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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

For those missing context, Insteon is a smart home company that shut down suddenly a few weeks ago without notice to it's users, essentially bricking peoples smart homes.

Good for Ken and the team to take this on. I'm not an insteon user, but I hope one of the first tasks they take on is to either open source the servers, or update the system to be able to work offline, should they decide to kill the service in the future.

The lack of concern for it's users and the way Insteon was shutdown probably had a large negative impact on the smart home industry. Thanks to these dedicated fans, it hopefully has a happy ending

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So Insteon hardware works fully offline. It's a RF and powerline protocol, and they sold computer USB or serial adapters to interact with it.

People who got screwed were only people who chose to use the Insteon Hub, which is their specific cloud/Alexa/Siri/phone app solution.

So most of the hardware was unaffected and the users dependent on the cloud chose to be.

Insteon hardware actually exploded in value when the company folded just because you could only buy second hand. PLMs were going for $400 on eBay. Because all the hardware is offline and still works fine, there's just nobody manufacturing it.

Yeah that shit rocketed up in price fast. My dad was trying to get some spare components for his system (can't remember if it was the ISY or the PLM[1]). He ended up bailing out of the bidding at $700. Not sure if he managed to luck out on a cheaper one since then.

Definitely good that he refuses to use any cloud-centric home automation, so nothing was directly affected by Insteon's sudden shutdown. But still he was rightfully worried that pieces of the system would need replacing over time. He's already had to fix a few switches by replacing bad caps, but not every problem is so easily serviced

1: Edit - Couldn't have been the ISY. I forgot that was made by another company

I believe I have the USB adapter that's fully wireless, not dual-band... somewhere... as a backup for my PLM, but definitely looking forward to resumed manufacturing. There was rumor for years about an improved PLM model too that never shipped, hoping we hear about that.

> For those missing context, Insteon is a smart home company that shut down suddenly a few weeks ago without notice to it's users, essentially bricking peoples smart homes.

Thank you. Some variant of this surely would have fit in the actual description :(

wow, this is so absurd from my point of view. i am glad my home is not smart.

You do realize the worst case scenario for this stuff is that the house is no longer smart right?

I'd feel worse about the wasted time and money.

sunk cost. you got to enjoy the smart home for some period of time, just not forever. yea its totally annoying, but its not wasted entirely.

Many people I know with smart home stuff enjoy the tinkering a bit, and find its another thing to be restless about and fiddle with, and don't "set and forget" anyways.

If I spent a lot of time and money making something and someone else immediately broke it I’m not sure I would be as satisfied with the experience alone of having invested time and money in it as you, but I have to say theres something to be said for having that incredible level of optimism and ability to stay positive.

It'd be a bad investment. E.g. spend money to smarten up your home and enjoy living in it for the next, say, 20 years, vs. only enjoying it for a year because hey it's a cloud service that's died...

A worse case is when you spend effort to make it smart, made decisions that rely on being smart, and then it suddenly becomes not smart at some point.

No, it works fine. You just could not remotely control it from outside the house. I didn’t even notice.

> You just could not remotely control it from outside the house

And what about disabled folk who might rely on the smart functionality of the house to have something resembling an independent life? Or the elderly? Even if e.g. a smart bulb fails gracefully and becomes a non-smart bulb in the absence of the cloud, it doesn't help if you have cannot operate a normal light switch effectively.

A lot of comments on this article seem to think smart home devices are only for the lazy or are toys for people with more money than sense, but there are plenty of "legitimate" use cases as well.

Also, while I would never want to use it myself, relying on the cloud is perfectly valid - the simple fact is most people are incapable of hosting and maintaining their own smart hub [1], and Insteon fucked up big time by not having a better transition plan.

[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ The source is paywalled, but this article is a decent summary. TL;DR if we assume running your own smart hub is a "level 3" task, only about 5% of people in a country would be capable of doing so.

> And what about disabled folk who might rely on the smart functionality of the house to have something resembling an independent life? Or the elderly?

Again, the house just becomes non-smart. What about them? You can't say "I prefer dumb homes because smart homes might stop being smart" "Yeah but then they just become dumb" "But what about people who can't have dumb homes?"

That's not an advantage of a dumb home, it just sucks for people who rely on something when the something stops working.

It reminds me of the standup bit where no escalator should ever be "out of order". It should just say "escalator temporarily stairs". I've got some smart lights, but worst case, they still have a lightswitch that works.

Also being left with ewaste, and money you have spent on a product that can no longer be used.

No, you can still use all the switches. A light switch that turns lights on and off isn’t ewaste.

It is e-waste if you still want smart switches, and if they were smart until yesterday then your revealed preference on that point is pretty clear?

The worse case scenario is your smart home leaving online signals such that crime rings are aware when your not home, or more/worse.

No, worst case scenario is that the house has no contolls at all. Lights permanently on or off while brain dead switches are locked up trying to talk to servers that are no longer there.

Note this isn't what happened in this case, but it is a worst case scenario.

Accurate.

"For those missing context, Insteon is a smart home company that shut down suddenly a few weeks ago without notice to its users, essentially bricking [=ruining, making inoperable] people's smart homes.

Companies like this have no concept of open source and no concept of offline. To them, your home is their home, to traffic so as to maximize their bottom line.

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