# $#@#$% Insteon went out of business



## Katodude (Apr 22, 2021)

So, my 30 or so light switches no longer have Alexa access anymore, and I cannot access the app either. So my smart home is a little less smart right now.

I tried to install Homebridge since they have an integration but that does not seem to be working.

Might try Home Assistant next.

Or if I get really mad just go ahead an replace all the switches.

Are the Lutron Caseta now considered the best? It seems like they will work with both Alexa and Siri of which I use both extensively.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

I use home assistant and would recommend it. If you have a pi 4 around, it would be easy to migrate.

https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2022/04/19/for-insteon-users/


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## avionics12 (Jul 2, 2018)

> Are the Lutron Caseta now considered the best? It seems like they will work with both Alexa and Siri of which I use both extensively.


I cannot say that Lutron are the best light switches; I do not have experience with other switches. I will say that I have used Lutron for many years and have had zero problems. I use them with HomeKit, Siri, and Alexa according to where I am or want to do. They are expensive, however, not having any problems over these years is worth that kind of peace of mind and no troubleshooting...thats great ROI in my book.


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## Katodude (Apr 22, 2021)

I tried setting up Homebridge but that did not work. It shows up in HomeKit but says not supported.

Will try to find a Pi 4. I do have a spare 3 lying around that I might try in the meantime. I need to order an enhanced SD card for it.

And if all that fails going to go to Lutron, hopefully, I dont have to.


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## avionics12 (Jul 2, 2018)

You may want to check out Hoobs

They have a comment regarding Insteon devices.


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## Katodude (Apr 22, 2021)

I actually did load the HOOBS version of Homebridge and it did not work for me. Everything loaded up just fine and I can see the accessory in the Home app, but it does not work. It says not supported in the accessory icon.


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## dicko1 (Oct 25, 2019)

Homeseer can do Insteon and is seeing an uptick in Insteon postings on their forums.

Http://www.forums.homeseer.com.


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## MasterMech (Sep 24, 2017)

Every smart home user's nightmare.


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## Phids (Sep 24, 2020)

MasterMech said:


> Every smart home user's nightmare.


I'm surprised this kind of issue isn't a bigger issue in people's minds considering the short life span of many tech companies, and the fact that home fixtures are often intended to be used for decades without replacement.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

If you go open source locally host like home assistant, then this is not a problem.


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## MasterMech (Sep 24, 2017)

g-man said:


> If you go open source locally host like home assistant, then this is not a problem.


(Cue Paul Hibbert's Home Assistant Bit.... :lol

If you have the technical ability, there is never really a problem. I could run 24VDC power and networked remote I/O all over my home and use standard industrial automation Legos with a standard PLC platform to accomplish waaaaay more than my current handful of devices are doing with HomeKit. And quite possibly, even more powerful the HA. But it still wouldn't appeal to the vast majority, as very few people would have the ability to maintain or expand the system without paying through the nose for a professional to do it.

It doesn't have to be open source either. All of my HomeKit devices work just fine in the absence of a manufacturer's app/cloud. I suppose if Apple were to scuttle HomeKit, I might be in trouble, but the only device I have that's HK exclusive (and happens to be cloud-dependent) is my Logitech doorbell. I decided I was ok with that risk as we just don't have many great doorbell options in HK without 3rd party integrations like HomeBridge or HOOBS.


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## Amoo316 (Jul 8, 2021)

MasterMech said:


> (Cue Paul Hibbert's Home Assistant Bit.... :lol
> 
> If you have the technical ability, there is never really a problem. I could run 24VDC power and networked remote I/O all over my home and use standard industrial automation Legos with a standard PLC platform to accomplish waaaaay more than my current handful of devices are doing with HomeKit. And quite possibly, even more powerful the HA. But it still wouldn't appeal to the vast majority, as very few people would have the ability to maintain or expand the system without paying through the nose for a professional to do it.
> 
> It doesn't have to be open source either. All of my HomeKit devices work just fine in the absence of a manufacturer's app/cloud. I suppose if Apple were to scuttle HomeKit, I might be in trouble, but the only device I have that's HK exclusive (and happens to be cloud-dependent) is my Logitech doorbell. I decided I was ok with that risk as we just don't have many great doorbell options in HK without 3rd party integrations like HomeBridge or HOOBS.


Bad, Grease Monkey, no wire touching for you, don't need you letting the smoke out of my stuff.... :lol:


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## MasterMech (Sep 24, 2017)

Amoo316 said:


> MasterMech said:
> 
> 
> > (Cue Paul Hibbert's Home Assistant Bit.... :lol
> ...


Ironically, in my line of work, grease is pretty rare! (And risky!) 😆 I may have started turning wrenches, but more often than not, I'm grabbing the laptop and a Fluke something or other to get it done.


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## Katodude (Apr 22, 2021)

Update, I got HOOBS to work. Its a bit of a pain since you have to manually add every switch and it turns out I have about 30 of them. But it is working.

I can now control my lights with Siri and HomeKit which is kind of nice. My Alexa integration is not working yet, but will probably try to set that up this weekend. The scenes that were very important now work. All in all disaster averted.

I still have a single point of failure with the hub, if that goes then its game over since I cannot replace it.

At least this buys me the time to decide what to eventually replace them all with. Right now it looks like the two contenders are Leviton and Lutron with me leaning in towards Lutron. Kasa might be a possibility but I dont like the idea of having every light switch take up an IP address.


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## MasterMech (Sep 24, 2017)

Katodude said:


> Update, I got HOOBS to work. Its a bit of a pain since you have to manually add every switch and it turns out I have about 30 of them. But it is working.
> 
> I can now control my lights with Siri and HomeKit which is kind of nice. My Alexa integration is not working yet, but will probably try to set that up this weekend. The scenes that were very important now work. All in all disaster averted.
> 
> ...


I'd heavily lean towards Lutron as well. Moving to either a proprietary connectivity protocol like ClearConnect, Zigbee, or Thread alleviates the IP issue. I'm fine with assigning an IP to every device, I'd be even more "fine" with it if they were all Thread Devices managing their IP's on their own mesh network without my intervention and the need to open up my subnet mask for the hoarde of IoT devices on the network. 

I'd be interested to hear how/if some of the more network savvy users are doing dozens/hundreds of IoT devices on residential WiFi equipment. Is it a no-go unless upgrading to enterprise-grade equipment?


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## dicko1 (Oct 25, 2019)

I have about 50 wifi smart devices, mostly shelly1's and Tasmota smart plugs on a 3 AP mesh wifi network. Absolutely no problems with them. Their network load is pretty insignificant.

I had a z-wave network before I switched to wifi and I'd never go back. Z wave is such a pain to keep running. Things would be working great and then boom! Everything slows to a crawl as the z wave devices decide to re-organize themselves into a configuration that leaves half of them unreachable. Trying to troubleshoot the zwave mesh was next to impossible. Of course this was when z wave first came out and I guess all my devices were Gen1 or gen2 so they werent very sophisticated. I dont know if the newer devices are easier to use but I'll never go back to z-wave. Wifi just plain works. But you do need good signal strength throughout the house. A weak wifi signal wont hack it. Some of these modules have very poor receivers.

All the units are assigned fixed IPs from the DHCP server. Its not a big deal to manage.

I'd be leery of using Kasa. I had a few kasa modules and while they worked well they have what I consider to be a big problem. I didnt want any of my IoT devices talking to the internet so I had my pihole block DNS queries to any out of network address. Tasmota handles this gracefully but Kasa goes into DNS storm mode when disconnected from its mothership. The 5 modules I had were generating 10s of thousands of daily DNS requests when blocked. When allowed to connect, they settled down to just a few hundred per day. THey worked just fine but they generated all that DNS traffic when blocked. That was it for Kasa. I no longer use them.


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## MasterMech (Sep 24, 2017)

****o1 said:


> I have about 50 wifi smart devices, mostly shelly1's and Tasmota smart plugs on a 3 AP mesh wifi network. Absolutely no problems with them. Their network load is pretty insignificant.
> 
> I had a z-wave network before I switched to wifi and I'd never go back. Z wave is such a pain to keep running. Things would be working great and then boom! Everything slows to a crawl as the z wave devices decide to re-organize themselves into a configuration that leaves half of them unreachable. Trying to troubleshoot the zwave mesh was next to impossible. Of course this was when z wave first came out and I guess all my devices were Gen1 or gen2 so they werent very sophisticated. I dont know if the newer devices are easier to use but I'll never go back to z-wave. Wifi just plain works. But you do need good signal strength throughout the house. A weak wifi signal wont hack it. Some of these modules have very poor receivers.
> 
> ...


Notice I left Z-Wave out of my options for Wi-Fi alternatives. :lol:  I have a few Thread devices and they have been solid (and hands-off) so far. But I've only got a handful (5 devices, 6 Homepod Mini's) of them so far. I'll probably add an Eve Aqua here in the near future.

Your point on reserving and assigning IP's to IoT devices is exactly one of those things I've been meaning to do for awhile now.


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