Zigbee device. I had hopes for Inovelli as they came out with (as their name suggests) with innovative Zwave products, but for a while now they seem to have gone the Smarthome way, sold out and no customer service. Also, the quality of their products is far from perfect. Therefore going into Zigbee may be their swan song. 1
upstatemike Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 It just seems like Zigbee based products like Hue and Control4 are better positioned to integrate with the unsophisticated mass market products to create a natural and incremental upgrade path that new users can follow over time.
stillwater Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 (edited) One data point re Zigbee vs Zwave -- Nabu Casa, the business arm of Home Assistant, integrated Zigbee but not Zwave into their Home Assistant Yellow box. https://www.crowdsupply.com/nabu-casa/home-assistant-yellow Clarification -- the logic behind this choice is partly that Zigbee is the same worldwide whereas Z-wave operates on different frequencies and so makes more sense to add a USB stick as needed. Edited April 13, 2022 by stillwater clarification in post 1
Michel Kohanim Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 No more speculations ... they are gone! It's 100% official and it has been for a couple of weeks now. With kind regards, Michel 1 4
Brian H Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 Thank you for the information. This doesn't look good for things like replacement PLM modules or the future of my continued Insteon use.
apostolakisl Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 1 hour ago, Michel Kohanim said: No more speculations ... they are gone! It's 100% official and it has been for a couple of weeks now. With kind regards, Michel Are they in bankruptcy or are they solvent but just shut down? Are they selling their patents and secret code? If they are in bankruptcy then these things would be for sale by court order.
Michel Kohanim Posted April 12, 2022 Posted April 12, 2022 What I know is that they were going to sell but it didn't go through, so they just decided to shut down. With regard to PLM and devices, the outlook is grim. If they would offer me their PLM code/chip in return for $ per unit, I might consider (all we need is the chip since we already designed it once before they shut us down). I will not entertain up front $. The only goal would be to support existing customers. With kind regards, Michel 6 1
Recommended Posts