TinkerTry featured on BYOB Episode 125 "Home Automation"

April 20 2022 Urgent Update - Insteon ceased all sales and service operations abruptly in mid April of 2022, as covered by arstechnica here. Their abrupt closure left customers without access to their hubs to change any settings, myself included. While smarthome.com hasn't been taken offline yet, I would not recommend ordering anything. This shut-down has been confirmed by Insteon, see @danwroc's tweet linking to insteon.com/news2022. It's also not quite as bad operationally as it first seemed, with my own home's sunset/midnight/sunrise programs all still running fine, at least until the next Daylight Saving Time change on November 6 2022 here in the US. There also might be some paths forward to keep the installed hardware going, see details in My Hub is now offline thread on reddit, where rszostak writes:

Folks just to clear up a few things, the issue with the servers being done impacts the Insteon App which uses the Insteon servers to process the requests from the App. The timers are actually stored on the hub thus the reason those still work but you need the App to make changes so we are screwed to make changes as long as the Insteon servers are down, the Insteon App is effectively dead. However the good news is the hub can still be used with software that runs locally and does not rely on the cloud.

This is a shameful example of poor company behavior, and of the risk taken when investing in gear from any cloud-connected IoT device company. Such stories hurt the IoT industry as a whole. I'm glad that the prospects for some level of local Insteon device control may make the pain felt much less keen that it would be for other sad story endings such as Wink, and hopefully I can keep my dozens of Insteon devices away from landfills for at least a little while longer. All my local light wall toggle switches will continue to keep working, and a while back I moved from Insteon leak and smoke sensors over to the monitored service of (Amazon owned) Ring Home Security System.

Article as it originally appeared below.

Here's Mike Faucher's bold announcement.

BYOB 125 is out and all about Home Automation.  Special guests, Richard Gunther from the DMZ and Paul Braren from TinkerTry.com.  Great show and a pile of information.  You have to listen to this one.

Mike Faucher and I decided to try a little something different, talking about Home Automation on this special episode 125 of BYOB, with Richard Gunther of the Entertainment 2.0 podcast from The Digital Media Zone joining us. What an opportunity, with so many topics to cover, and such great hosts. A chance to share affordable options for the average smartphone-toting consumer that actually work, and work well. Mike led off the discussion, as we all reminisced about our mixed luck with many years of X10, followed by eventual success with Insteon products, from Smartlabs. We compared and contrasted different controllers including the new Insteon Hub and Mike's ISY-994i, with the potential for growth into more complex software options including Microsoft Xbox Kinect voice recognition with CastleOS. Richard touched upon new opportunities to start fresh with his planned new home, which could include ZigBee and Z-wave. We simply ran out of time to mention many of the devices we've used, but my own experiences with a variety of Insteon products are now described in the new Insteon Home Automation Superguide.

Don't forget to also check out and subscribe to the new Home: On podcast.

Home: On is a show focused on home control and automation topics for the enthusiast and do-it-yourself communities. Every other week, we run through industry news, take a closer look at interesting products, share project ideas, or present topics for information and education purposes. Host Richard Gunther is joined by a rotation of co-hosts and guests from the industry, including consumers, industry experts, and executives from companies offering smart products of their own.

Finally, this special event wouldn't have happened without Mike. So if you haven't already heard signed-up to hear BYOB, please consider subscribing, and visiting Mike's blog, The Doc's World. Finally, enjoy Mike's shownotes for BYOB 125 here.