alt Hacker NewsInsteon remains incredibly solid. The new company is super slow with new product because it's tiny, but the hardware remains incredibly good long-term. It doesn't clutter common wireless bands and by nature of being stupid, Insteon devices cannot really be hacked.
My rules for home automation are largely the same as the article, first and foremost the existing physical UX of switches and stuff should always work, and ideally automations should be nearly invisible: They should subtly be convenient and monitoring should be useful, but nobody should be confronted with a weird change of lifestyle because a house has automation. And nobody should ever need an app to use their house.
They can also develop 1 to 1 relationships before a controller is even introduced. If I turn on my kitchen lights, the living room turns on to 50% without any controller, they talk amongst themselves over PowerLine and RF. Great 20 year old tech that's still relevant IMO.