California-based IoT company Insteon suddenly shut down this month leaving its smart home users without connectivity.

It later emailed customers saying it was dissolving the business and trying to sell its assets to pay off creditors.

A statement on the company’s web site said it found itself in financial difficulty and that its problems were increased due to the pandemic. As a result, it had been trying to find a company that would take it over and invest in its products and technology.

“The process resulted in several interested parties and a sale was expected to be realised in the March timeframe,” said the statement. “Unfortunately, that sale did not materialise. Consequently, the company was assigned to a financial services firm in March to optimise the assets of the company.”

The statement said it was still looking for a buyer and apologised to its customers and employees. However, nearly all Insteon employees seem to have removed Insteon from their LinkedIn profiles; some even removed it from their bios.

Insteon is a proprietary home automation system launched in 2005 by Smartlabs. It enabled light switches, lights, thermostats, leak sensors, remote controls, motion sensors and other electrically powered devices to interoperate through power lines, RF communications or both. It uses a dual-mesh networking topology in which all devices are peers and each device independently transmits, receives, confirms and repeats messages.

However, the abrupt shutdown on Insteon servers means all these devices lost their ability to connect. The company also closed down its user forums and replaced all information on its web site with the statement mentioned earlier.