Shameful: Insteon looks dead–just like its users’ smart homes | Hacker News Reader

Shameful: Insteon looks dead–just like its users’ smart homes

arstechnica.com

54 pointsProAm6 comments

There was another thread on this topic a day ago [0] that may contain more information.

As an affected customer, it just feels bad to basically be "ghosted" by a company like this. The capital firm that acquired the company seems to deserve all the blame (I think it is Richmond Capital and Rob Lilleness who assumed the role of CEO & Chairman).

My most fervent wish is that the very robust underlying technology ([1], see Protocol) lands in the hands of a group that can make good use of it and hopefully return it to market.

It's all a shame, really: the products were/are fantastically diverse and reliable, but the company was run into the ground.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31056027

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insteon

A new group of people who will transition to the IOT devices which can be bought and quickly replaced with open source firmware like Tasmota. Then never give direct access to the cloud. Coordinate and control with OpenHab or Home Assistant as mentioned in the story, though not necessary.

I misunderstand what you mean.

The lesson here is to never buy a smart home product which can only be controlled/montitored/upgraded via a cloud service provided by the hardware vendor. If the product cannot be controlled and monitored from your home network while unplugged from the internet, then there is some risk that this type of experience can happen again. Tasmota [0] allows a user to erase the vendor provided firmware, of ESP chipset devices, with well maintained open source firmware so that is never reliant on the vendor ever again. This is one example. Perhaps there are others.

[0] https://tasmota.github.io/docs/

thank you: makes total sense, and that's a super clear explanation.

One can generalize that to other SAAS services

Unless it is absolutely critical to have the online services component, any company that is requiring you to sue and pay for such a service (either monthly or as part of the requirement to use the product), is not primarily focused on providing value to you the customer, they are focused on rent-seeking with you as the target.

If SAAS is a convenient and OPTIONAL add-on then fine.

Otherwise, it adds a vast array of failure modes related to connection failure, provides worse performance vs local control (and optimizations applied to SAAS could also be better applied to local networks), and of course adds the major risk of this situation -- that the software /service could disappear any time due to many business reasons. Sure, native app companies can also go out of biz or discontinue products, but I still have the software and can upgrade on MY schedule.

Just say no, and more importantly, tell your entire circle of family, friends, and acquaintances to say NO.

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