Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
Insteon's last blog post was published at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic
(Photo: Insteon)
Home automation company Insteon has quietly shut down its servers without warning and also, it seems, the entire company. The abrupt service termination left users with broken smart home setups and plenty of questions.
As Ars Technica reports, despite Insteon's status page claiming "All Services Online," the company's forums are down and no one appears to be responding on social media. A number of executives at Insteon and parent company Smartlabs have scrubbed the home automation firm from their LinkedIn accounts, according to IoT reporter Stacey Higginbotham,.
Members of the Universal Devices forum confirmed the shut down, and warned users not to factory reset their hub. Instead it's suggested alternative compatible platforms like Home Assistant, Policy, and Zwave be considered. The company's spontaneous combustion has driven users to Reddit, where folks are mourning their loss while trying to come up with alternatives for their existing—and now mostly useless—devices.
Since its founding in 2005, Insteon launched more than 200 products, including LED bulbs, wall switches and keypads, sensors, thermostats, plug-in modules, and embedded devices, as well as central controllers for system management. In 2012, it introduced the first network-controlled LED light bulb, and in 2014 Microsoft even teamed up with the company for home automation.
The company's final blog post—which looks to have been published near the start of the pandemic (and is ironically titled "We're Keeping the Lights On")—promises lasting support for its smart home systems. Its last press release was published in early 2018, and the company's social media presence has been quiet since 2021. Neither Insteon nor Smartlabs immediately responded to PCMag's request for comment.
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