Smart home provider Insteon has taken its servers offline. The company has not informed customers and employees of the company appear to have removed all of their online presence. As a result, devices can no longer be operated from a distance.
Insteon’s hubs and related devices have stopped working since this week, dozens of users write to iot expert Stacey Higginbotham. The app and the lamps and other devices connected to it no longer seem to be able to connect to the company’s servers. It is unknown what happened to the company behind it, SmartLabs, which also manages Nokia Smart Lighting. The company does not write anything about the situation at Insteon. Users have also not been notified of their service being discontinued. The status page of the service states that it is still fully online.
In addition, according to Higginbotham, the founders of the company seem to have disappeared from the internet. Several high-ranking employees such as the cio and cro have removed Insteon from their LinkedIn profiles and say they have stopped working for the company as of this month, but are not responding to messages. Insteon’s press and customer service email addresses are also no longer available. The user forum has also been taken offline.
The products that Insteon offers have not become completely worthless. Insteon equipment uses a local hub so that devices on a local network can still be operated. It is mainly the remote control and the automations that no longer work. Also, links with assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant no longer work. Besides IoT lamps and switches, Insteon also made thermostats and sensors. The company has been around since 2005 and was one of the first major iot companies to offer a local service.