Smart homes Insteon resurrected as suddenly as immured

Just as suddenly as he disappeared, Insteon returned. The company’s smart home services began to come back to life this week, and on Thursday Insteon announced that a group of customers have acquired and are reviving the business.

In April, Insteon made headlines when it suddenly shut down its cloud servers without warning customers, resulting in their smart home devices being locked out.

A few days later, Insteon explained that supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to the company looking for a buyer in 2021 but never materialized. The farewell message said the financial services firm had been appointed “to optimize the company’s assets”but left the window open, expressing “the hope that a buyer could be found for the company.”Turns out the buyers were right under Insteon’s nose.

Customers have noticed that the company’s servers are back online and features, including the app and Amazon Alexa integration, are working again, Stacey at IoT reported Tuesday. This applied to people who kept their equipment. Insteon products operate on a wireless radio protocol, so they could partially function, although without the ability to access or program the hub through an application or integrate with cloud services.

New CEO Ken Fairbanks explained the situation on Thursday. The company reopened for business and began restarting Insteon hubs before announcing a comeback. Fairbanks wrote:

We are a small group of passionate Insteon users who have successfully purchased Insteon. Like many of you, our homes are equipped with Insteon’s amazing dual mesh technology and highly customizable products.

Most of you have found that Insteon hubs have started to come back online. Our first priority was to get the hubs online immediately, before we got access to this site, email service provider, social media accounts, etc. Every day more customers lost hope, so it was important to restore it as soon as possible. We know that not all features are back online, but we are actively working on it.

Fairbanks said Insteon Hub account holders will receive an email with more information “in the coming days.”Insteon apps are now available for download again, including through Google Play and the Apple App Store.

The blog post did not provide details about the company’s plans or new owners. However, Fairbanks’ LinkedIn page shows that he worked for Insteon from 2004 to 2007; he was “responsible for the design, marketing, and business development of INSTEON’s network technology and home control products.”

Insteon did not explain how he would overcome financial difficulties. As noted by The Verge, the company could potentially introduce a subscription fee for once free services.

It looks like Insteon’s resurgence is aimed at returning services to customers who already have the equipment. Its hardware offerings are currently almost completely sold out.

Insteon has a lot of work to do to win back customers, starting with those who haven’t given up on their equipment yet after the company seemed almost dead. Customers were met with closed forums, unanswered social media messages, and a misleading status page that said all services had been down for several days before Insteon provided any explanation.

Potential customers are also likely to be wary of how suddenly and silently Insteon can render their products useless.

And it appears that despite new ownership and management, Insteon still hasn’t sorted out its communication issues and hasn’t learned how to provide dedicated customers who rely on its products with timely updates so they can make decisions about their equipment and avoid confusion. and security issues.