Insteon acquired and servers coming back up

[Geddy]

@epete Thanks for the info that there was a release about that name going to a different entity. Forums have been updated to reflect simply the "Insteon" name. 

[brians]

Insteon Company should work to support matter.

I see Polisy as a platform to move away from Insteon... with both Z-Wave and future Matter support. If Matter is successful, and factoring in Z-Wave support, Polisy users won't be worrying about the Insteon protocol in the future except for legacy support. It would be a  nice option to purchase an Insteon Branded Matter KeypadLinc, or SwitchLinc however.

Insteon protocol was revolutionary back in the day when Smart Homes were more of a niche, but I don't think Insteon has brand recognition or resources now to go against Z-Wave or Matter as a competing protocol, even if they licensed it out... SH has tried and failed and were even trying to resurrect it using Nokia branding to make it more marketable. If new Insteon company expects people are going to invest in droves... eg. a whole new house with Insteon proprietary protocol and an Insteon Hub... doubtful!

 

 

[lilyoyo1]

2 hours ago, brians said:

Insteon Company should work to support matter.

I see Polisy as a platform to move away from Insteon... with both Z-Wave and future Matter support. If Matter is successful, and factoring in Z-Wave support, Polisy users won't be worrying about the Insteon protocol in the future except for legacy support. It would be a  nice option to purchase an Insteon Branded Matter KeypadLinc, or SwitchLinc however.

Insteon protocol was revolutionary back in the day when Smart Homes were more of a niche, but I don't think Insteon has brand recognition or resources now to go against Z-Wave or Matter as a competing protocol, even if they licensed it out... SH has tried and failed and were even trying to resurrect it using Nokia branding to make it more marketable. If new Insteon company expects people are going to invest in droves... eg. a whole new house with Insteon proprietary protocol and an Insteon Hub... doubtful!

 

 

This i agree with. Matter is a must for them to even have a chance

Edited June 18, 2022 by lilyoyo1

[Techman]

1 hour ago, brians said:

Insteon Company should work to support matter.

I see Polisy as a platform to move away from Insteon... with both Z-Wave and future Matter support. If Matter is successful, and factoring in Z-Wave support, Polisy users won't be worrying about the Insteon protocol in the future except for legacy support. It would be a  nice option to purchase an Insteon Branded Matter KeypadLinc, or SwitchLinc however.

Insteon protocol was revolutionary back in the day when Smart Homes were more of a niche, but I don't think Insteon has brand recognition or resources now to go against Z-Wave or Matter as a competing protocol, even if they licensed it out... SH has tried and failed and were even trying to resurrect it using Nokia branding to make it more marketable. If new Insteon company expects people are going to invest in droves... eg. a whole new house with Insteon proprietary protocol and an Insteon Hub... doubtful!

 

 

Several years ago I was told by the head of product development at Smartlabs that they were working on developing a programable touch keypad. I don't know if it ever made it off the drawing board or if they ever developed a prototype.

[RPerrault]

16 minutes ago, Techman said:

Several years ago I was told by the head of product development at Smartlabs that they were working on developing a programable touch keypad. I don't know if it ever made it off the drawing board or if they ever developed a prototype.

they did

touchlinc

 

[Techman]

On 6/15/2022 at 12:39 PM, Pacman said:

So riddle me this...

For those of us that did the panic leap from dead Insteon Hub to Polisy or similar, what would be the merit of ever going back to the Insteon Hub?  I actually took the experience of sort of, "Why the hell didn't I do this sooner?"

I get that it would be swell if Insteon started manufacturing PLM's, switches, et al again.  I've always liked most of the devices, but that period of smart home to incredibly awkward and really dumb home is not something I'd like to repeat.

 

On 6/15/2022 at 12:39 PM, Pacman said:

So riddle me this...

For those of us that did the panic leap from dead Insteon Hub to Polisy or similar, what would be the merit of ever going back to the Insteon Hub?  I actually took the experience of sort of, "Why the hell didn't I do this sooner?"

I get that it would be swell if Insteon started manufacturing PLM's, switches, et al again.  I've always liked most of the devices, but that period of smart home to incredibly awkward and really dumb home is not something I'd like to repeat.

For those that made the leap forward there's no reason to turn back.

I expect, based on what the new Insteon owners have said thus far, we will see the Insteon devices become available again. The timeline is uncertain due to numerous constraints, have patience.

Riddle solved.

[RPerrault]

i'm thinking anyone here cannot afford to have their automation professionally installed and maintained.  like me, i want the automation on the cheap.

i would bet that the people who failed (i suppose) to make a success of insteon could (and still can) afford to have theirs done professionally.

and yet the captains of industry here know exactly what went wrong.  now i am no captain of industry either - and do not know everything about the farthome/fartlabs business and what happened - running a business is not where my talents lie - so i did not choose that as a career.  i can admire those that do.  and the plumber - and the nurse 

that said, i will vomit the reason i will eventually migrate away from insteon.  

for me to believe that two different sets of incompetent management took a run at it failed, that investors gave incompetents control - not willing to believe that

i know we are fans of insteon and believe its the absolute best - the protocol - the communications methodology - everything that encompasses the word insteon - and it might be - not arguing that - but the best does not always win

burroughs mainframe architecture was better than ibm's - burroughs lost - ibm was in a position to tell standards orgs what the standards would be - until it wasn't 

i hope the absolute best for the new owners - partly because i might need some replacement devices before i can migrate - but also - insteon will not become widely adopted - hopefully it will last awhile - and there will be a market for those of us that were suckered in needing replacements - but if i were to start over - or someone that is new to ha - i doubt insteon will be the choice - too much money for a diyer to stake on hope

now that big names and money are on matter, i suspect it will become the standard - more encompassing - more ambitious - not reinventing the wheel when existing standards can be adopted into their standard

not saying all others will go away - looking into my crystal ball and taking a guess - my next choice won't be based on hope though

farthome sold me a house full of x10 switchlincs - until they stopped making them - i foolishly believed the 'coexist' lie - x10 and insteon - began the changeover to find out coexist was a lie - went all out insteon - bought their 'dual band' lie - the early devices were not dual band - houselinc - all the craplincs and lies of 'buy more' - just another crapload of money and it will work - crappy micro switches that they denied for years and never really admitted were a problem - phase bridging - filterlincs - blah blah blah

ud saved me - the devices and support - but the word insteon is forever tainted in my head - and i am not the only one 

the few device parlor trick market - insteon is too pricey and complex - new to ha?  might have a shot but only if you wow them and they don't research insteon's reputation - existing customer base - probably have those - not sure it will be enough to build an empire - but will supply some jobs 

[stillwater]

17 hours ago, Techman said:

I expect, based on what the new Insteon owners have said thus far, we will see the Insteon devices become available again. The timeline is uncertain due to numerous constraints, have patience.

I admire your optimism... what could go wrong? 

[They may only bring back some devices -- since Smartlabs had already vastly reduced the product list.   They may omit the PLM and not license UDI to produce its version.  They could go bankrupt again.  Lots could still go wrong for people on this list. ]

Edited June 19, 2022 by stillwater
added material in brackets

[lilyoyo1]

17 hours ago, RPerrault said:

i'm thinking anyone here cannot afford to have their automation professionally installed and maintained.  like me, i want the automation on the cheap.

i would bet that the people who failed (i suppose) to make a success of insteon could (and still can) afford to have theirs done professionally.

and yet the captains of industry here know exactly what went wrong.  now i am no captain of industry either - and do not know everything about the farthome/fartlabs business and what happened - running a business is not where my talents lie - so i did not choose that as a career.  i can admire those that do.  and the plumber - and the nurse 

that said, i will vomit the reason i will eventually migrate away from insteon.  

for me to believe that two different sets of incompetent management took a run at it failed, that investors gave incompetents control - not willing to believe that

i know we are fans of insteon and believe its the absolute best - the protocol - the communications methodology - everything that encompasses the word insteon - and it might be - not arguing that - but the best does not always win

burroughs mainframe architecture was better than ibm's - burroughs lost - ibm was in a position to tell standards orgs what the standards would be - until it wasn't 

i hope the absolute best for the new owners - partly because i might need some replacement devices before i can migrate - but also - insteon will not become widely adopted - hopefully it will last awhile - and there will be a market for those of us that were suckered in needing replacements - but if i were to start over - or someone that is new to ha - i doubt insteon will be the choice - too much money for a diyer to stake on hope

now that big names and money are on matter, i suspect it will become the standard - more encompassing - more ambitious - not reinventing the wheel when existing standards can be adopted into their standard

not saying all others will go away - looking into my crystal ball and taking a guess - my next choice won't be based on hope though

farthome sold me a house full of x10 switchlincs - until they stopped making them - i foolishly believed the 'coexist' lie - x10 and insteon - began the changeover to find out coexist was a lie - went all out insteon - bought their 'dual band' lie - the early devices were not dual band - houselinc - all the craplincs and lies of 'buy more' - just another crapload of money and it will work - crappy micro switches that they denied for years and never really admitted were a problem - phase bridging - filterlincs - blah blah blah

ud saved me - the devices and support - but the word insteon is forever tainted in my head - and i am not the only one 

the few device parlor trick market - insteon is too pricey and complex - new to ha?  might have a shot but only if you wow them and they don't research insteon's reputation - existing customer base - probably have those - not sure it will be enough to build an empire - but will supply some jobs 

I agree with you on all of your points. They have a rough road ahead of them. As much of a supporter of insteon that I am, they would have to show me that they are a completely different company than they were and not just lipstick on a pig. Other installers I know feel the same way.

This is why im strongly against re-releasing the same old product line. This is a perfect time for a fresh start and clean slate. Sure, they'll upset some people since the devices would look different but it allows them to cut themselves off from the old history and poor quality issues that they cant seem to shake regardless of the truth.

Existing base isnt enough to carry the company. Looking at the amount of old systems that have changed hands over the last few months on ebay, many of them are already gone and many of the rest probably have enough parts to be ok for a while.

If a person wants a basic home control system or control over a few devices, there are simpler low cost options out there and they probably wouldnt have turned to insteon anyway. For those who wants Automation, those devices will not suffice and zwave has its own complexities which makes it even less attractive.

For those looking for HA and not HC, insteon is perfect price wise and in simplicity which can allow it to have a place in the world. They may not be world conquering, but they can have enough market share to stay alive and flourish if they make smart decisions. I do think they should go back to focusing on the market that made them in the first place and become a niche company. With Polisy, HA, Homeseer, (Potentially) Matter, etc., they do not have to try and create products for every facet of someone's home. Just a core group of products that most people use and let others fill in the rest.

 

 

[Techman]

 Are you bringing back the Insteon forum?

 Yes. It's high on our list of to-do's and it will be coming back soon.

 What happened to smarthome.com?

 Another entity has purchased the smarthome.com domain – Insteon is no longer connected to Smarthome. You’ll be able to buy Insteon products directly through Insteon.com and other partners in the future.

If you still have unanswered questions, please reach out to support@insteon.com - response times are long while we rebuild the team. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

[jeffw_00]

Hi - just found this thread - a few thoughts for you all from a 17-year Insteon user with some early inside contact.

a) I believe that as "next year is the big year for home automation" became a trope, Insteon changed their focus to the smart commercial building market, with (I believe) a fair amount of success.   So there's an installed base out there that's going to need expansion/replacement parts and is wary of change - hopefully that will jumpstart the hardware side of the business.

b) For those wanting a programmable touchpad -  Powerhome offers the ability to create a webpage of buttons that trigger Insteon commands.  I have a bunch of amazon Fire tablets around my house ($40 each on sale) with their browser selecting that webpage (sourced by PH running on a desktop PC).  Thus a poor man's touch screen.  

/j

[Athlon]

17 minutes ago, jeffw_00 said:

b) For those wanting a programmable touchpad -  Powerhome offers the ability to create a webpage of buttons that trigger Insteon commands.  I have a bunch of amazon Fire tablets around my house ($40 each on sale) with their browser selecting that webpage (sourced by PH running on a desktop PC).  Thus a poor man's touch screen.  

By 'Powerhome', do you mean this?

http://www.myx10.com/default.aspx

[lilyoyo1]

37 minutes ago, jeffw_00 said:

Hi - just found this thread - a few thoughts for you all from a 17-year Insteon user with some early inside contact.

a) I believe that as "next year is the big year for home automation" became a trope, Insteon changed their focus to the smart commercial building market, with (I believe) a fair amount of success.   So there's an installed base out there that's going to need expansion/replacement parts and is wary of change - hopefully that will jumpstart the hardware side of the business.

b) For those wanting a programmable touchpad -  Powerhome offers the ability to create a webpage of buttons that trigger Insteon commands.  I have a bunch of amazon Fire tablets around my house ($40 each on sale) with their browser selecting that webpage (sourced by PH running on a desktop PC).  Thus a poor man's touch screen.  

/j

I'm not really seeing where they changed their focus to a smart commercial building market (that's locked down by much higher quality systems). If anything, they focused more on mass/casual users than anything. This shows with their stabs at retail (and retail packaging), along with jumping aboard homekit from day 1 (which really jumpstarted their downfall). 

Edited June 21, 2022 by lilyoyo1

[RPerrault]

with all the 'what went wrong and this is what they should have done' posts - one point seems to be overlooked - farthome/fartlabs made some crap products - deliberately deceived customers - failed to be truthful to its customers about the weaknesses of its products 

when i called about yet another failed fanlinc, they said they only replace devices sold through smarthome - and i should buy another from smarthome - and - if amazon had guts - would toss them off the site - they said 'yeah we shipped a bunch of faulty ones to amazon - buy from us instead'

i don't expect this will go over well here - but it just might be that insteon created their own destruction with their products and service and business practices

jon peters wrote 'in search of excellence' in the 80s - ud personifies that book - farthome/fartlabs did not 

[stillwater]

32 minutes ago, RPerrault said:

insteon created their own destruction with their products and service and business practices

 

I can't think of any argument against this conclusion.  

[upstatemike]

I don't think anybody disputes the past but the question is what of the future? Some questions looking forward might be:

Can Insteon overcome the challenges of gettting product back in the pipeline against a backdrop of component shortages, and inflation? Do the investors have enough resources to survive a slow and expensive ramp up?

Do the shortcomings of other protocols provide a unique opportunity for Insteon? Zigbee (aka Matter) has no high end switches (apart from Control4) with true rocker action, multi-tap and fancy LED bars. Z-Wave does not understand that keypads are used for more than just "scene controllers". The protocol does not currently have the command classes needed to use keypad buttons as virtual 3-way switches and other common applications easily handled by the Keypadlinc. LoRa has only low-end switches like Zigbee. Broadlink Bluetooth has a lot of potential but there are too many issues with the gen1 stuff to be an immediate threat. Wi-Fi is not scalable beyond a very small limit. This leaves Lutron as the only true competitor to Insteon right now.

Will the delays in rolling out matter help Insteon get re-established before consumers decide matter support is a defacto requirement (assuming consumers ever actually embrace Matter... they never really did Sidewalk).

Edited June 22, 2022 by upstatemike

[giomania]

8 hours ago, jeffw_00 said:

Hi - just found this thread - a few thoughts for you all from a 17-year Insteon user with some early inside contact.

a) I believe that as "next year is the big year for home automation" became a trope, Insteon changed their focus to the smart commercial building market, with (I believe) a fair amount of success.   So there's an installed base out there that's going to need expansion/replacement parts and is wary of change - hopefully that will jumpstart the hardware side of the business.

b) For those wanting a programmable touchpad -  Powerhome offers the ability to create a webpage of buttons that trigger Insteon commands.  I have a bunch of amazon Fire tablets around my house ($40 each on sale) with their browser selecting that webpage (sourced by PH running on a desktop PC).  Thus a poor man's touch screen.  

/j

Great idea about the fire tablets how do you mount and power them?

Another way to use touch screens with a browser to command ISY events via http get HT Web Remote: https://github.com/nicko88/HTWebRemote

Mark

[RPerrault]

10 hours ago, RPerrault said:

with all the 'what went wrong and this is what they should have done' posts - one point seems to be overlooked - farthome/fartlabs made some crap products - deliberately deceived customers - failed to be truthful to its customers about the weaknesses of its products 

when i called about yet another failed fanlinc, they said they only replace devices sold through smarthome - and i should buy another from smarthome - and - if amazon had guts - would toss them off the site - they said 'yeah we shipped a bunch of faulty ones to amazon - buy from us instead'

i don't expect this will go over well here - but it just might be that insteon created their own destruction with their products and service and business practices

jon peters wrote 'in search of excellence' in the 80s - ud personifies that book - farthome/fartlabs did not 

wait - it was tom peters i think - back before my rugged good looks faded

 

[jeffw_00]

Yes - that Powerhome.  The tablets are wall-mounted (bought mounts at amazon) near power so they are always on a charger

[jec6613]

16 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

I'm not really seeing where they changed their focus to a smart commercial building market (that's locked down by much higher quality systems). If anything, they focused more on mass/casual users than anything. This shows with their stabs at retail (and retail packaging), along with jumping aboard homekit from day 1 (which really jumpstarted their downfall). 

The opposite occurred, Insteon in early days did have some reasonable commercial installs, the UK Embassy in DC was the one they kept hammering on about.  For about the first year or two (2005-2007), they were actually a reasonable competitor in this space, especially for retrofit applications.  The traditional commercial lighting providers were caught a bit off guard, but recovered pretty quickly.  After that they were pretty big in large homes for quite a while, providing lighting for Crestron, Elan, and related systems around that time (remember, at this point you could DIY a Crestron system).

The last of the pivot towards general consumers and away from large installs was around 2014 when the app and hub came out and they started EOLing a lot of their higher end products such as HouseLinc and TouchLinc.  This is also when the long discontinuation of a lot of the ancillary devices (think color change kits) started.

[jec6613]

10 minutes ago, jeffw_00 said:

Yes - that Powerhome.  The tablets are wall-mounted (bought mounts at amazon) near power so they are always on a charger

Wow, haven't seen that one in a minute.

[RPerrault]

9 hours ago, upstatemike said:

I don't think anybody disputes the past but the question is what of the future? Some questions looking forward might be:

Can Insteon overcome the challenges of gettting product back in the pipeline against a backdrop of component shortages, and inflation? Do the investors have enough resources to survive a slow and expensive ramp up?

Do the shortcomings of other protocols provide a unique opportunity for Insteon? Zigbee (aka Matter) has no high end switches (apart from Control4) with true rocker action, multi-tap and fancy LED bars. Z-Wave does not understand that keypads are used for more than just "scene controllers". The protocol does not currently have the command classes needed to use keypad buttons as virtual 3-way switches and other common applications easily handled by the Keypadlinc. LoRa has only low-end switches like Zigbee. Broadlink Bluetooth has a lot of potential but there are too many issues with the gen1 stuff to be an immediate threat. Wi-Fi is not scalable beyond a very small limit. This leaves Lutron as the only true competitor to Insteon right now.

Will the delays in rolling out matter help Insteon get re-established before consumers decide matter support is a defacto requirement (assuming consumers ever actually embrace Matter... they never really did Sidewalk).

um - the past influences the future

no one knows the future - my guess is that the new owners did their due diligence - and it seems they are not new to ha products - might work - might not - hopefully they are successful but if not, they will look back without the regret of not trying

whatever happens, i have no input or control

the brains behind matter would not have chosen wifi if the rumored limitations were true - it might just be they know something we don't - and have overcome the rumored limitations

probably know more about the ecorealm than us

 

[jec6613]

42 minutes ago, RPerrault said:

the brains behind matter would not have chosen wifi if the rumored limitations were true - it might just be they know something we don't - and have overcome the rumored limitations

Overcoming the normal WiFi limitations isn't even that difficult, it's just not necessarily currently cheap.  The only unusual requirements:

1. WiFi 6/802.11ax on both the client and access point side.
2. A sufficiently large IPv4 broadcast domain, or IPv6.
3. Pervasive coverage that survives things like interference from a microwave oven or large sacks of mostly water roaming around the house (e.g. humans)
4. A sufficiently large routing table to handle all of the connected devices.

And ... that's it.  It obviously isn't quite that simple in practice, but you can go and buy a system 100% compliant with these requirements, out of the box, today - Orbi and Google come to mind but I'm sure it's not exclusive to them.

[lilyoyo1]

1 hour ago, jec6613 said:

The opposite occurred, Insteon in early days did have some reasonable commercial installs, the UK Embassy in DC was the one they kept hammering on about.  For about the first year or two (2005-2007), they were actually a reasonable competitor in this space, especially for retrofit applications.  The traditional commercial lighting providers were caught a bit off guard, but recovered pretty quickly.  After that they were pretty big in large homes for quite a while, providing lighting for Crestron, Elan, and related systems around that time (remember, at this point you could DIY a Crestron system).

The last of the pivot towards general consumers and away from large installs was around 2014 when the app and hub came out and they started EOLing a lot of their higher end products such as HouseLinc and TouchLinc.  This is also when the long discontinuation of a lot of the ancillary devices (think color change kits) started.

If you noticed, I said I don't see where they changed their focus to commercial not from. Besides, a few commercial ventures does not mean that's where their focus is/was.

For example, I've done a couple of commercial projects but my focus is on residential new construction.

One thing that stands out is that they've only highlighted a few large installations like that. That's because there aren't many more.  Some of the works they showcased as theirs was piggy backed off of Steve Lee's work (independent of them).

Regardless of the home size, it was installers choosing to use insteon in homes not insteon pursuing those homes. They developed the product as a low cost alternative for hobbyists and enthusiasts. Installers saw the benefits of it and used it. 

Their first move into mass appeal was actually the smartlinc. It was a way to gain acceptance by users who did not have the technical skills to use one of their PLC controllers or did not want to leave their computer on 24/7 with houslinc. 

Houslinc was always going to be disco'd after the first hub. While the hub could be used as a PLM, it was determined then that houslinc had reached EOL (around the same time it became free to use). The idea behind hub 2 was to go mainstream. This is when they started creating retail packages and working to sell in regular stores, When they came out with hub2, they disco'd houselinc completely but maintained it in regards to new firmware compatibility due to user backlash. 

Subsequently this is when they started on their Asics chip..The plan was for that and to create an "Isy killer" software (which employees laughed about), for hub 3. The store went from what it was to an Apple inspired theme. Then came home kit and the slide began/picked up steam. All future plans were dropped and the focus went to homekit. 

 

[upstatemike]

2 hours ago, jec6613 said:

Overcoming the normal WiFi limitations isn't even that difficult, it's just not necessarily currently cheap.  The only unusual requirements:

1. WiFi 6/802.11ax on both the client and access point side.
2. A sufficiently large IPv4 broadcast domain, or IPv6.
3. Pervasive coverage that survives things like interference from a microwave oven or large sacks of mostly water roaming around the house (e.g. humans)
4. A sufficiently large routing table to handle all of the connected devices.

And ... that's it.  It obviously isn't quite that simple in practice, but you can go and buy a system 100% compliant with these requirements, out of the box, today - Orbi and Google come to mind but I'm sure it's not exclusive to them.

4a. A sufficiently powerful processor to handle greatly expanded routing tables and DHCP reservation tables without bogging down.

5. A simple enough configuration UI to avoid being a barrier to non-techie consumers.

6. A low enough price point to avoid being a cost of entry barrier to casual consumers.