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The app and servers are dead. The CEO scrubbed his LinkedIn page. No one is responding.

 

RON AMADEO - 4/18/2022

 

The smart home company Insteon has vanished.

The entire company seems to have abruptly shut down just before the weekend, breaking users' cloud-dependent smart-home setups without warning. Users say the service has been down for three days now despite the company status page saying, "All Services Online." The company forums are down, and no one is replying to users on social media.

As Internet of Things reporter Stacey Higginbotham points out, high-ranking Insteon executives, including CEO Rob Lilleness, have scrubbed the company from their LinkedIn accounts. In the time it took to write this article, Lilleness also removed his name and picture from his LinkedIn profile. It seems like that is the most communication longtime Insteon customers are going to get.

 

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As someone who is heavily invested in the smart home market I can understand how painful this must be for the users who bought in. To be left with nearly useless hardware (assuming the did the reset) would be tough. At the end of the day this is another lesson to be careful who you purchase from. It could happen to any business at any time. I try to stick with major players for this very reason, but even that can be tricky at times..

IOT is growing faster than the protection they require. Someone could literally turn off the lights now. 

The house I just sold had a lot of Insteon in it. I did not bring it along to the new place as it had a lot of Lutron already installed. But the buyers did not care, and just wanted to be sure switched worked locally.  I thought about bringing it along, but must have been prescient about this. 
 

I do love their tag “The lights are always on”. That’s because you can’t turn them off anymore.😩

This is crazy and makes me think twice about investing in a smaller smart home appliances. As much as I might not want to do Alexa or Google home appliances, they aren’t going to shut down their servers unexpectantly. 

The house I just sold had a lot of Insteon in it. I did not bring it along to the new place as it had a lot of Lutron already installed. But the buyers did not care, and just wanted to be sure switched worked locally.  I thought about bringing it along, but must have been prescient about this. 
 

I do love their tag “The lights are always on”. That’s because you can’t turn them off anymore.😩

The lights are always on...but no one is home!

The lights are always on...but no one is home!

I guess for that house, it is true!  :-)

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