How to save a smart home company | The Vergecast

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy chats with Ken Fairbanks, a longtime customer of Insteon who ended up buying the smart lighting company when it went bankrupt. Ken shares the story of how the early smart lighting protocol, founded in the post-X10 era when home automation moved from wired to wireless, floundered, and how he and a band of users brought it back from the dead. He dishes what he’s learned about how to keep the lights on — from customer loyalty and the value of subscriptions, to what tariffs are doing to the industry and how some hardware companies are really just pyramid schemes. Then, in a special supersized Vergecast Hotline, Jen is joined by smart home expert Richard Gunther, co-host of The Smart Home Show, to tackle a bunch of your burning smart lighting questions. They answer everything from how to move your smart home, whether to choose smart switches or bulbs, to which Thread border router you should buy for your Matter setup. Plus, they run down how they have smart lighting working in their own homes.  00:00 Intro 00:24 Interview w/ Ken Fairbanks, CEO of Insteon 02:25 Ken's background in smart home techn 05:01 How Insteon's dual-band technology works 10:11 The fall of Insteon 14:22 Buying and reviving Insteon 41:04 Insteon's future 40:09 Smart home hotline w/ Richard Gunther 45:48 Richard's smart home setup 55:35 Jen's Smart home setup 1:17:04 More smart home questions 1:29:06 Matter integration and smart home controllers 1:35:50 Thread border routers 1:44:09 Wrap up and credits Subscribe: http://goo.gl/G5RXGs Like The Verge on Facebook: https://goo.gl/2P1aGc Follow on Twitter: https://goo.gl/XTWX61 Follow on Instagram: https://goo.gl/7ZeLvX Follow on TikTok: http://bit.ly/42VeCVU The Vergecast Podcast: https://pod.link/vergecast Decoder with Nilay Patel: https://link.chtbl.com/decoder More about our podcasts: https://www.theverge.com/podcasts Read More: http://www.theverge.com Community guidelines: http://bit.ly/2D0hlAv Wallpapers from The Verge