Insteon’s relatively new CEO Rob Lilleness reached out to registered Insteon product owners last week, ending a lengthy quiet period for the company. In his letter, Lilleness introduces himself, acknowledges some past problems, and discusses steps Insteon is taking to ensure its place in today’s market.
First, Lilleness unveils a new Insteon app that should be in beta sometime next month. He also outlines future interoperability plans and discusses other improvements in progress, including what sounds like a preview of next-gen Insteon.
While consumers received this news, we were [specifically, I was] at Insteon headquarters in Irvine, speaking with some of Insteon’s leadership team. In this post, we’ll share our review and analysis of how we got here, what this all means, and where we think it will lead.
The Rough Road Behind
The last news many recall from Insteon was almost exactly two years ago, in 2017. At that time, Richmond Capital Partners acquired parent company SmartLabs and Rob Lilleness took the helm. Since then, things have seemed very, very quiet.
Lilleness took over Insteon and Smarthome(.com) in arguably tumultuous times. The industry had changed substantially since SmartLabs first introduced Insteon technology and products. Once driven largely by high-end installations and hobbyists, Nest, Philips, Amazon, and others have now popularized the smart home market. Insteon was noticeably struggling to keep up, introducing incomplete solutions to support Nest, Apple Watch, Windows, Sonos, and more.
Insteon’s HomeKit-compatible Hub Pro resulted in the biggest black eye. As one of HomeKit’s first-movers, they were in over their heads. Apple’s infrastructure and protocols for working with HomeKit hardware manufacturers were immature. HomeKit itself was still evolving before launch, and Insteon was poised to launch support for more SKUs than any other HomeKit partner.
The launch was, not surprisingly, rough. HomeKit was buggy. Users reported hardware issues with the new hub, and Insteon’s limited, fire-walled device support confused and frustrated long-time customers. The hub definitely wasn’t living up to its “Pro” moniker or price tag.
Time To Focus
We can only imagine what life was like inside Insteon at the time. From the outside, it was obvious that this company lacked focus. The product line was massive, they were taking on (and often abandoning) too many integration projects, and customer and 3rd-party developer support was suffering. It must have been full-time firefighting.
Enter Lilleness, who came on board to right this ship. Over the past two years, Rob Lilleness has been working to restructure, re-organize, and even relocate the company to transform it into a leaner, tighter, more focused organization. Some team members departed, but others, who left either before or during all this chaos, have returned to be a part of rebuilding the brand.
None of this has necessarily been apparent to the outside world. But Insteon customers have noticed that product development has (seemingly) stagnated and inventory over at smarthome.com has dwindled. It’s easy to understand why customers were becoming…concerned.
This Is All by Design
We spoke with Insteon Vice President Steve Lee (one of Insteon’s returning past team members) at last year’s CEDIA Expo. As we reported then, Insteon’s new CEO purposefully applied the brakes when he arrived. This has allowed them to evaluate problems and strengths, formulate and implement a forward strategy, and focus the company and its offerings. The radio silence and diminishing product line has been intentional.
Lilleness has made some key organization and leadership changes, including charging Dan Cregg, the “father of Insteon,” with leading R&D as the Chief Research and Development Officer. Succeeding him as CTO, enterprise veteran Tom Carter has been brought in to stand up a scalable infrastructure that can support current and future plans. Carter tells us he’s structured the development organization itself similarly, allowing them to scale the team as needed.
The problem with frenetically adapting to support every new technology is you end up building a Borg ship that becomes difficult to scale and maintain—even if it can seemingly do everything. Insteon needed a platform to move into the next decade and beyond. Insteon’s new infrastructure will position it to better support its products, scale for third-party services and partnerships, and offer true intelligence to customers.
On the product side, things were also getting out of hand. The SKUs (and associated inventory) at smarthome.com had expanded well behind the technology products customers had come to expect. The Insteon line was similarly over-extended. While a past bragging right, the growing line and its expansive customization options were becoming a liability. Time for some hard decisions.
You may have noticed that some Insteon products have been “disappearing” from the line and from smarthome.com. Insteon is intentionally sliming down the line to its core smart lighting and electrical control products (notice the repeated use of that intentional language in Lilleness’ letter). This means discontinuing some commoditized products that, frankly, other vendors do much, much better—products like cameras, door lock controllers, and bulbs. They’ve also reduced customization options by pairing down to the most popular trim colors and eliminating color change kits and custom etched paddles.
Fans of these products may surely take exception to such changes, but this weight loss repositions Insteon in an increasingly competitive market with a strong and still significant lineup of products, including dimmers, switches, keypads, outlets, sensors, and much more—all core to the focus.
What To Expect Next
As discussed in the information Lilleness shared with customers, Insteon is working on a next-generation iOS and Android app. We’ve seen it in action. It’s a slick, performant, refreshing departure from the stale and buggy apps that have been limping along on those platforms. If you’re interested in trying the app and providing feedback, you can sign up for the beta. The team wants your feedback. Lilleness even discusses the technology they’re using to build the new app. The bottom line is that it’s significantly easier now for them to implement and iterate on improvements.
The new app works with Insteon’s existing (square) hub, f.k.a. the Hub 2, without requiring any new hardware. It does not support first-generation Insteon hubs, but the current apps will remain available in the meantime to bridge the gap to older hardware.
Insteon also reiterated its support for HomeKit—something Lee shared with us last September. This is likely to elicit eye rolls, particularly from those still licking their Hub Pro wounds. And we get it…but we’re optimistic. Integrating Insteon’s proven products into a HomeKit ecosystem would be compelling. Notably, devices like keypads could be used as HomeKit scene controllers. Insteon confirmed for us plans to expose individual keypad buttons for third-party integration, so this is a likely (and powerful) reality.
We don’t know yet how Insteon will implement HomeKit, but it will probably require a new piece of hardware. Insteon is talking about the possibility of an economical upgrade path, and we’re confident they learned from their premium-priced Pro miscalculation back in ’15. HomeKit integration cannot come at the expense of everything customers love about Insteon devices. It must allow customers to use their devices the way they’ve always been able to without requiring two separate hubs. As for the timing on this, we’d love to see it hit by the end of this year, but we know all too well from the many companies we’ve interviewed that many factors can impact the timeline of a HomeKit rollout.
Beyond That…
Lilliness also talked about big new things ahead. Expect to see a new generation of Insteon favorites sporting a refined industrial design and further-improved reliability—all compatible with your existing, installed Insteon devices.
Dan Cregg demonstrated some hardware updates for us, powering and dimming dozens of lights together, in sync, with no visible latency. Insteon’s dual-band technology is already quite robust. These improvements will allow the platform to scale even further for large installations.
And A Few More Things
If you’ve requested support from Insteon in the past few years, there’s a good chance you left the experience disappointed. It wasn’t unusual for days—even weeks—to pass before receiving a response to email queries, and call wait times were excessive. Responses were often unhelpful, and customers felt frustrated and abandoned. The company acknowledges some of these problems and has been actively working to improve this. So far, Insteon has dramatically reduced call wait times and reports higher customer satisfaction. We hope to see email/online support similarly improved.
Meanwhile, Insteon expects to continue improving the current hub platform. Isaac Sanz, Director of Product Management, spoke of plans to notify customers when their hub goes offline. Often caused by a loss of power or Internet service, this can warn of bigger root problems. And the new infrastructure they’ve been building will make it much faster to read device status—even on the existing hub.
That last point is particularly important for third-party developers, and Insteon understands this. These infrastructure improvements will also benefit third-party apps and services, (finally) enabling near-realtime status checks for all devices, including sensors. Beyond that, Insteon is even working on a module that third-party hardware manufacturers could use to offer built-in Insteon support.
Our Final Thoughts
You could argue that the absence of Insteon’s voice in the marketplace has done more harm than good, but we’re past that at this point. Under Lilleness’ lead, they’re talking today and working to ensure a greater level of transparency.
We’ve always believed in and recommended Insteon products for smart lighting control. The patented dual-band communication and control protocol is reliable, the industrial design is clean and unobtrusive, and the customization options were unmatched at similar price points.
Josh, Doug, and I all use Insteon devices. Despite the occasional hardware glitch (e.g., Insteon will fix your Hub 2 power supply), our experience has been overwhelmingly positive.
For years, SmartLabs ran Insteon fast and hard. The company churned out as much as it could at the expense of scalability and long-term sustainability. That may have worked for the market over a decade ago, but it’s a different world now. With the right leadership and focus, we believe Insteon will be poised to get back in the game in a big way. We like what we see so far, but they have a lot of catching up to do to recapture consumers’ confidence and mindshare.
Where do things stand now? Insteon released the new app to the general public in mid-September 2020. You can read more about it here at the DMZ.
