User forums are replete with hundreds of angry customers concerned that Smarthome firm Insteon appears to have shut down four days ago when customers noticed their Insteon hubs bricked, leaving them unable to control dimmers and appliance plug-in switches, among other IoT dsevices.
Smartlabs, the owner of Smarthome and Insteon, has not posted any official update or advice for customers even though their web sites show the products are still on sale and the Insteon System Status page says “All Services Online.” However, the Smartlabs president told Fierce Electronics in a brief message on Tuesday he is “unfortunately” no longer at the company.
An Openhab.org community includes hundreds of comments from Insteon customers wondering if the hub can be redirected after surmising that the Insteon servers had gone dark on April 14.
Likewise, a forum on universal-devices.com discusses ways Insteon users can find replacements or workarounds. A Reddit user described successfully switching an Insteon Hub 2245-222 to work with Home Assistant & Home Assistant Cloud.
Some customers on chat boards were angry and demanded a class action suit against Insteon or the appropriate owners, if they can be identified. For the most part, forum posts expressed disappointment more than anything. “Like everyone else here, I’m rather upset that Insteon ghosted all of us,” wrote DougInATL on Reddit.
Rob Lilleness, once the president and chairman of Smartlabs, (which has owned Insteon and Smarthome) no longer lists the connection to Smartlabs on his LinkedIn page, but he did respond via LinkedIn when asked the status of Insteon. He told Fierce Electronics, “Unfortunately, I’m no longer involved with the company.”
Lilleness is a former Nokia executive who lives in Seattle. He invested $7.3 million to acquire Smartlabs in 2017 through his Richmond Capital Partners, a private investment firm.
IoT reporter Stacey Higgenbotham reasoned that Insteon’s proprietary technology didn’t pan out because of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee and the arrival of Matter, the smart home interoperability standard.
Smartlabs sells products from Nokia Smart Lighting, which Smartlabs purchased last year. Lilleness is currently a board member of ISOutsource, a consulting firm focused on technology.
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