If you're an Insteon Smart Home System user, you may have noticed that your smart home hub suddenly lost power on April 15.
The cause for the outage is much worse than you could expect. Apple Insider recently confirmed that Insteon has suddenly gone out of business and has shut down its servers without warning its customers.
Smartlabs, the parent company of Insteon, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment, per CNET.
Insteon Disappearance Details
According to Apple Insider's report, the smart home hardware and software company closed its doors just before April 16, per Stacey Higginbotham of Stacey on IoT.
Stacey also reached out to Smartlabs' president and chairman, Rob Lilleness but has yet to hear from him.
There have been various signs Insteon is disappearing for good instead of lack of service due to an unsolved outage.
The first piece of evidence is when the company's servers have been down for days despite the company saying its servers are online. Meanwhile, its support forums and social media pages are either down or completely unresponsive.
Although automated procedures such as opening garage doors and turning lights off and on are still possible by directly pressing their switches.
Insteon leadership has also removed any mention of their involvement in the company, with Review Geek reporting that the Insteon "leadership bios" page shows a 404 error. Additionally, Stacey on IoT noted Rob Lilleness no longer lists the company in his LinkedIn profile.
Other Insteon higher-ups like former Smarlabs CIO Mike Nunes and Smartlabs president and COO Matt Kowalec listed that their involvement in the company ended in 2022 and 2020, respectively.
On the other hand, Tom Carter, Insteon's CIO, didn't list his role in the company at all.
Unfortunately, the company didn't leave its servers up and running while they were shuttering its doors, making the Insteon app becoming non-functional. The automations and schedules for smart home devices have also suffered a similar fate, with them no longer working due to the sudden server closing.
Fortunately, Reddit user u/insull2 mentioned in their post that Insteon's devices continue to work despite the servers closing, noting that they can still turn their lights off and on and open their garage doors by setting up and pressing switches directly.
However, Insteon smart home device users should beware of the devices' troubleshooting steps, as a server connection is required before a factory reset could be initiated.
With the servers down, the initial installation after the reset will never be completed. The best solution with Insteon servers permanently down is to buy new smart home devices.
What Was Insteon?
Insteon is a smart home company owned by Smartlabs, which is also the owner of Nokia Smart Lighting as of last year through purchasing it.
Many of Insteon's devices were compatible with Apple's HomeKit system, including the company's flagship Insteon Hub, per a separate Apple Insider report.
Both Smartlabs and Insteon have shared several people in leadership roles.
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