Insteon Home Control System
By Brad Pransky, Editor June 22,2016Insteon® advertises itself as "the most affordable, complete connected home solution". In an age where the Internet of things is pervasive and invading our lives and our homes, we decided to put that slogan to a test.
The principles behind the operation of the Insteon system are long tested and proven. What we wanted to see was if it really did the job in a simple, effective and economical fashion.
So what do you want to be when you grow up?
If you've been around technology long enough to remember the early transistor radios, the emergence of FM, UHF TV stations and the Bowmar brain, then most assuredly you remember places like RadioShack selling the X10 controllers that were so convenient to turn lights and devices on and off. X10 is still alive and well (https://www.x10.com/) but it always had certain limitations because of its dependence on the internal wiring structure of your home.
Insteon's smart home devices are sort of what X10 would look like when it grew up. It combines the use of your home's wiring system but augments that by setting up a Wi-Fi mesh network among its devices. This is what makes up Insteon's patented dual band technology. All of our testing demonstrated a 100% device activation success rate.