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The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

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Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#21

Post by Swizec »

brimble wrote: post #11
api wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be easy to do that, but nobody wants to. Without cloud there is no recurring revenue upsell opportunity and no side revenue from selling user data to advertisers.

The entire market of smart-home shit's gonna keep being terrible until/unless some decent, reliable, inter-operable, long-lived standard takes over or is imposed. It's all too expensive to be worth it unless you can be pretty sure it'll keep working for at least a couple decades. Imagine if lightbulb sockets were proprietary! It'd be madness. The current state of things with smart home stuff is worse than that, becau…

> Imagine if lightbulb sockets were proprietary

Pretty sure lightbulb sockets used to be proprietary. And in the UK it used to be common to buy appliances with just a cable that you wired up to a plug because there was no common standard for outlets. There was even a brief period when appliances plugged into lightbulb sockets!

Remember the 90’s and what phone chargers looked like until the EU put its foot down and said “This is dumb, everyone should use USB for charging”. Now phone chargers are interchangeable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AC_power_plugs_and_...

Great episode of Absolute History about this: https://youtu.be/sxndE740wlo

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#22

Post by t_mann »

I totally wouldn't mind some hardware that lets me flip, turn, push or pull the flips, knobs, buttons, shades,... that I already have in my home in some programmable way that I can control.

No way am I going to replace my perfectly functional hardware with some device that relays my data to a cloud service and maybe even ends up bricked if they discontinue support. I'm actually happy to see this business model is not playing out.

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#23

Post by aetherson »

The reason why the smart home keeps faltering is that it provides little value to the customers. It's not the cloud, or the monetization schemes, it's that it turns out that flipping light switches or pressing a button on the thermostat is not a big pain point for people, and using smart-home technology is as often inferior to old dumb tech as it is superior.

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#24

Post by bradstewart »

tinbad wrote: post #13
jl6 wrote: post #4

So do all their products now become e-waste or is there some salvageable value?

There’s no need to use Insteons hub/cloud service. Most Insteon power users that I know are using homeseer, homeassistant as a way to control the devices. The other good thing about, at least the light switches (which is their core product), is that they work without an internet connection and will continue to function. However unfortunately the less tech savvy users who set up automations through Insteons service wi…

Yea this Insteon debacle is a weird example to use to highlight problems with IoT systems.

They've been around way longer than most of the "modern" protocols. It was basically Insteon and Lutron in semi-affordable home lighting control space for years and years and years before cloud-controlled IoT and Alexa entered the picture.

I'm really wondering how this all came to pass... guessing they tried and failed to jump on the app/cloud bandwagon? Their new app was late to the game and in beta for, like, two years?

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#25

Post by greedo »

brimble wrote: post #17
gh02t wrote: post #8

The reason these companies keep faltering is that they push cloud-based and/or locked in product ecosystems. Then they are either forced to a) operate on a pyramid scheme where new customers finance the ongoing costs of existing users or b) a subscription model that gives them a strong incentive to keep customers as locked into their ecosystem as possible. Either of these leave customers high and dry when the house o…

I think a big missing piece for the whole thing is the Just Works factor. You're either stuck with cloud garbage (some of which does, kinda, Just Work, until it doesn't), or a bunch of DIY. Meanwhile, with traditional dumb fixtures, switches, outlets, et c., I don't even pay attention to which brand I'm buying. They all work the same, and you hook them all up the same way, then forget about them until/unless they phy…

I've found the Lutron Caseta line perfect so far. I won't buy anything that requires external servers etc (like Nest). But Lutron only makes a limited range of devices.

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#26

Post by jmull »

exabrial wrote: post #2

It's a device that doesn't need to be cloud connected... that's cloud connected. Smart home stuff needs a local network to the home, that's it. A server going down in Virginia shouldn't mean a person can't run their vacuum robot.

Do you even need a local network?

For home automation the hobby, all the complexity is a feature. Fiddling with phones, apps, watches, identities, connections, security, networks, etc. is the fun of it.

Outside the hobby, though, I don't think people really want to deal with all that.

Generally, home devices you might automate are things you interact with -- locally. Local controls for a local device work really well, and the simplicity is hard to beat. Home automation wants to interject poor controls between you and everything.

E.g., the regular wall-mounted light switch is pretty close to an ideal design for a light.

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#27

Post by twblalock »

The bottom line is that a lot of these smart devices put more burden on the customer than traditional devices — not less.

I don’t remember the last time I had to fix or upgrade a malfunctioning traditional light switch or doorknob. I just never think about them.

On the other hand, every smart device I’ve bought has bugged me multiple times a year because of wifi or other network drops, or battery changes, or needing to log back in to my accounts.

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#28

Post by armagon »

lkxijlewlf wrote: post #7
exabrial wrote: post #2

It's a device that doesn't need to be cloud connected... that's cloud connected. Smart home stuff needs a local network to the home, that's it. A server going down in Virginia shouldn't mean a person can't run their vacuum robot.

How are you going to get your MRR if you don't have something for your customers to subscribe to?

It may be a place of simply changing your thinking and building a product that people want.

I saw an article recently that claimed that there will be more repairable phones on the market soon, as France put in a law requiring a fixability score for products, and consumers responded by preferring fixable products.

The Cricut smart cutters were changed to require a subscription to a cloud service, and consumers dumped 'em. The company finally walked the idea back.

I'm interested in smart home products, but I don't like the devices randomly talking to a server somewhere. It's insane that your lightbulb talks to the internet. It's also a gamble wondering if I can reflash a specific device to use a known-safe firmware that only talks on my LAN. Similarly, if I were in the market for a smart cutter, I'm absolutely going to weight in the possibility of control of my device being taken from me and look at Cricut's competitors more favourably.

I recently learned that domestic sewing machines were built before planned obsolescence was a thing; I can still buy a 1902 sewing machines in decent condition (for example), as they were designed to be repaired. Bad for a company's monthly income, I suppose, but good for me as a consumer.

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#29

Post by bombcar »

The smart home is still running into the "it's not simple/easy enough". Apple HomeKit almost gets there, sometimes, but the wireless connections still are flakey, one bulb comes on at a slightly different time than another, etc.

It works well enough with someone technical in the house to diagnose, but it is nowhere NEAR reliable enough for people without that.

Re: The end of Insteon and why the smart home keeps faltering

#30

Post by cptskippy »

brimble wrote: post #17
gh02t wrote: post #8

The reason these companies keep faltering is that they push cloud-based and/or locked in product ecosystems. Then they are either forced to a) operate on a pyramid scheme where new customers finance the ongoing costs of existing users or b) a subscription model that gives them a strong incentive to keep customers as locked into their ecosystem as possible. Either of these leave customers high and dry when the house o…

I think a big missing piece for the whole thing is the Just Works factor. You're either stuck with cloud garbage (some of which does, kinda, Just Work, until it doesn't), or a bunch of DIY. Meanwhile, with traditional dumb fixtures, switches, outlets, et c., I don't even pay attention to which brand I'm buying. They all work the same, and you hook them all up the same way, then forget about them until/unless they phy…

> I don't even pay attention to which brand I'm buying.

My mil has purchased some seriously sketchy outlets off Amazon to install because she wanted to modern style but didn't want to pay the Leviton/Legrand premium from the home center duopoly.

If you're purchasing in-wall electrical, I strongly encourage you to buy a name brand from a reputable source. Also spend the extra half dollar for nylon plates that won't crack or shatter.

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