Two days ago I noticed the Insteon app was unresponsive and my hub showed a persistent red light. Their support telephone numbers ring "busy" at all hours. Word on the web is they're gone.
Truly baffling to have no communication from the company -- even their status page insists systems are operational.
Many users are finding it easy enough to migrate to Home Assistant, but the whole experience leaves a bad taste.
I hope that the technology/patents land in good hands; Insteon's combo-RF-and-powerline tech has been incredibly reliable for the seven years I've used their switches and dimmers.
Edit: Also, really demonstrates the pitfall of having an app and local hub rely on third party servers over the Internet to work. Should be a total non-starter for IoT gadgets at home.
really demonstrates the pitfall of having an app and local hub rely on third party servers over the Internet to work
Yep. And it's happened before.
Before there was Homekit, I bought a bunch of "smart" light bulbs from Fiet Electric. Long story short, within 16 months, Feit decided not only to shut down the service, but uploaded firmware to everyone's home device controllers to brick them.
The company wouldn't talk about it. Wouldn't answer support queries. The best guess on the internet at the time was that the company got caught using someone else's IP, and that was the way out.
Amazingly, this company has launched new rounds of "smart" devices that are on sale today. How's that for bad "planned obsolescence" optics? They brick millions of light bulbs, then go ahead and sell new ones.
I had a Feit CFL bulb from Costco nearly burn down my home about 5 years ago. If we hadn't been home at the time it would have succeeded. I will never buy one of their products again.
That's unfortunate; I'm glad you were able to avert disaster.
I have well over 100 Feit LEDs (dumb ones) throughout my home and family's home, and they're actually my favorite brand, mostly because of their high-CRI offerings.
I’ve also started to consider FEIT as a higher quality brand. My house came with Philips LED bulbs, and over the last two years every one of them burned out before their promised EOL dates. All FEIT replacements have been working as expected so far.
As the price came down on LEDs, so did the quality. I have a dozen or so Philips bulbs from 2012 and 2013 that have had no issues and good quality dimming. Could not find same quality when looking for more a few years later.
Did it say something like “not for use in totally enclosed luminaries”? I’ve seen a few of them get melty in enclosed lamps. Also makes led bulbs fail much faster than people expect.
(Not blaming you or whoever installed it) it seems like one of those bad cover your ass disclaimers
This is one of the many reasons why I decided to go with bulbs that have Zigbee support. They can be controlled by other software. I bought a FEIT electric bulb and the app is terrible. Hopefully open standards like Zigbee and Matter win.
Truly baffling to have no communication from the company -- even their status page insists systems are operational.
Many users are finding it easy enough to migrate to Home Assistant, but the whole experience leaves a bad taste.
I hope that the technology/patents land in good hands; Insteon's combo-RF-and-powerline tech has been incredibly reliable for the seven years I've used their switches and dimmers.
Edit: Also, really demonstrates the pitfall of having an app and local hub rely on third party servers over the Internet to work. Should be a total non-starter for IoT gadgets at home.