Insteon Hubs Bricked? Insteon going out of business? What about switch purchase, what now?

[lilyoyo1]

1 minute ago, mvgossman said:

Thanks for that UD Mobile reference, looks interesting.

Is there a way to use the USB version of the PLM with the ISY994i?

No. There are hacks but not directly

[MrBill]

13 minutes ago, mvgossman said:

Thanks for that UD Mobile reference, looks interesting.

Is there a way to use the USB version of the PLM with the ISY994i?

Not with the 994, the USB version will connect directly to Polisy.

And while I say no, in this thread, they developed a serial converter using a PI to make the 2448A7 usb interface work with the 994.... I don't know if anyone's tried that approach with the USB PLM, but if one works I would think the other would.  That said, unless you just want a hobby project it's probably better and easier to just upgrade to Polisy (the Pro version of Polisy is not needed).

 

 

Edited April 19, 2022 by MrBill

[apostolakisl]

10 minutes ago, mvgossman said:

Thanks for that UD Mobile reference, looks interesting.

Is there a way to use the USB version of the PLM with the ISY994i?

You can buy the new Polisy and run ISY on it.  This supports both USB and serial PLM.  ISY running on Polisy is new and, I believe still in beta, but very stable from what I see here on the forum.  I am likely going to migrate my ISY to Polisy soon and retire my 994i.  Polisy also runs Polyglot which dramatically increases integration between ISY and damn near everything else that has a published API, and some things that aren't published but people have reverse engineered.  I have installed over 20 node servers on my ISY now so things like my roomba, flume water meter, sense energy meter, weather stations, etc are all nodes on ISY, the same as an Insteon device is a node.

[mvgossman]

I confess I hadn't heard of Polisy, will check it out.

[RPerrault]

4 hours ago, Teken said:

I have no clue what you’re saying.

saying its ironic that you say you don't know what the plan was

the next sentence - you declare the plan was a failure

 

[Teken]

1 hour ago, RPerrault said:

saying its ironic that you say you don't know what the plan was

the next sentence - you declare the plan was a failure

 

There's no irony simply you don't understand the facts presented by me as I have been watching this company for more than twenty years. I'll give you an analogy and if you can't follow how it relates to what I stated many times - that's on you.

A person comes upon a car accident and the end result is the driver killed another person by running them over. 

The end result are two people are dead . . .

Do the authorities stop there?!?!

No, they ask the question(s) of why . . .

They literally take all of the data they can obtain from first hand witnesses. Video surveillance, and of course a post mortem. When they piece all of the evidence together they find that at that very moment in time the light was red. The driver was drunk and clearly blew over the 0.08 limit and had no ability to react when the lights were solid red or when the person stepped into the intersection.

It doesn't end there because video evidence and people on the ground state the pedestrian was doing what???

Wait for it . . .

Head buried deep in their cell phone texting all the while blasting their ghetto music. No awareness or care of their surroundings and just walked out into the intersection like an idiot.

5th graders are taught what before stepping out???

So, are the material facts two people are dead or because it was completely avoidable and other factors played into an outcome that could have been avoided???

Could that dirty sh^t running Insteon / Smartlabs offered a final good bye??? It's only been 48 hours and counting and still nothing from this POS . . . What the public has been able to *Observe* just like the car accident are the bread crumbs of FACTS . . .

- Everyone from the company have removed any mention or association of Insteon

- Everything is shut down and no one is manning the phones / emails.

- Inventory being liquidated

- No new hardware being replaced or upgraded

- Existing hardware being deprecated

- No expansion to other markets to drive sales

- Spun up a new brand under Nokia to get away from the stench of Insteon

- The hundreds of other stupid things rolled out under the lead imbecile are too numerous to rehash here.

- As others stated follow the money, follow the trends, follow the actions.

 

[RPerrault]

i'm thinking an analogy needs something in common for a comparison

so i'll be blunt

i understand the anger - when you start dropping the genitals of females in your posts - we get that you are mad

you do not know that the ceo's plan was or was not perfectly executed - by your own admission - the fact that you can't imagine a plan might be to close the company is on you - or that external events caused its closure - or a myriad of other possibilities 

maybe be did a mark cuban - he might be on a bar stool in jrs next to cuban now

i am surprised that you post about what successful companies are doing wrong - if bill gates only had your wisdom, he'd be righ

 

 

[lilyoyo1]

1 hour ago, Teken said:

There's no irony simply you don't understand the facts presented by me as I have been watching this company for more than twenty years. I'll give you an analogy and if you can't follow how it relates to what I stated many times - that's on you.

A person comes upon a car accident and the end result is the driver killed another person by running them over. 

The end result are two people are dead . . .

Do the authorities stop there?!?!

No, they ask the question(s) of why . . .

They literally take all of the data they can obtain from first hand witnesses. Video surveillance, and of course a post mortem. When they piece all of the evidence together they find that at that very moment in time the light was red. The driver was drunk and clearly blew over the 0.08 limit and had no ability to react when the lights were solid red or when the person stepped into the intersection.

It doesn't end there because video evidence and people on the ground state the pedestrian was doing what???

Wait for it . . .

Head buried deep in their cell phone texting all the while blasting their ghetto music. No awareness or care of their surroundings and just walked out into the intersection like an idiot.

5th graders are taught what before stepping out???

So, are the material facts two people are dead or because it was completely avoidable and other factors played into an outcome that could have been avoided???

Could that dirty sh^t running Insteon / Smartlabs offered a final good bye??? It's only been 48 hours and counting and still nothing from this POS . . . What the public has been able to *Observe* just like the car accident are the bread crumbs of FACTS . . .

- Everyone from the company have removed any mention or association of Insteon

- Everything is shut down and no one is manning the phones / emails.

- Inventory being liquidated

- No new hardware being replaced or upgraded

- Existing hardware being deprecated

- No expansion to other markets to drive sales

- Spun up a new brand under Nokia to get away from the stench of Insteon

- The hundreds of other stupid things rolled out under the lead imbecile are too numerous to rehash here.

- As others stated follow the money, follow the trends, follow the actions.

 

You already know my history with insteon so i just want to respond about some of what you've posted. 

No expansion- J. Dada Used insteon as his toy to satisfy him and his friends needs. I think he truly meant well at one point but wasn't focused on seeing those ideas through. He wanted to be able to say he did something vs putting forth the effort to do it properly. This is why Europe had product but they really didn't push for it. He was more interest in saying insteon was world wide than seeing it through completely. 

Deprecated hardware- Most of the stuff disco'd after purchase needed to be disco'd. If i had bought the company, i would've done the same. The only difference would've been colors. I would've kept the top 2 options after white.

The only thing I really think they completely screwed up on was getting rid of their other smart home products. The 3rd party products is what would float them when insteon sales were down and vice versa. I would've got rid of the junk stuff and focused on making it the biggest source of home automation tech out there. 

Nokia Rebrand- I would've done the same to get out from under all the bad reviews that still haunted them years after they were corrected. The difference with me however would've been to capitalize on my built in user base as that meant instant sales base. I would've focused on making the product available to anyone who wanted to support it- which leads to my next statement.

Jealousy- Most of what went wrong IMO is jealously. Things turned sour because the dynamic went from UDI making a device that controlled insteon and them needing insteon (even if only in their mind) to insteon needing UDI. They hated that dynamic. Instead of seeing UDI as a partner they could grow with, they saw them as competition. Some in management said they were going to make a controller that would put the isy to shame (more on that later)

They used to get on their tech support because none wanted to push insteon controllers. All would steer customers away from insteon hubs to the Isy. I think this played a major part as to why Rob wanted to go at it alone. He was an investor there before they got JD to sell. 

Homekit. This was their downfall. This was the beginning of the end. When they were picked for homekit, they went way in over their heads. This is partly why I defended @Michel Kohanim decision NOT TO support homekit so vigorously.

Prior to homekit, they were working on I3 with a new chip design and a slew of new features such as being able to tune the power line signal to get away from noise, decouple the signal from zero crossing, etc. Had it come to fruition, it would've been spectacular. We had a few talks back then about it. Around this time, they wanted the hub3 to provide conditional logic to provide a challenge to Isy. Even employees laughed which didn't go over to well.

Once Apple picked them, all eggs went into the homekit basket. Apple's changes forced rewrite after rewrite of their software (partly why Hubpro sucked so bad). They allowed a company that knew nothing of automation tell them how to automate and the results spoke for itself. They never recovered from the Hubpro fiasco. Had they sat back, waited, and simply followed everyone else, they could've slapped a chip in the hubpro to allow insteon devices to be controlled like everyone else, and been ok. Instead they went all in, lost everything, and lack of new products killed them. 

Liquidation- Up until Oct./Nov. I think they were really looking at staying afloat. With no products to sell they couldn't hang on. 

Edited April 19, 2022 by lilyoyo1

[Teken]

4 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

You already know my history with insteon so i just want to respond about some of what you've posted. 

No expansion- J. Dada Used insteon as his toy to satisfy him and his friends needs. I think he truly meant well at one point but wasn't focused on seeing those ideas through. He wanted to be able to say he did something vs putting forth the effort to do it properly. This is why Europe had product but they really didn't push for it. He was more interest in saying insteon was world wide than seeing it through completely. 

Deprecated hardware- Most of the stuff disco'd after purchase needed to be disco'd. If i had bought the company, i would've done the same. The only difference would've been colors. I would've kept the top 2 options after white.

The only thing I really think they completely screwed up on was getting rid of their other smart home products. The 3rd party products is what would float them when insteon sales were down and vice versa. I would've got rid of the junk stuff and focused on making it the biggest source of home automation tech out there. 

Nokia Rebrand- I would've done the same to get out from under all the bad reviews that still haunted them years after they were corrected. The difference with me however would've been to capitalize on my built in user base as that meant instant sales base. I would've focused on making the product available to anyone who wanted to support it- which leads to my next statement.

Jealousy- Most of what went wrong IMO is jealously. Things turned sour because the dynamic went from UDI making a device that controlled insteon and them needing insteon (even if only in their mind) to insteon needing UDI. They hated that dynamic. Instead of seeing UDI as a partner they could grow with, they saw them as competition. Some in management said they were going to make a controller that would put the isy to shame (more on that later)

They used to get on their tech support because none wanted to push insteon controllers. All would steer customers away from insteon hubs to the Isy. I think this played a major part as to why Rob wanted to go at it alone. He was an investor there before they got JD to sell. 

Homekit. This was their downfall. This was the beginning of the end. When they were picked for homekit, they went way in over their heads. This is partly why I defended @Michel Kohanim decision NOT TO support homekit so vigorously.

Prior to homekit, they were working on I3 with a new chip design and a slew of new features such as being able to tune the power line signal to get away from noise, decouple the signal from zero crossing, etc. Had it come to fruition, it would've been spectacular. We had a few talks back then about it. Around this time, they wanted the hub3 to provide conditional logic to provide a challenge to Isy. Even employees laughed which didn't go over to well.

Once Apple picked them, all eggs went into the homekit basket. Apple's changes forced rewrite after rewrite of their software (partly why Hubpro sucked so bad). They allowed a company that knew nothing of automation tell them how to automate and the results spoke for itself. They never recovered from the Hubpro fiasco. Had they sat back, waited, and simply followed everyone else, they could've slapped a chip in the hubpro to allow insteon devices to be controlled like everyone else, and been ok. Instead they went all in, lost everything, and lack of new products killed them. 

Liquidation- Up until Oct./Nov. I think they were really looking at staying afloat. With no products sell they couldn't hang on. 

I just want to argue with you so much - just can't! ?

[lilyoyo1]

Just now, Teken said:

I just want to argue with you so much - just can't! ?

? ? ? Slacker

[stillwater]

14 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

You already know my history with insteon so i just want to respond about some of what you've posted. 

No expansion- J. Dada Used insteon as his toy to satisfy him and his friends needs. I think he truly meant well at one point but wasn't focused on seeing those ideas through. He wanted to be able to say he did something vs putting forth the effort to do it properly. This is why Europe had product but they really didn't push for it. He was more interest in saying insteon was world wide than seeing it through completely. 

Deprecated hardware- Most of the stuff disco'd after purchase needed to be disco'd. If i had bought the company, i would've done the same. The only difference would've been colors. I would've kept the top 2 options after white.

The only thing I really think they completely screwed up on was getting rid of their other smart home products. The 3rd party products is what would float them when insteon sales were down and vice versa. I would've got rid of the junk stuff and focused on making it the biggest source of home automation tech out there. 

Nokia Rebrand- I would've done the same to get out from under all the bad reviews that still haunted them years after they were corrected. The difference with me however would've been to capitalize on my built in user base as that meant instant sales base. I would've focused on making the product available to anyone who wanted to support it- which leads to my next statement.

Jealousy- Most of what went wrong IMO is jealously. Things turned sour because the dynamic went from UDI making a device that controlled insteon and them needing insteon (even if only in their mind) to insteon needing UDI. They hated that dynamic. Instead of seeing UDI as a partner they could grow with, they saw them as competition. Some in management said they were going to make a controller that would put the isy to shame (more on that later)

They used to get on their tech support because none wanted to push insteon controllers. All would steer customers away from insteon hubs to the Isy. I think this played a major part as to why Rob wanted to go at it alone. He was an investor there before they got JD to sell. 

Homekit. This was their downfall. This was the beginning of the end. When they were picked for homekit, they went way in over their heads. This is partly why I defended @Michel Kohanim decision NOT TO support homekit so vigorously.

Prior to homekit, they were working on I3 with a new chip design and a slew of new features such as being able to tune the power line signal to get away from noise, decouple the signal from zero crossing, etc. Had it come to fruition, it would've been spectacular. We had a few talks back then about it. Around this time, they wanted the hub3 to provide conditional logic to provide a challenge to Isy. Even employees laughed which didn't go over to well.

Once Apple picked them, all eggs went into the homekit basket. Apple's changes forced rewrite after rewrite of their software (partly why Hubpro sucked so bad). They allowed a company that knew nothing of automation tell them how to automate and the results spoke for itself. They never recovered from the Hubpro fiasco. Had they sat back, waited, and simply followed everyone else, they could've slapped a chip in the hubpro to allow insteon devices to be controlled like everyone else, and been ok. Instead they went all in, lost everything, and lack of new products killed them. 

Liquidation- Up until Oct./Nov. I think they were really looking at staying afloat. With no products to sell they couldn't hang on. 

Thanks for this explanation.  Very sad.

[Teken]

12 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

? ? ? Slacker

Just can't argue with the facts - Maam! ?

[Techman]

Here's some reliable but unverified information on the Smartlabs/Smarthome shutdown.

    They tried to file bankruptcy about two years ago, but the case was dismissed by the Judge.

    They defaulted on their lease at 1621 Alton Parkway and were in arrears on their rent.

 

[Teken]

4 minutes ago, Techman said:

Here's some reliable but unverified information on the Smartlabs/Smarthome shutdown.

    They tried to file bankruptcy about two years ago, but the case was dismissed by the Judge.

    They defaulted on their lease at 1621 Alton Parkway and were in arrears on their rent.

 

I don't follow a person / company doesn't *Try* to file for bankruptcy its literally done. Whether or not you receive protection against those (creditors) who have first dibs on your assets / cash is different. 

[Techman]

@Teken,

A company can submit a bankruptcy filing to the court and the court has the option to refuse the bankruptcy request, which is apparently what happened two years ago. My best guess is that they will try again depending on if there are creditors pursuing them.

Even though they are essentially shut down, the Smarthome.com web site is still up, and they just renewed the domain name for an additional 10 years, so I would assume they are hoping that a buyer will pick it up, 

 

[larryllix]

3 hours ago, Techman said:

@Teken,

A company can submit a bankruptcy filing to the court and the court has the option to refuse the bankruptcy request, which is apparently what happened two years ago. My best guess is that they will try again depending on if there are creditors pursuing them.

Even though they are essentially shut down, the Smarthome.com web site is still up, and they just renewed the domain name for an additional 10 years, so I would assume they are hoping that a buyer will pick it up, 

 

Sounds like somebody wanted the company and technology dead, right from the git-go.

[elvisimprsntr]

9 hours ago, larryllix said:

Sounds like somebody wanted the company and technology dead, right from the git-go.

Another former Microsoft executive sent in to "save" the business.  

Confirms Microsoft execs don't know how to run a hardware business.  

Edited April 20, 2022 by elvisimprsntr

[Georg]

I know the discussion has moved on a bit… but from doing some “research” (I think that is the new word for “googling”), it appears that not only Rob Lilleness has disappeared from the surface of this planet, but with him also his Richmond Capital Partners investment firm. They used to have a web presence (which I now can’t find anymore) that listed Smartlabs/insteon as one of their prime investments. 

All news about them is five years old.

Without the backing of a solvent company, there’s a slim chance that subsidiaries who haven’t been able to generate any revenue for the past two years will stay afloat.  

Where to go now? I think the only company that possibly could have an interest in gobbling up the remainders (and IP) would be Nokia - but the question is if they really want to go into the smart home business themselves, instead of just licensing their name and get cash for it. 

As long as my ISY works, I probably am fairly safe. I have been adding a few Z-Wave devices - but integration is spotty (e.g. if one is controller of a scene - not all “responders” respond to the Z-wave device). 

Let’s hope that Thread and Matter will, at some point, offer ways of integration to tide us into the future.

The achilles heel of the Insteon/ISY combination of course is the PLM - but that, apparently, can be fixed if it fails. It requires some soldering, replacing low-quality capacitors that break (e.g. see here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/174552309995). 

My lights have not gone out just yet. 

[DaveStLou]

44 minutes ago, Georg said:

...it appears that not only Rob Lilleness has disappeared from the surface of this planet, but with him also his Richmond Capital Partners investment firm. They used to have a web presence (which I now can’t find anymore) that listed Smartlabs/insteon as one of their prime investments.

Here's Richmond Capital Partners' website: https://richmondcapitalpartners.com/ but no mention of Insteon or Rob Lilleness.

Edited April 20, 2022 by DaveStLou
Wrong company

[Techman]

1 minute ago, DaveStLou said:

Here's Richmond Capital Partners' website: https://richmondcapitalpartners.com/ but no mention of Insteon or Rob Lilleness.

That site is for Richmand Capital Partners, Ltd, based in London

Rob Lilleness, and his company, is/was based in Seattle, Washington

 

[dbuss]

27 minutes ago, DaveStLou said:

Here's Richmond Capital Partners' website: https://richmondcapitalpartners.com/ but no mention of Insteon or Rob Lilleness.

This the correct Richmond Capital Partners.

 

https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_wa/604051836

[fisix]

On 4/19/2022 at 3:02 PM, Teken said:

I don't follow a person / company doesn't *Try* to file for bankruptcy its literally done. Whether or not you receive protection against those (creditors) who have first dibs on your assets / cash is different. 

a company can petition for different types of bankruptcy, and a court can deny any petition. 

in particular, a company can petition for a chapter 11 bankruptcy or reorganization, and a court can deny the petition if the reorg plan appears deficient in some way.  courts tend to be pretty lenient on how they evaluate reorg plans, but people file plans that aren't complete or are way, way too optimistic all the time, and courts shoot them down.  creditors also get an opportunity to voice their opinion on the likelihood of a successful recovery to solvency... they're usually pretty negative on the outlook, but their opinions can be devastating if there's been a history of poor management and the reorg plan attempts to keep the present management in place.

a chapter 7 bankruptcy (liquidation) petition can be denied for various reasons, ranging from incompetence to fraud.

i'm guessing, if Smartlabs attempted and failed to successfully petition for bankruptcy a few years ago, it was a reorg chapter 11, and the plan was probably deficient on its face.  from what i've read, it appears that the primary creditor was the CEO, and he wouldn't have argued against his own bankruptcy petition... but a judge isn't going to allow the CEO to give everyone a haircut on outstanding corporate debt except for the CEO (and I'm sure their plan tried to sidestep that obligation).  so, after getting denied relief, the company limped along losing money on facilities rent and salaries, keeping some aspects of the business looking shiny while they looked for a buyer.  due diligence or stubbornness probably killed the sale, and Smartlabs exited all further expenditures and are now using what's effectively an auctioneer to sell dead assets (an active company or "going concern" will always be worth more, but they couldn't keep a pulse going).

i feel for the guy who purchased the company and tried to run it, but he ran it into the ground.  they had the install base and a lot of powerline expertise... if they'd have just worked hard on making things a little smaller and cheaper and more reliable, they could have easily cornered the smarthome devices market.  instead, they kept trying to force devices onto the market that people didn't want to buy, they kept making unforgivable decisions about capacitors, and they kept their prices so high that most consumers wouldn't even think of installing their products... until voice assistants came along (and they STILL didn't adapt).  on top of that, whatever licensing and/or partner outreach strategy they had utterly failed.  i still find it ridiculous that there was never an insteon-linked pool pump.  if there's one group of people who will buy overpriced smart control of appliances, it's people with pools.

Edited April 21, 2022 by fisix

[lilyoyo1]

5 hours ago, fisix said:

 

i feel for the guy who purchased the company and tried to run it, but he ran it into the ground.  they had the install base and a lot of powerline expertise... if they'd have just worked hard on making things a little smaller and cheaper and more reliable, they could have easily cornered the smarthome devices market.  instead, they kept trying to force devices onto the market that people didn't want to buy, they kept making unforgivable decisions about capacitors, and they kept their prices so high that most consumers wouldn't even think of installing their products... until voice assistants came along (and they STILL didn't adapt).  on top of that, whatever licensing and/or partner outreach strategy they had utterly failed.  i still find it ridiculous that there was never an insteon-linked pool pump.  if there's one group of people who will buy overpriced smart control of appliances, it's people with pools.

I'm not really sure where you are getting your information from as there are many falsehoods in your statements. 

Insteon devices  are already cheap. Comparable to other zwave device makers at the same level of quality. Of course there are cheaper switches to be had. However, the ones at a lower price that are also high quality is very small. There are outliers but trying to play the race to the bottom is a fools game. 

Not sure about making things smaller being an issue. They already have the smallest devices on the market so I doubt that size matters...Otherwise people wouldn't have been using zwave. 

They did improve quality over time. Early on their stuff sucked. Quality was atrocious but there is a huge difference between the last 5-6 years and previous iterations (PLM took longer to solve). 

Voice assistants- they were an early adopter. The hub 2 has been working with Alexa and Google for years. They had a homekit compatible hub from day 1 (though it and homekit sucked) so I'm not sure how they didn't adapt to voice assistants. 

They had a 240v load controller that could operate pool pumps. However, most people with that type of disposable income were going to use other systems not insteon. There's a reason why none of the big boys such as Control4, Savant, Crestron, and Lutron do not make them and only 1 zwave mfg. does. People with disposable income will use pentair, jandy, Haywood, and some others. 

 

Edited April 21, 2022 by lilyoyo1

[jec6613]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

They had a 240v load controller that could operate pool pumps. However, most people with that type of disposable income were going to use other systems not insteon. There's a reason why none of the big boys such as Control4, Savant, Crestron, and Lutron do not make them and only 1 zwave mfg. does. People with disposable income will use pentair, jandy, Haywood, and some others. 

The 240V load controller, DIN rail equipment, and so on were there to retrofit homes that did not have dedicated hard wired centralized lighting - or if they did, needed it upgraded/replaced.  During the first years of Insteon, there was a huge market for Insteon-enabling homes with a custom integrator using custom controls and an Insteon PLM.  You may recall that the UK embassy in DC was (is?) an 100% Insteon shop, but they weren't the only ones ... hundreds of devices into a home at once.  You sometimes see the bulk removals on eBay of a bunch of older equipment.

The only other competitor at the time was RadioRA, which was/is a very different sort of system - lighting only and professional installer required.

[lilyoyo1]

5 minutes ago, jec6613 said:

The 240V load controller, DIN rail equipment, and so on were there to retrofit homes that did not have dedicated hard wired centralized lighting - or if they did, needed it upgraded/replaced.  During the first years of Insteon, there was a huge market for Insteon-enabling homes with a custom integrator using custom controls and an Insteon PLM.  You may recall that the UK embassy in DC was (is?) an 100% Insteon shop, but they weren't the only ones ... hundreds of devices into a home at once.  You sometimes see the bulk removals on eBay of a bunch of older equipment.

The only other competitor at the time was RadioRA, which was/is a very different sort of system - lighting only and professional installer required.

What does din rails have to do with anything? The load controller was for a variety of situations not for centralized lighting. Either way, outside of some very specific use cases, the din rails wasn't that big of a seller. During it's 3 year run, they had 3 or 4 shipments come in of a few boxes