If you’re an Insteon user or enthusiast, you may be wondering what’s going on with SmartLabs and the Insteon product line. They’ve (seemingly) done little this year beyond some (seemingly) minor firmware updates, third-party integration work, and product revs. You might conclude they’re stalled, or even winding down, particularly after last year’s acquisition and changing of the guard.
That’s “the furthest from the truth,” contends Insteon VP of Integrator Sales, Steve Lee. In a live interview at CEDIA, Steve talked about the work that’s being done in the background and gave us some insight into what the future looks like for Insteon.
A Little Introspection
According to Lee, they’ve taken an intentional step back to examine their products and their place in the market. On the product side, they’re looking at performance, design, installation, and even features, particularly for their best sellers. They’re also working to streamline their core technology so it’s more compact and reusable in their products. This is key to scaling while also reducing costs.
No discussion of Insteon’s products would be complete without a nod to their best-in-class keypad controllers. At $80 (or about $140 fully customized), Insteon’s professionally customized keypads rival competitors’ offerings that sell at much higher price points. Asked whether they plan to bring these keypads to a broader audience by supporting them through their API, Lee said, “yes, that is happening.” Whether this will happen up front or later on down the line is unclear, but this is great news either way. We’ve repeatedly asserted that these controllers would be enormously powerful outside of the Insteon world. Imaging setting light color/temperature, adjusting shades, or closing the garage with third-party products via HomeKit or some other ecosystem. This is technically possible today, but it requires setting up much more complicated systems and routines.
From conversations over this past year, we’ve expected that they’re also rethinking the Insteon apps and hub. Lee confirmed as much in our interview, adding, “and yes, HomeKit will be coming back into that.” That’s good news for Insteon users who had all but given up on HomeKit after struggling with Insteon’s now deprecated Hub Pro. If they do this right, HomeKit compatibility will just be built into their next-generation hub—not a separate SKU.
So why the big rethink? Why not just keep selling Insteon products to the customer and fan base they’d already cultivated? “Amazon Echo changed everything,” says Lee. “That started our process of thinking ‘we need to be more inclusive.’ Insteon has a phenomenal technology in our light switches, keypads, outlets, and dimmers. We don’t need to own every segment of this market, but we need to work with every segment of the market.” That’s wise insight in an increasingly competitive space.
Waiting for the Next Big Thing(s)
So when is all this going to happen? We already see some signs that they’re cleaning up their product line. If you check out Insteon’s lineup at Insteon.com, you’ll notice they’re trimming some options. Switches and keypads are now available in a somewhat more limited selection of colors. Hopefully they won’t completely abandon their less common color options—like black and gray—but continue to offer these through customization kits. They may be far less popular than standard white and light almond, but these options keep Insteon’s products on a par with high-end custom switches and keypads. They also make the line more appealing for a wider range of home decors.
Even the latest few updates to the Insteon Hub have hinted at good things to come, including “an upcoming account migration service [to] make it easier to get your system back up and running in the event of a Hub failure” [quoted from firmware release notes]. Maybe they heard us!
Nobody’s talking about timing for the big wave of anticipated Insteon product announcements. Lee says, “we’ve got a timeline and a plan for that”—they’re just not sharing it yet. We’re expecting the reveal to be sometime in the first half of the coming year. And you can bet we’ll be ready to put it all through the paces.
