Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis
April 22, 2022 by Stacey Higginbotham 37 Comments
Smart home company Insteon has shut off its servers, lost its management team, and on Thursday sent an email to customers explaining how it plans to sell any remaining assets to help pay off creditors as part of a formal dissolution of the business. It has been the most drama-filled end of a consumer IoT company to date — and also represents one of the biggest opportunities left for the Matter smart home standard going forward.
On Friday, April 15, customers started reporting that their Insteon app was down and their hubs could no longer communicate with the cloud. After reading those reports, I went online and discovered that, according to their LinkedIn bios, no one from the SmartLabs/Insteon management team was still working at the company.
Three of them had stripped the company name from their bios altogether, including Rob Lilleness, the former CEO. Lilleness founded Richmond Capital Partners, the company that invested $7.3 million in Insteon in 2017 with the idea of capitalizing on interest in smart homes. After I reached out to him on Saturday and reported the original story, he truncated his name on LinkedIn to R. Li. On the following Tuesday, he responded to my original inquiry by replying to me on LinkedIn saying, “Unfortunately, I am not involved with the company.”
By that time he also had taken his name, photo and bio off LinkedIn, appearing only as an anonymous LinkedIn member.
His statement to me was true, because as customers learned via email two days later, Insteon’s parent company SmartLabs had transferred its assets to a separate legal entity on March 22 called SmartLabs (ABC) LLC. SmartLabs ABC is a legal entity created to sell any assets and pay off the original SmartLabs’ creditors.
As part of that process, the new LLC contracted with a company to collect claims, and on April 12 issued a letter telling companies that have a claim on SmartLabs/Insteon to file them before Sept. 18, 2022.
SmartLabs ABC may have some assets to sell, including the source code that many customers would like to see made available, but the idea that Insteon will continue as a sort of going concern for anything but the most tech-savvy users is misplaced. A connected product is far more than its source code.
While a company might buy the SmartLabs code and host it, it’s unclear why a buyer would invest in paying for Amazon servers, continued updates, and the skills necessary to rebuild all of the integrations without the promise of some sort of new revenue. This also assumes that some of the more valuable integrations, such as those that link to Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, would be approved by the larger companies.
After such a public shutdown of the Insteon service, many customers are likely to cut their losses as opposed to paying a new company to restart the service. We have offered a list of potential alternatives to keep some Insteon gear limping along. But many of those options require a level of comfort with smart home services such as Home Assistant, HomeBridge, HOOBS, or other DIY smart home tools.
Casual users of Insteon gear will likely look at ripping and replacing what they can. The good news is there’s an option on the horizon that can help. Matter, a smart home protocol championed by Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung (as well as hundreds of other companies in consumer IoT) is expected later this year.
The standard will create an interoperable data model for a selection of devices such as locks, lightbulbs, and HVAC equipment that will enable any Matter-certified devices to talk to them. Which means that if one Matter-certified hub stops working, a consumer can easily swap it out for a new one that can work with peripheral Matter devices.
Because the Matter standard isn’t actually here yet, this is all still theoretical. But the problem it could solve is very real. Insteon is only the latest example of a smart home company going out of business and stranding its users. We’ve also seen the death of early hubs and gear built by retailers such as Lowe’s and Staples.
We’ve also seen some connected device companies try to restart with a subscription model, as Wink did. That said, because Insteon’s technology used proprietary wireless radios to communicate among light switches, garage door openers, and other products, the loss of its service is a bit more complicated. Whereas companies such as Universal Devices have licensed the radio technology, so we could see new options that work with the stranded devices. But if a smart home is what you’re after, there are still no guarantees that anything you buy will stand the test of time.
Maybe Matter will change that. Then again, maybe it won’t.
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Filed Under: Analysis, Featured Tagged With: Insteon, Matter, Smartlabs
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As a service to existing customers, I would really like to see them allow the manufacturer in China to produce more of the core products (dimmers, switches, keypads) as replacements for failed units. Then let Universal Devices sell them. Instead, they will likely sell the patents off to a troll which will only hurt their existing customer base since it will prevent replacement units from being manufactured. Possibly this could be done with a carve out which would license the continued production of replacement units. The goal here is just to let existing customers limp along until Matter is available.
BTW, losing the Insteon Hub is not critical. I have one and stopped using it because it was very unreliable. Instead, I use the Universal Devices hub which has been completely reliable. So if you have a dead Insteon hub there is a simple alternative.
What is a larger problem for me is keypads. I have some locations which are dependent on multiple keypad buttons controlling remote dimmers. I don’t know of an alternative replacement for Insteon keypads.
Universal Devices hub will control all of the switches I have? I assume I’ll have to reprogram them, don’t care about that. Any tricks to it or does it work natively with insteon devices?
You need to own an Insteon PLM (~$75). If you don’t have one, Universal Device may help you in getting one. Check out the website: https://www.universal-devices.com/
I’d like another smart home enthusiast to pipe up and tell us about something you think would be a true hardware replacement for Insteon…and by replacement I mean something you can effectively deploy into every light switch box throughout the house. I have such an Insteon system…and luckily I have it all back online using HomeSeer. But what would you replace such a system with? 70ish Leviton WiFi based light switches? Z wave switches with slower communication and more limited range than Insteon? Replacing Insteon is an irritating, but not too hard of a task if you are a basic user had maybe a lamp dimmer module and a couple of smart switches. I put Insteon throughout the house because the wired in 110v smart devices were top notch at controlling lights, fans, etc…once you had it set up with Alexa. Even if the app was always horrible, you never needed to look at the Insteon App again after setting everything up. It was gravy for 5 years not a single device has yet to break or physically go bad. (The hub, I have heard is more failure prone.)
If you have enough tech savvy to get HomeSeer or ISY running, I think those are the only true workarounds for the moment. Solutions that allow you to control…but not reprogram/add/remove devices are not really complete solutions. Correct me if I am wrong, but is that not the major limitation of Home Assistant for the moment?
The devices will last about ten years and then they will all start failing around the same time. I am currently experiencing failure in a dozen devices. But they did run for the last ten years without problems.
These failures are a known problem with smart devices, the electrolytic caps used in these devices only last about ten years. But I will also say about half of the units I have looked at the crystal failed instead of the caps. They did not use high temp rated crystals.
I use mostly Sonoff products. Light switches, smartplugs, etc. The reason being that they are easily reflashed (after a small learning curve) with Tasmota open source firmware. That way, I have complete local or remote (via Wireguard) control, and no one can ever disable the functionality of the devices. I have 93 assorted devices running Tasmota in my home network today (over 2200 unique devices are supported). I feel sorry for those that invested in failing IoT companies; that’s how I got started. Back in the day, I was an X10 user. Once burned, I vowed never again. Open source and hobbyist friendly hardware all the way for me now.
Sonoff appears to be better now, but I am still leery of them. For the first three years or so they refused to get UL/ETL safety certification. If you Google around you will find pictures of Sonoff units that caught on fire. So I would recommend only using the newest Sonoff devices which have passed UL/ETL inspection.
Yes, that was the original Sonoff POW; they don’t make that anymore. I had them, but never had a problem with them. I have a rule of thumb that I derate everything sitting between the outlet and the load 50%. The newest outlet plug-in incarnation, the S31, has over voltage / current / power protection. I’ve intentionally overloaded them to test, and they just turn off. You can configure lower thresholds in Tasmota, too.
What I need is an ESP32 based replacement for the Insteon keypad dimmer. I have never seen one.
This is a great discussion regarding longevity. Me personally, I reject the idea that devices like smart light switches should have to be physically changed every 10 years. My parent’s house has electronic (but non smart) dimmers that are 20+ years old. What I’m saying is its unacceptable for the life cycle of wired-in 110v hardware to be treated like short life cycle electronic items that you upgrade/replace more often. If IoT companies choose to make cheap crap that fails or has such a short intended life cycle every 5 years…who would want a house full of that? Such a business model will diminish consumer confidence…and willingness to make larger investments in any smart home tech.
Those electronic dimmers don’t have a microprocessor and radio in them. You can construct them without having to use components that have limited lifetimes. You are also simply lucky that they are still working. You must be in an area that does not get many lightning strikes.
It is certainly possible to build smart dimmers that last 20-30 years. But no one wants to pay for them which is probably not too bad of a decision. The technology is changing too much and after ten years you probably want to upgrade to the next wave. The problem is that you need to replace multiple 15-cent caps with ones that cost $2-3. You might say you’d pay 50% more for a 20-year lifetime dimmer. But if I put 10-year and 20-year dimmers on a shelf in Home Depot it doesn’t matter what the box says, the cheapest one will sell.
Also, this is not planned obsolescence. It is simply the observation that the cheaper dimmer will outsell the 20-year model 50 to 1.
50:1 initially, sure. But people will flip once they *already* spent 10x to 20x the cost of a dumb switch and yet their smart switches died within 5 years.
Dumb light switch: $0.75 to $2 (dies in 25 years) Average smart switch: $30 to $50 (dies in 6 years)
That will not be sustainable and there will be a market correction rather quickly, I would suspect. This is easily conveyable with warranties alone (which smart light switches already include).
Let’s not forget: if people are replacing many switches, they’ll be hiring an electrician, so that “smart home upgrade” price tag just went up again.
TBH, all we need are a few major news stories of IoT companies refusing to fix old hardware -> major loss of trust throughout the marketplace. Think of it like recalls on retail products: consumers have zero brand loyalty to commodity hardware.
Your expensive, new-to-most-consumers product dies quickly and you refuse to fix it, even out of warranty? Prepare for the news onslaught, forum & comment anger, and multiple local news cycles.
Light switch tech is hardly changing: not sure why you think that? I’d love some example. Feels like there’s no little incentive to upgrade light switches: sensors, bulbs, cameras, new endpoints (e.g., a sprinkler, smoke alarm, etc.) seem like better “pulls” of consumer wallets.
IMHO, it’s like asking a homeowner: do you want to spend money on a new roof or on a new kitchen & living room? They care little about the former; it’s meant to “just work for decades”.
Frankly, I struggle to see new innovation in a switch whose only job can be 1) change the brightness and 2) change the color. Some have tried turning wall switches into “all-in-one” IoT remotes (e.g., Inovelli) and they are either quite expensive or quite difficult to learn -> tough sell, IMHO, to the mainstream.
Not planned obsolescence, but consumer trust & expectations. See Matter: there’s a reason ultra-rich mega-corporations are uniting and it’s because the industry have lost consumer trust and that has meant ~significantly~ weaker revenue.
Money always talks, one way or another.
If your only objective is money, stick with the dumb switches. Like you say they last 25 years and cost $2. Smart switches will NEVER cost $2. Reasonably priced smart switches will likely never last 25 years either.
In my case, I like being able to push a single button and have six to eight different lights/devices simultaneously move to a preset arrangement. I also really like having an “all-off” button by the garage door on the way out. I also like how my landscape lighting tracks sunrise/sunset times for when it turns on/off.
Different people will have different preferences in this regard.
I am quadriparetic, so home automation isn’t just a convenience for me: it’s the only way I can personally control a lot of devices in my home without having to ask someone else to do it. Even if I can reach a conventional light switch from my wheelchair, I may not have the hand function to use it. Also with the rapid feature changes in the industry, it can be really difficult to project just which automated light switch I would prefer in 5 years.
So after some early efforts at figuring out what would work in our household, I finally decided about 5 years ago that I would, as Stacey has sometimes suggested on this site, think of home automation hardware as simply the delivery mechanism for the features I wanted. Much like a smartphone is. Sure, the hardware matters: but the available features matter more. And different people have different requirements.
Anyway, about 5 years ago I decided to both plan and budget home automation devices, even light switches, similarly to how I budget my phone. I assume a 3 year replacement cycle for everything, even the hub if there is one. If I get longer use out of something, that’s great: but if I don’t, it doesn’t crush me psychologically or financially.
That does lead to some decisions other people might not make. If a room has two light fixtures, maybe only one of them is automated, or maybe the ceiling fixture isn’t automated but the table lamp is. We don’t automate for the sake of automating: we automate so I have more independence. We have a smart countertop toaster oven which works great for me and gets used all the time: we don’t have any money invested in making the conventional oven smart because those aren’t features our household needs.
My point is just that while many people will find it makes sense for them to evaluate smart light switches on the same standards as dumb switches and look for the same kind of longevity, for others of us, particularly with such rapid industry changes going on, it can make more sense to evaluate smart light switches on the same standards as other high tech items. It needs to be safe to operate, of course. But I want to feel ready to change to a different light switch in a few years if that one has features that will improve my life on a daily basis. Otherwise I could get stuck with a VCR when the rest of the world has gone to streaming. Or even AR.
Just as an example, my own guess is that in another 3 or 4 years there will be light switches with built in sensors that know just which specific people are in the room and react accordingly. A lot of people won’t care, but it’s a feature I could use, and I’d be willing to swap out my existing switches, or at least some of them, to get it. So I budget so I’m prepared for decisions like that every few years.
So personally, I don’t need a smart light switch that lasts 20 years. I need one that gives me my money’s worth on a daily basis over a 3 year replacement cycle. That strategy won’t work for everyone, but it’s working very well for me. Choice is good. ?
Those presence / occupancy sensors *do* sound quite interesting for a light switch. I never thought about that sort of innovation.
You have the better conclusion: different markets for different people.
When I first started exploring home automation in 2014, I had no idea that by 2018 voice control option would be essential for me. But they are now!
In 2016, IFTTT compatibility was one of my top priorities. By 2020, I hardly used IFTTT at all: I was able to substitute Alexa routines for the few “intermediary required” situations I still had left.
As the available features change, so do my own priorities, and I want to feel free to switch if there’s something else that will work better for me.
I know not everyone sees that kind of flexibility as important, and I respect that. But I’ve given up trying to guess what the future of home automation will be! And like smart phones, I’m not sure we will ever be in a “one-size-fits-all“ marketplace again.
You actually already nailed it. A light switch already has a limited, defined set of tasks. It turns a light on. Or off. Or dims it. Or maybe the ability to change the color of an RGB setup. On the hardware side of things, there’s not much else you can do to make a light switch more useful. Especially once the switch also has the ability to talk to a networked hub and be remote controlled by software. After that, the only improvement/evolution really then is on the software side of things. Like the ability to command it with a voice agent. Or the ability to be used with platforms like HomeSeer, etc. My point is that an Insteon switch from 2007 has the same usefulness/capability hardware wise as any smart switch currently being produced. And because it is wired into the home’s 110v system, replacing it is more labor intensive than setting up a new Apple watch. The paradigm we have all adopted that electronic things have a 3 year life cycle is wrong for so many reasons. That’s especially true for someone who would have to hire an electrician to wire these things in for them. The main point I’m trying to make is that it is very important that wired-in smart devices be granted a longer life/expected replacement cycle. Or else adoption will remain far more limited to more of a hobbyist/enthusiast type market.
What we really need is for NEMA to require electrical boxes with internal plug receptacles instead of bare wires. Boxes like that exist, but they are all patented proprietary solutions.
If the boxes had plug receptacles inside you would undo the screws, pop out the dumb switch or a dead smart one, and then pop in a replacement. This would be safe since the receptacle inside the electrical box would be recessed preventing easy access to live AC.
I don’t mean plugs like a wall socket, this system would be specifically designed for the constraints of an electrical box.
I do hear you on the longevity concerns. But getting more than about ten years out of a smart switch is a difficult problem in electronics design. Sure it can be done but all of the solutions drive the cost of the unit up a LOT. Around ten years is the best you can do at a low cost.
And that ten years will be an average, some units will fail at five and some will make it to fifteen years. I have one very early Insteon dimmer still running that I believe is over 20 years old. But that is only one out of hundreds.
There are many dimmers supported by Tasmota, you can search at their supported devices list, at ‘templates dot blakadder dot com’ for something that meets your needs. An ESP32 is not needed for that; an ESP8266 is more than capable (unless you also want it to be driving a display, or something similar).
Assuming the TopGreener Scene Controller Switch (TGWFSC8-W) hasn’t been tuyafied and can’t run Tasmota I think I can use this. The trouble is that this is a switch and I need an integrated dimmer. But maybe I can figure out locations where I can splice a dimmer module into the load line. I don’t see any other scene controller options. I have this problem in eight places.
!!!!REVISED EDITED FOR TYPOS!!!! I contacted Universal Devices, the makers of the ISY controller hub that supports many home automation devices. I was told they are pushing hard to support Insteon customers. This is what’s posted on their device store, under their main product.
https://www.universal-devices.com/store/
“ IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING INSTEON HUB:
If you are replacing INSTEON HUB, you will need a PLM. If you do not have one or cannot find one, please login to your account, uncheck everything except for Product News & Announcements . Once we can source PLMs, we’ll notify you.”
The way any third party device controller hub that supports Insteon works is with the use of a Power Line Module (PLM).
We must remember the reason why Insteon was an attractive tech, to me at least, is the ability to communicate to devices via the electrical power lines of the building/home , in addition to Radio Frequency (RF), and finally communication between devices on a mesh configuration. Very advanced for its time. Insteon has been a work horse and reliable tech for me and many users. For example, I have an electrical metal box t that houses Insteon micro switches to control my pool lights, and landscape lights. There is no technology available that can replace it, no way WiFi can communicate through the metal box. Only power line communications will work.
I do hope this tech survives and/or adopts and includes the thread and matter tech.
I’m holding my breath for good news.
Matter has won a few major battles that nobody else is even close to:
A) Open enough for serious, industry-wide competition (e.g., many vendors can compete for the entire user base, without users locked in or old devices too difficult to support).
B) Popular enough to become the de facto standard for major, “too big to fail” companies (e.g., USB today).
C) And reliable enough software that consumers aren’t concerned with “will all this work 90% of the time or 99.9999% of the time?”
Matter solves these (or it claims to), but Jon brings up a good point. Now that the software resiliency is being settled, we now need to have conversations about hardware resiliency.
Normal, dumb consumer (aka non-industrial / non-medical) switches last 20+ years, depending on usage. Some might go bad or get loose earlier, but on average, they’re very resilient for a typical home ownership cycle.
I’d like to see some standardized (ANSI / UL) on longevity. Who knows who is cheaping out?
Perhaps Matter’s software resiliency will push users back to traditional, large companies like Eaton, Legrand, etc.
I would like to jump in here with a slightly different point of view. As a long retired EE, I became interested in home controlled appliances many years before the term “Smart” was used. Early on I adopted the X-10 power line approach which necessarily included the power line phase coupler. Even so, the communication was never reliable as it suffered from line noise. When Insteon came out with their switches the were both compatible with X-10 and in addition had RF communication, I quickly replaced all of my X-10 modules with Insteon modules which, while not perfect, did a great job. About 10 years ago I found the need to communicate remotely and added the Insteon hub. The first one failed after a short time and was replaced with an updated one and all went well and I was happy. Or so I thought. Seems that my house cleaning ladies were plugging their vacuums and such into my lamp dimmer outlets with the net results that the internal contacts were heating up enough to cause them to loose their temper and no longer held the lamp plugs in securely. Instead of replacing the wall receptacles, I chose to replace them with some good old standard ones and bought some plugs at 1/10th the cost. So now I had two controllers to contend with, each with it’s own app. And then Insteon went dark and while my existing schedules worked for awhile, I was unable to edit them. Eventually the whole control system went dead leaving me to investigate the newer controls and devices and for reasons I don’t need to go into right now, I chose to go with Apple HomeKit and am currently replacing all my modules with HomeKit ones. So far so good. The devices are extremely easy to add, the control app is easier to program than any other app that I have investigated and more importantly, easily shared with and understood by my wife.
If you have an Insteon PLM you can just switch to free Home Assistant to replace your hub. No immediate need to replace devices. If you don’t have a PLM, then you have a problem.
I was not aware that a Power Line Modem would give me remote access. Can you explain?
Setup free Home Assistant on a RaspPi. It comes with a remote app. It supports Insteon PLM.
For Alexa control, you can set it up yourself with a domain name, or you can pay a small fee and they will host for you.
Thank you. I appreciate the help but it comes a little late as I have just replaced ALL of my Insteon stuff with HomeKit certified stuff and liking it way better because it not is only easier and quicker to setup but it is more flexible and more rapid in its response Ken
Apparently my initial posting was truncated and probably at my doing. I apologize. I do have an old PLM but I really do need remote access. I will try to append the rest of my posting.
It’s frustrating that all the press revolves around people using the SmartHub feature. I think the problem that affects most Insteon users is that they have dozens (hundreds for commercial customers, possibly thousands) of modules installed that are going to die at some point and there are no longer any replacements. There are lots and lots of people using ISY-99, PowerHome, etc., who can live without the phone-home hub, but need a replacement source. Let’s hope someone sees the market opportunity. Smarthome/Insteon recognized a over a decade ago that the bigger money was in the commercial building and security markets. Everyone is, as usual, going for the consumer market (which is always a year away from exploding, but in reality never will because you can’t use home automation without some sort of programming, and no matter how ergonomic you make it, most people don’t want to program), but I wonder who is going to step in and replace Insteon in the commercial market, perhaps just by acquiring the patents and starting up production again once the supply shortages ease (which is really what killed Insteon – not lack of demand).
If you’re interested in understanding more of the confusing legal aspects of SmartLabs ABC case, I invite you to read this article published on DailyDAC by a bankruptcy and restructuring attorney: https://www.dailydac.com/assignee-unknown-the-curious-cases-of-smartlabs-shine-bathroom-technologies-liftopia-glasspoint-solarreserve-maker-media-toymail/
I guess I had better subscribe to some site like this so I can salvage what I’ve got. About 20 years ago, the previous owner of my house (my father) had installed ONE smart switch, bought at Radio Shack, to control the outdoor floodlights in a separate outbuilding about 60 feet from the house. It was an X-10 switch, with a remote control.
that switch still works in 2022. so does the keychain remote, and the plug-in 8-code panel.
My house is “smart” in the sense that it has five switches, three control options (plug in panel, handheld remote, and a larger Insteon panel that was backward compatible with X-10)
After I got more complex with Insteon 8-button control panels mounted as switches, they all started failing in less than a year. I was not impressed with having to replace $70 switches every time we had a voltage drop. I bought filters. I bought a “whole house filter”, I bought a bridge that plugged into my dryer socket.
And now I’ve got those two remaining Insteon switches…. but you’re telling me Insteon is kaput. Is X-10 still around, and can I get a four-button switch (that’s all I need at most) – –
or do i cough up $500 and replace my stuff with today’s technology, and – – which one do I go with?
I’m really not a wizard. I don’t want full home control. I was an electrician for a few years back in the 90’s and I like to tinker, but I also am not a computer programmer, and I’m getting old. This stuff is too hairy for me.
It all depends on exactly what you want to do: there’s definitely no one best answer. Like anything else you can buy at Home Depot, from door knobs to curtain rods, there is a very wide range of costs and features in smart home devices.
If you just want to be able to put up a remote control switch for an individual light, there are quite a few brands out there that have been available for years and work just fine for that purpose. skylink is one of the better known and has a lot of different devices, but Home Depot will have a lot of choices.
These days, though, when we talk about Smart Home most people are talking about app control, voice control, schedules and timers, and the ability to control the devices when you are away from home. That’s a lot more features. it’s also a much higher cost, and to be honest most of these have a warranty of 3 to 5 years. Not so much because an individual device itself won’t last, but because the technology is evolving so quickly that it’s sort of like a cell phone, and you don’t want one that’s three years old because it doesn’t have current features. an inexpensive system of that type will typically be budgeted at around $300 per room up to around $5,000 for a whole house. And personally, I budget this in a way similar to a mobile phone: I assume that any one device will be replaced after three years. So I pay about the same in a per month basis for my home automation as I do for my mobile phone with service. I know that’s not how everyone thinks about it, but it takes a lot of stress out of my smart home technology decisions because I don’t have to worry about finding something that would work for 15 years. And if any one device does end up lasting longer, that just means more money in the budget to spend on shiny new stuff. So it works for me.
If you look at a high-end home automation system that includes security, home theater, and home automation in an integrated system, something like Crestron or Control 4, The cost is typically 10% of the cost of the home itself plus an annual maintenance fee. There are certainly people going for systems like that, but they are not your average consumer. And most of those systems are professionally installed.
So… in your case, if you just want some wall switches/remotes to control lights in other parts of the house or in outbuildings, you can go to Home Depot and see what they have. No app, no voice control, no integration with anything else, but they work fine for that purpose.
If you want a DIY system with a whole house cost of under $5000 with an app and voice control, then there are a whole lot of other questions to be asked and answered to come up with a good candidate list for you. And I don’t think this particular site is the right format for that. You might want to check out the Reddit subforum on home automation. It covers all brands and all levels of knowledge and is often a good place to start.
https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/
There are lots of other good forums as well depending on your specific interests.
So I think you’ll be able to find something which is the right choice for you, but it will take a little research just because there are so many choices out there.
Your Insteon stuff is still work, right? Don’t do anything until it fails. Maybe Matter devices will be out by then.
no, my insteon 8-button control panels – I had 3 – all died within 3 years of install, which was about two years ago.
I live on about $1,500 a month – hand-to-mouth. I need to go buy about 500 feet of romex and some single pole switches and get trenching. This is ridiculous.
I’m 54 years old, and becoming jaundiced and bitter that so much of what is FLASH! BANG! ZOOM! is just that – a gimmick that never works very long at all.
I there are switches in this house that have worked since 1933. until about two years ago, there was still knob-and-tube wiring in the attic that was still hot, still worked, and had not been touched since the house was built in ’33.
If you want a light switch to work for 50 years your only choice is a mechanical one. If that’s your goal — don’t by a smart switches they are not going to last 50 years. Best I have achieved is about ten years for some of them.
It is not difficult to see why this is true. A mechanical switch is just a lump of metal. Very difficult to break a lump of metal. No electronic device is going to outlive a lump of metal.
However, knob and tube is very dangerous and it should be replaced.
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