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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

#71

Post by jvolkman »

brimble wrote: post #64
Nextgrid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is DIY considered bad? I mean, aren't existing "dumb" electricals also DIY in the sense that you have to install it, wire it in, etc? I have a "DIY" setup in my current property with Shelly modules behind light switches and everything connected to Home Assistant. It's been rock-solid for a year now and the occasional maintenance I do (updates, etc) is more out of a hobby than anything (I could air-gap the entire…

There's a big difference between wiring up a new outlet that'll likely last for decades without further effort and will very likely require an identical or near-identical process to replace even 30 years from now, and care and feeding of fully-local "smart home" networks & interfaces. Most plumbing or electrical work I do will last decades. If I move, the same skills will transfer perfectly to the plumbing and wiring…

But any decent smart switch works as a normal switch by default, without any care or feeding. Sure, controlling them remotely and adding them to automation takes additional work, but that's stuff that is just impossible with the dumb switches, and not a requirement to control the light fixtures.

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

#72

Post by markvdb »

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…

For a new build or serious renovation with complete rewiring, this is mostly a solved problem.

The Shelly pro 4pm installs in the electric wiring cabinet. It speaks MQTT standard messaging across wired ethernet, but it can also integrate with Shelly's cloud thingies. It's a smart, standards based drop in replacement for ordinary "dumb" AC teleruptor/impulse relay star topology wiring.

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

#73

Post by groby_b »

Nextgrid wrote: post #42
brimble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why is DIY considered bad? I mean, aren't existing "dumb" electricals also DIY in the sense that you have to install it, wire it in, etc? I have a "DIY" setup in my current property with Shelly modules behind light switches and everything connected to Home Assistant. It's been rock-solid for a year now and the occasional maintenance I do (updates, etc) is more out of a hobby than anything (I could air-gap the entire…

The reason DIY is "bad" is the time investment that comes with it, and the fact that all good systems required a lot of bespoke work, which means there's a skill gap too.

Home automation, when it works, is great. If you don't have the time & skill to do it yourself, the cost of having somebody do it well for you is prohibitive unless you're in a fairly high income demographic.

And that's the problem with DIY - it's an indicator of a niche audience, not an inherent "badness".

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

#74

Post by crooked-v »

______-_-______ wrote: post #12

Let's say I want to dip my toe into smart homes, maybe get a smart light switch or two. I care about: - privacy - staying out of the cloud (so things like TFA don't affect me) - an open protocol interoperable between vendors Can anyone recommend a good "for dummies" guide written from that angle? I know that software-wise Home Assistant is generally recommended, but how do you decide what hardware to get?

It's not "open", but Lutron devices (Caseta for DIY or small installations, RadioRA 3 for whole-home setups) are some of the best you can find at the moment. They're designed around local communication and directly synchronizing switches and remotes with each other, with an optional local hub for automation.

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

#76

Post by api »

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…

Yeah this plus the cloud privacy nightmare are what's kept me away. I don't fancy having my entire house go braindead because a company goes bankrupt and shuts down its cloud, gets hacked, or experiences a gigantic devops mistake like Atlassian just endured. "We're sorry, your house is now bricked." The entire thing is madness on lots of levels.

Cloud use is an anti-feature for me in anything that does not objectively benefit from cloud compute offload, rich collaboration, or access to large amounts of data. It doesn't totally rule it out but if I see that it has to call out to the cloud that's a ding against it.

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

#77

Post by Andrex »

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…

There's some hope in Matter... if it doesn't keep getting delayed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_(standard)

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

#78

Post by jaywalk »

Terretta wrote: post #62
gregmac wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason these companies keep faltering is that they push cloud-based and/or locked in product ecosystems. I agree. It's a shame because Insteon products were pretty good for their time, for the most part. Granted, I never used their cloud stuff at all -- only local control (via ISY99 and later also Home Assistant). Though I'd say this was a long time coming; it had been nearly a decade since any new products cam…

> no equivalent for Insteon KeypadLinc there are a variety of HomeKit buttons that are sold as e.g. dimmers or multi-bulb, but in fact can trigger arbitrary homekit devices, scenes, automations, etc. i’m guessing these fall in the category you say “comes close”? an example of what i mean is “Philips Hue v2 Smart Dimmer Switch and Remote” which is actually 4 arbitrary device, scene, or automation buttons that magnetic…

Unfortunately Logitech has discontinued the Harmony line. I would be very wary about starting off fresh with them, because they are reliant on Logitech's servers being available.

That being said, you can pry my Harmony Ultimate from my cold, dead hands. I'm not looking forward to the day I have to get rid of it, because there's really nothing out there to replace it with.

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

#79

Post by FinnKuhn »

______-_-______ wrote: post #12

Let's say I want to dip my toe into smart homes, maybe get a smart light switch or two. I care about: - privacy - staying out of the cloud (so things like TFA don't affect me) - an open protocol interoperable between vendors Can anyone recommend a good "for dummies" guide written from that angle? I know that software-wise Home Assistant is generally recommended, but how do you decide what hardware to get?

I think something like this might be what you are looking for, though I think some of the products he uses rely to much on being battery powered, although there appear to be cable powered versions of these products too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85yH56DS5mg&t=5s

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

#80

Post by blable2 »

My four full-size ceiling led lights (think old school Florissant size in a square configuration) are independent and triggered by motion with self timed off. Perfect. My front porch lights are similar but just dusk to dawn automatic. Perfect. Oh, the garage door opener is Siri controlled but I can take it off with a bluetooth tag I've been to lazy to setup. Near perfect. Only Google Home is used for IOT to lazily control the temp. I really like my smooth home automation thus far.
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