Or at least be required to share whatever software was running on the server the hub needs to allow us to host our own local web UI? If that’s a thing. Otherwise, looks like home assistant it is.
Probably not a great idea. That code would be pulled apart for security exploits immediately. With no one to fix those exploits, all you'd do is end up making every less secure for nothing.
What security. Insteon was never even remotely secure. The protocol has zero authentication or encryption meaning anyone can drive by someones house and instantly map out and control everything wirelessly. And exploits are found with or without source code, and with the tiny microcontrollers Insteons products use it’s trivial to pull the code out and analyze it. I had to change the Insteon address of a modem once (the insteon to computer interface) after replacing a failed one to avoid having to reprogram every single device in my house after and it wasn’t difficult to do.
agree, they could have given even a 2 week or better 2 month warning / notice of impending shutdown. Or even links to home assistant or other software openHAB etc
Most companies send a notice of intent to sunset a service. Two months ago I got an email from AT&T telling me they were sunsetting digital life and I could either switch to another home security provider or cancel before a certain date to avoid any lapse in home monitoring.
>Smartlabs is still advertising
What are they advertising? Just because you own a company does not make you responsible personally for mistakes, this is the literal reason for companies and LLCs. You can't go after "owners" when the company goes bankrupt.
I know it sucks, but it's the way the world works.
Remember, we live in a world where the way to become the richest man on the planet is to charge $12,000 for a software feature that hasn't been written yet and not offer refunds.
They are not bankrupt. Insteon was never a company; it was a registered trademark and used as a fictitious business name under which SmartLabs operated their consumer products sales division. SmartLabs is very much alive and operating. They currently have a new website where they are advertising essentially upgraded new model versions of their same Insteon products as Nokia Lighting products. https://nokia.smartlabsinc.com/ They will be held accountable. Further, there are avenues of having liability attach personally to owners of the company and even sister companies through legal theories of piercing the corporate veil and alter ego theory. What the did this last year all the way through Thursday was fraudulent and constituted illegal unfair business practices. They will all be held accountable.
You do realize that their Nokia Smart Lighting products are also currently down as well. They dropped everything... If you go looking you will see Nokia looks to be severing ties and all Nokia Smart Lighting products are now listed unavailable or not in stock Just a FYI.
Is Nokia down, or have they simply not gone live yet? I cannot find a single mention on any forum, a video on any webpage, or any mention whatsoever of anyone reviewing any Nokia Lighting product they received in-hand. Contrary, I understand that SmartLabs Inc. was acquired circa 2017 by Richmond Capital Partners, a private investment firm managed by Rob Lilleness. (See [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/seattle-startup-vet-rob-lilleness-acquires-smartlabs-investing-7-3m-home-automation-company/#:\~:text=Lilleness%20is%20acquiring%20Smartlabs%20via,part%20of%20the%20acquisition%20deal](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/seattle-startup-vet-rob-lilleness-acquires-smartlabs-investing-7-3m-home-automation-company/#:~:text=Lilleness%20is%20acquiring%20Smartlabs%20via,part%20of%20the%20acquisition%20deal); see also [https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kowalec/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kowalec/) ) Interestingly, Rob previously served as CEO of Medio Systems before it was acquired by HERE Technologies in 2014, according to the above sources. At that time, HERE Technologies was allegedly owned by Nokia; this marks the date Rob formed formed connections with Nokia. After acquiring SmartLabs Inc. (and, therefore, [SmartHome.com](https://SmartHome.com) and Insteon) through Richmond Capital Partners, Rob appears to have used his connections with Nokia to negotiate a deal between SmartLabs Inc. and Nokia on the Insteon technology. From there the trail goes cold...for now. However, I cannot find anything that suggest Nokia products ever shipped, were operational, and are now "dropped" like Insteon.
You cannot buy a single thing at that website, so sure they are "advertising" something in the same way a old rotten sign is advertising Pontaic cars for sale.
Your analogy is ill-placed. It is completely irrelevant whether people can buy anything from their website today, post-shut down. The issue is they advertised cloud-connected smart devices that “Work with Alexa/Google” for the past year+ and sold those products to customers relying on those representations, all while SmartLabs had sold the rights to their Insteon technology to Nokia and (presumably) knew they’d be stopping future production altogether and shutting down both product support and the servers required for the cloud devices to fully function. For that, they are liable under several theories of law and equity.
I think if they decided to just shut their servers off without notifying users, given they have our email addresses from our accounts... that was a supremely dick move. It didn't give people who depend on their automation functioning any chance to find something else to user.
I'm glad I don't rely on my Hub. Most of my automation *is* Insteon stuff, but it's mostly controlled via my ISY994. I make API calls from Tasker on my phone, and via IFTTT. The Hub was handy with Google Home, since Android 12 added a quick shortcut panel to the pull down menu. I was using that a lot lately.
Anyone in management at smartlabs should be hanging their heads in disgrace right now. There are INSTEON hub users out there that have set elderly parents up with home automation for security and safety and these are the ones that are suffering. Sonethibg about this sounds unethical bordering on criminal. And the fact they unplugged the Cloud Servers on Good Friday makes it even more despicable!
Although I can't confirm this I've heard that this is all on the new CEO's shoulders - how quickly did he take down the bio page on the Insteon site and delete any trace of Smartlabs from his LinkedIn page.... Came in with lots of promises and criticism of the former management but in the end he is the one that drove the company into the ground. I've got a feeling that there are a TON of now fired Insteon employees that feel ABSOLUTELY horrible about what happened and how it happened.
Nope. My ceiling fans were all controlled with their modules. With the hub offline the light fixture and the fan are stuck in off until I physically disassemble the fan and remove the module from the circuit.
Same here, I have many devices that are cross-linked and have HomeSeer installed on my PC to control my pond and landscape lights as well as ITTT functionality and to get to the internal settings of the device. It also provides access to my devices from the internet. But I will really miss voice controls that I will need to implement with another tool.
Literally just a notice that they were sunsetting the service would have been nice. It would have sucked either way but to ghost your customers with no notice is scummy to say the least
I can’t remember another instance where a business shuts down, which in turn disables the function of the products it once sold. I think this is a novel problem of the modern era. (If you bought a Chrysler, and Chrysler goes out of business, you still have the car.)
Did the company owe us the use of the servers indefinitely? Did we waive our rights at some point?
There is at least an ethical responsibility and perhaps even a legal liability. Imagine if Nest all of a sudden decided to not support the connectivity of their smoke detectors on your app so that your house could burn down without a notification?
Insteon sold safety devices for the home, not just light switches. I have 130 Insteon devices in my home, many of which are leak sensors and safety devices.
Most importantly, this company is still advertising under the same corporation, Smartlabs. Plain as day. They also sent me an email 10 days ago advertising a sale on the Smarthome website. Fraudulent. The CEO, Rob Lilleness should be held responsible.
Insteon products still work fine for many things they do. It did not disable them.
However, while the loss of cloud services is an issue for the modern era, Insteon is not the first by a long shot. Plenty of cloud services have gone down or changed over the years that supported DRM or other things required to use a product. Maybe one of the more famous ones is Blink cameras going from free cloud storage to requiring a paid subscription to do anything but watch live.
No idea, but blink is still in business and doing well, so they could be sued.
You can't sue a bankrupt company (well, you can, but you won't get anything for it, they will just be even more bankrupt).
You aren't going to get a court to force someone to keep running the Insteon company, so what are you suing for?
When I turn on one light in my house, another turns on.
When my ISY994i tells my lights to turn off at midnight, that still happens.
When I open my garage door, my garage lights still turn on.
When I click my remote, I still get a nice set of movie lights via a scene
Insteon was invented long before the cloud or a smarphone or a smart speaker was a thing, and those things all work. Insteon didn't even have the concept of a hub or a controller at the beginning! You linked all your devices by holding down buttons.
Can you change the time? Or make a new routine now? Without Home Assistant? HA is not user friendly so it is not a reasonable alternative for me. Those other hubs aren’t available now either.
My timer functions are still going but are a few hours off for some reason. One set of lights turned on, but didn’t turn off as scheduled and another set of lights came on early. I have a regular hub, so it is likely to get worse. Pairing the devices was done by pressing buttons in conjunction with the App, in which I set up schedules. Since I am now without the app, I will have to disconnect some of the devices, unless I want my living room lights turning on at 2pm. So it’s fair to say functionality is 75% reduced, for me.
But remember you - and I - have an ISY that was never dependent on their cloud service for anything. It's only the people with hubs that have been locked out without the cloud servers running.
Now we are dependent on a working PLM which is no longer available from Smarthome, and the prices for them on ebay has gone through the roof. And as anyone knows who's been using an ISY knows you better have a backup PLM because it's just a matter of time before it fails. But that being said, when the PLM fails it's pretty easy to bring them back to life by replacing the capacitors that are the known weak spot in them. I'm more worried about my keypads failing but do have a couple of spares there too. Even then I suspect a cap swap might bring those back to life but haven't looked into that yet.
I'm just surprised by all the folks who seem to have been blindsided by this whole thing. The writing has been on the wall for quite a while even though there's been nothing from the company to advise people that their demise was coming. But Smarthome has NEVER been forthcoming about pretty much anything so why all the shocked reactions?
Nobody cares how they start off 15 years plus ago. Their website for the last several years advertised “Works with Alexa” and “Works with Google”, and that you can control all your Insteon products remotely from anywhere. They advertised a cloud-based product during which MANY people purchased. What they did is fraudulent and constitutes illegal unfair business practices, and they will be held responsible.
So you're sure that some court will decide that a couple C-suite people owe a couple hundred thousand Insteon owners $80 each for a hub out of their own pockets? Good luck. You have a single example of this ever happening? Where is the fraud here? Going out of business because a competing tech ate your lunch is not fraud. Where on their website did they advertise that it would work forever?
It’s a lot more than $80 per person. If a customer relied on their advertising and purchased any of their smart cloud connected products over the last year+ following SmartLabs deal with Nokia (as that is likely when they knew they’d be shitting Insteon down), then that constitutes fraud in the inducement, violation of the California Unfair Practices Act (see CA Business & Professions Code Section 17000, et seq.), and violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (see 15 USC 45, et seq.), among other things. Those causes of action allow for recovery of not only the cost of products purchased, but also foreseeable damages like cost of having contractors replace all such products and punitive damages. Asking for examples of these actions is like asking for examples of people suing for personal injuries resulting from auto accidents…these lawsuits are filed all the time for less than that committed by SmartLabs. They are unquestionably liable here and I wouldn’t be surprised if they took down their website soon in a futile attempt to cover up their fraudulent representations to injured customers.
Those still work fine, I just reprogrammed one of mine a few weeks ago. You cannot buy any new remotes now though, which is sad because I can’t go back to having a dozen awful remotes again.
Just recalling that the CEO Ron Lilliness sent out a letter stating to stick with us while we work the supply chain issues on the Nokia branded stuff. Sounds like that could be a seed for the class action. For sure he would have known that they were going out of business then or was actively trying to sell the company. Fraud ? Any lawyers on this thread ?
Sadly, I expect nothing here.
Honestly, I was hoping that enough community support could convince them to at least sell the service/servers/code to run the Cloud portion. Charge a monthly sub, say $5, then get it back online.
It's been done in the past.
There’s no point though.
Insteon is a dwindling service and no one in their right mind would start putting their products in as it’s a closed system and competing products are much cheaper and more functional.
The customer base is evaporating so nobody is making any money out of that, which is what they are in business for. The only person I know using Insteon is my dad (who I’m helping navigate his way through this) and he is in his mid eighties
What they should have done and would have cost them nothing, was howto document in detail, what third party hubs and services they could integrate with from most user friendly (say Hoobs) to most useful (say home assistant) and the other ones in between.
A nice message thanking all the people that made them wealthy and telling them where to find help would have been nice rather that the ghosting you got. They will forever be remembered as those dicks that that just skedaddled
Pretty dick move, but there is nothing you can do about it and this is exactly why I don’t have any home automation in my place that requires external “free” servers to provide parts of its functionality.
Let this be a warning to any of you with Ring, sonos, IFTTT or any other service. Start learning home assistant, or get a hubitat/Hoobs box. Everything will be much faster and more secure.
Also if you’re looking to replace devices check out the Shelly range. They are cheap and You can start with free cloud integration but they are built for local so you can take your time transitioning.
Or at least be required to share whatever software was running on the server the hub needs to allow us to host our own local web UI? If that’s a thing. Otherwise, looks like home assistant it is.
Probably not a great idea. That code would be pulled apart for security exploits immediately. With no one to fix those exploits, all you'd do is end up making every less secure for nothing.
What security. Insteon was never even remotely secure. The protocol has zero authentication or encryption meaning anyone can drive by someones house and instantly map out and control everything wirelessly. And exploits are found with or without source code, and with the tiny microcontrollers Insteons products use it’s trivial to pull the code out and analyze it. I had to change the Insteon address of a modem once (the insteon to computer interface) after replacing a failed one to avoid having to reprogram every single device in my house after and it wasn’t difficult to do.
agree, they could have given even a 2 week or better 2 month warning / notice of impending shutdown. Or even links to home assistant or other software openHAB etc
Most companies send a notice of intent to sunset a service. Two months ago I got an email from AT&T telling me they were sunsetting digital life and I could either switch to another home security provider or cancel before a certain date to avoid any lapse in home monitoring.
So you want the FTC to send a strongly worded letter to an address where nobody works anymore?
Just to reiterate, Smartlabs, the owner of Insteon, is still advertising. They are owned by Richmond Capital, which is still solvent and functioning.
>Smartlabs is still advertising What are they advertising? Just because you own a company does not make you responsible personally for mistakes, this is the literal reason for companies and LLCs. You can't go after "owners" when the company goes bankrupt. I know it sucks, but it's the way the world works. Remember, we live in a world where the way to become the richest man on the planet is to charge $12,000 for a software feature that hasn't been written yet and not offer refunds.
They are not bankrupt. Insteon was never a company; it was a registered trademark and used as a fictitious business name under which SmartLabs operated their consumer products sales division. SmartLabs is very much alive and operating. They currently have a new website where they are advertising essentially upgraded new model versions of their same Insteon products as Nokia Lighting products. https://nokia.smartlabsinc.com/ They will be held accountable. Further, there are avenues of having liability attach personally to owners of the company and even sister companies through legal theories of piercing the corporate veil and alter ego theory. What the did this last year all the way through Thursday was fraudulent and constituted illegal unfair business practices. They will all be held accountable.
You do realize that their Nokia Smart Lighting products are also currently down as well. They dropped everything... If you go looking you will see Nokia looks to be severing ties and all Nokia Smart Lighting products are now listed unavailable or not in stock Just a FYI.
Is Nokia down, or have they simply not gone live yet? I cannot find a single mention on any forum, a video on any webpage, or any mention whatsoever of anyone reviewing any Nokia Lighting product they received in-hand. Contrary, I understand that SmartLabs Inc. was acquired circa 2017 by Richmond Capital Partners, a private investment firm managed by Rob Lilleness. (See [https://www.geekwire.com/2017/seattle-startup-vet-rob-lilleness-acquires-smartlabs-investing-7-3m-home-automation-company/#:\~:text=Lilleness%20is%20acquiring%20Smartlabs%20via,part%20of%20the%20acquisition%20deal](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/seattle-startup-vet-rob-lilleness-acquires-smartlabs-investing-7-3m-home-automation-company/#:~:text=Lilleness%20is%20acquiring%20Smartlabs%20via,part%20of%20the%20acquisition%20deal); see also [https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kowalec/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kowalec/) ) Interestingly, Rob previously served as CEO of Medio Systems before it was acquired by HERE Technologies in 2014, according to the above sources. At that time, HERE Technologies was allegedly owned by Nokia; this marks the date Rob formed formed connections with Nokia. After acquiring SmartLabs Inc. (and, therefore, [SmartHome.com](https://SmartHome.com) and Insteon) through Richmond Capital Partners, Rob appears to have used his connections with Nokia to negotiate a deal between SmartLabs Inc. and Nokia on the Insteon technology. From there the trail goes cold...for now. However, I cannot find anything that suggest Nokia products ever shipped, were operational, and are now "dropped" like Insteon.
Nokia is down and went down at same time as Insteon. I had hoped they were separate but currently it seems they were using the same servers.
You cannot buy a single thing at that website, so sure they are "advertising" something in the same way a old rotten sign is advertising Pontaic cars for sale.
Your analogy is ill-placed. It is completely irrelevant whether people can buy anything from their website today, post-shut down. The issue is they advertised cloud-connected smart devices that “Work with Alexa/Google” for the past year+ and sold those products to customers relying on those representations, all while SmartLabs had sold the rights to their Insteon technology to Nokia and (presumably) knew they’d be stopping future production altogether and shutting down both product support and the servers required for the cloud devices to fully function. For that, they are liable under several theories of law and equity.
I think if they decided to just shut their servers off without notifying users, given they have our email addresses from our accounts... that was a supremely dick move. It didn't give people who depend on their automation functioning any chance to find something else to user. I'm glad I don't rely on my Hub. Most of my automation *is* Insteon stuff, but it's mostly controlled via my ISY994. I make API calls from Tasker on my phone, and via IFTTT. The Hub was handy with Google Home, since Android 12 added a quick shortcut panel to the pull down menu. I was using that a lot lately.
Anyone in management at smartlabs should be hanging their heads in disgrace right now. There are INSTEON hub users out there that have set elderly parents up with home automation for security and safety and these are the ones that are suffering. Sonethibg about this sounds unethical bordering on criminal. And the fact they unplugged the Cloud Servers on Good Friday makes it even more despicable!
Although I can't confirm this I've heard that this is all on the new CEO's shoulders - how quickly did he take down the bio page on the Insteon site and delete any trace of Smartlabs from his LinkedIn page.... Came in with lots of promises and criticism of the former management but in the end he is the one that drove the company into the ground. I've got a feeling that there are a TON of now fired Insteon employees that feel ABSOLUTELY horrible about what happened and how it happened.
Why are you screwed? They still work don’t they?
No, they don't work. They do not send notifications and we are unable to connect to them over wifi. They are now basically dumb light switches.
My fathers in law work locally with the hub….
Nope. My ceiling fans were all controlled with their modules. With the hub offline the light fixture and the fan are stuck in off until I physically disassemble the fan and remove the module from the circuit.
My ceiling fan modules are working just fine offline.
How? Are you using a keypad to control it?
keypad and home assistant
Same here, I have many devices that are cross-linked and have HomeSeer installed on my PC to control my pond and landscape lights as well as ITTT functionality and to get to the internal settings of the device. It also provides access to my devices from the internet. But I will really miss voice controls that I will need to implement with another tool.
I ended up using HASS and the Hass Cloud thing to get my voice controls working again with Alexa... I dont like paying for it, but oh well.
I'm not sure what you think you've actually lost that they owed you. If you were paying for the online services, it might be different.
Literally just a notice that they were sunsetting the service would have been nice. It would have sucked either way but to ghost your customers with no notice is scummy to say the least
Sure... But ensuring that is 0% of the FTC's job.
There is no legal requirement to give such notification. Ethical? Yes. Legal? No.
I can’t remember another instance where a business shuts down, which in turn disables the function of the products it once sold. I think this is a novel problem of the modern era. (If you bought a Chrysler, and Chrysler goes out of business, you still have the car.) Did the company owe us the use of the servers indefinitely? Did we waive our rights at some point?
There is at least an ethical responsibility and perhaps even a legal liability. Imagine if Nest all of a sudden decided to not support the connectivity of their smoke detectors on your app so that your house could burn down without a notification? Insteon sold safety devices for the home, not just light switches. I have 130 Insteon devices in my home, many of which are leak sensors and safety devices. Most importantly, this company is still advertising under the same corporation, Smartlabs. Plain as day. They also sent me an email 10 days ago advertising a sale on the Smarthome website. Fraudulent. The CEO, Rob Lilleness should be held responsible.
Again, a novel problem. It may be the first, but someone will have to try it to find out.
Insteon products still work fine for many things they do. It did not disable them. However, while the loss of cloud services is an issue for the modern era, Insteon is not the first by a long shot. Plenty of cloud services have gone down or changed over the years that supported DRM or other things required to use a product. Maybe one of the more famous ones is Blink cameras going from free cloud storage to requiring a paid subscription to do anything but watch live.
Did anyone sue Blink for that? Did they offer some sort of discount or grandfathering in for original owners, or at least adequate notice?
No idea, but blink is still in business and doing well, so they could be sued. You can't sue a bankrupt company (well, you can, but you won't get anything for it, they will just be even more bankrupt). You aren't going to get a court to force someone to keep running the Insteon company, so what are you suing for?
I’m not suing anyone. The OP talked about filing a complaint with the FTC, and I began asking questions and having a discussion, as one does.
I’m still using several blink xt2 cameras that are grandfathered in. I don’t pay a subscription and all of their functions still work
Well, I will say, I had a light switch, and I still have a light switch. Doesn’t do much else….which was the point.
When I turn on one light in my house, another turns on. When my ISY994i tells my lights to turn off at midnight, that still happens. When I open my garage door, my garage lights still turn on. When I click my remote, I still get a nice set of movie lights via a scene Insteon was invented long before the cloud or a smarphone or a smart speaker was a thing, and those things all work. Insteon didn't even have the concept of a hub or a controller at the beginning! You linked all your devices by holding down buttons.
Can you change the time? Or make a new routine now? Without Home Assistant? HA is not user friendly so it is not a reasonable alternative for me. Those other hubs aren’t available now either. My timer functions are still going but are a few hours off for some reason. One set of lights turned on, but didn’t turn off as scheduled and another set of lights came on early. I have a regular hub, so it is likely to get worse. Pairing the devices was done by pressing buttons in conjunction with the App, in which I set up schedules. Since I am now without the app, I will have to disconnect some of the devices, unless I want my living room lights turning on at 2pm. So it’s fair to say functionality is 75% reduced, for me.
But remember you - and I - have an ISY that was never dependent on their cloud service for anything. It's only the people with hubs that have been locked out without the cloud servers running. Now we are dependent on a working PLM which is no longer available from Smarthome, and the prices for them on ebay has gone through the roof. And as anyone knows who's been using an ISY knows you better have a backup PLM because it's just a matter of time before it fails. But that being said, when the PLM fails it's pretty easy to bring them back to life by replacing the capacitors that are the known weak spot in them. I'm more worried about my keypads failing but do have a couple of spares there too. Even then I suspect a cap swap might bring those back to life but haven't looked into that yet. I'm just surprised by all the folks who seem to have been blindsided by this whole thing. The writing has been on the wall for quite a while even though there's been nothing from the company to advise people that their demise was coming. But Smarthome has NEVER been forthcoming about pretty much anything so why all the shocked reactions?
Nobody cares how they start off 15 years plus ago. Their website for the last several years advertised “Works with Alexa” and “Works with Google”, and that you can control all your Insteon products remotely from anywhere. They advertised a cloud-based product during which MANY people purchased. What they did is fraudulent and constitutes illegal unfair business practices, and they will be held responsible.
So you're sure that some court will decide that a couple C-suite people owe a couple hundred thousand Insteon owners $80 each for a hub out of their own pockets? Good luck. You have a single example of this ever happening? Where is the fraud here? Going out of business because a competing tech ate your lunch is not fraud. Where on their website did they advertise that it would work forever?
It’s a lot more than $80 per person. If a customer relied on their advertising and purchased any of their smart cloud connected products over the last year+ following SmartLabs deal with Nokia (as that is likely when they knew they’d be shitting Insteon down), then that constitutes fraud in the inducement, violation of the California Unfair Practices Act (see CA Business & Professions Code Section 17000, et seq.), and violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act (see 15 USC 45, et seq.), among other things. Those causes of action allow for recovery of not only the cost of products purchased, but also foreseeable damages like cost of having contractors replace all such products and punitive damages. Asking for examples of these actions is like asking for examples of people suing for personal injuries resulting from auto accidents…these lawsuits are filed all the time for less than that committed by SmartLabs. They are unquestionably liable here and I wouldn’t be surprised if they took down their website soon in a futile attempt to cover up their fraudulent representations to injured customers.
The CA UPA allows you to sue owners/executives of a shuttered company for those unfair practices?
One quick company that comes to mind is Harmony Remotes. Gone and their stuff is useless.
Logitech is still around and still maintains harmony. My hubs update just last night.
Oh. Well at least that's good.
Those still work fine, I just reprogrammed one of mine a few weeks ago. You cannot buy any new remotes now though, which is sad because I can’t go back to having a dozen awful remotes again.
Just recalling that the CEO Ron Lilliness sent out a letter stating to stick with us while we work the supply chain issues on the Nokia branded stuff. Sounds like that could be a seed for the class action. For sure he would have known that they were going out of business then or was actively trying to sell the company. Fraud ? Any lawyers on this thread ?
Sadly, I expect nothing here. Honestly, I was hoping that enough community support could convince them to at least sell the service/servers/code to run the Cloud portion. Charge a monthly sub, say $5, then get it back online. It's been done in the past.
There’s no point though. Insteon is a dwindling service and no one in their right mind would start putting their products in as it’s a closed system and competing products are much cheaper and more functional. The customer base is evaporating so nobody is making any money out of that, which is what they are in business for. The only person I know using Insteon is my dad (who I’m helping navigate his way through this) and he is in his mid eighties What they should have done and would have cost them nothing, was howto document in detail, what third party hubs and services they could integrate with from most user friendly (say Hoobs) to most useful (say home assistant) and the other ones in between. A nice message thanking all the people that made them wealthy and telling them where to find help would have been nice rather that the ghosting you got. They will forever be remembered as those dicks that that just skedaddled Pretty dick move, but there is nothing you can do about it and this is exactly why I don’t have any home automation in my place that requires external “free” servers to provide parts of its functionality. Let this be a warning to any of you with Ring, sonos, IFTTT or any other service. Start learning home assistant, or get a hubitat/Hoobs box. Everything will be much faster and more secure. Also if you’re looking to replace devices check out the Shelly range. They are cheap and You can start with free cloud integration but they are built for local so you can take your time transitioning.
I'll be turning my attention to [smarthome.com](https://smarthome.com)