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

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Post from The Verge on August 12, 2025

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