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Yes or no when it comes to home automation?

Do people want to automate their homes and which functionality of home control they would like the most? These are the two question for which we found answers among the JCI Danube Conference participants , where we have been invited to talk about VIKI in a smart city context.

The  results are as we expected, 65.38% of those present take into account the installation of a home automation system in the near future . Surprisingly 7 out of 10 women said yes,  they would like to live in automated home environement.

Da sau Nu pentru automatizarea locuintei

As for functionalities, the top choise was the heating control,  motivated by the benefits it brings in terms of comfort, but also by the money saving  benefits that we talked about in a previous article.

Functionalitati de automatizare a locuintei

Door lock controlled from the mobile phone and Lighting Control follow in respondents’ preferences. Heating, Lighting, Home Acces and Multimedia  are part of the first version of VIKI, which wil be released at the begining of 2016.

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The smart heating control

viki scenariu temperatura

One of the most appreciated features of an automation system is certainly the possibility of a better management of the house heating.

Finding the house always at the prefered temperature, controling the heating from your smartphone even when you’re not home, smart zoning, auto standby mode when you leave the house and forget to stop temperature are just some of the “skills” that VIKI has.

I’m coming home

Neither too warm nor too cold, when you arrive home the house environment must be at a optimal temperature. This was our starting point when we design the “I’m coming home” feature with which  you  can announce the house  that you’re on the way home directly from your phone. VIKI will start to adjust the temperature automatically, so when you arrive home it will be just how you expected.

Smart Zoning

Once you get home you have the possibility to program different temperatures for each room and you can do that either from your phone, your tablet or the smart thermostat mounted directly on each radiator. Furthermore, VIKI will remember your preferences and it will replicate them without you being always concerned about  starting and stopping the heat.

Smart Living

Intelligent control also means and effective management of the resources. There are 3 features linked to VIKI’s heating intelligent control, which will guarantee a lower heat consumption by up to 30%.

Standby Mode: when in a room is not recorded activity for more than 2 hours,  VIKI turns off the heat and will maintain it around 18-20 degrees. In other rooms where you make your presence felt it will maintain it at the desired value.Scenariu-VIKI-4_1

Away Mode: there no need to ask yourself if you switched off or not the heat, when you left for  office in the morning. Once VIKI has registered that everyone left the home, will switch to Away mode, which means that  for 8 or 10 hours while nobody’s home it will keep the temperature at  an average  of 15-18 degrees.

Vacation mode: if between 48 to72 hours the system does not record  any activity in the house, it will automatically switch to holiday mode  maintain the required temperature for plant survival,  assuming you went on vacation and forgot to announce it.

VIKI’s temperatures and scheduling  scenarios can be adjusted according to your preferences, and you can change yourself, without needing the intervention of a specialist.

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The easier, the better

viki clima incalzire

We all agree that the house automation systems can bring to our homes benefits regarding our comfort and security, but there are few aspects that one has to question before acquiring such a product. We might call them problems of the home automation industry, but here’s VIKI and it might be the solution.

1. Most home automation systems are designed for houses under construction.

That is not the case for VIKI, which works  both on wired and wireless technology. The  system can be  installed without major changes in any building, be it an already furnished apartment or a house under construction.

2. Changing  the default user’s settings and preferences, always require resorting to the specialists who installed the automation system.

Most automation solutions are  being configured when installed with the preferences in terms of lighting, climate or irrigation  that the users have at the moment. But what if this preferences change over time? Normally one has  to appeal to those who have installed the solution, wait for  their intervention and most likely pay an extra cost for this service.

VIKI is a proactive solution that adapts to the behavior of the house inhabitants and change with it. All you have to do is give it a few days to memorize the settings you do manually,  and after that it will automatically learn what should do. If  you prefer after a while  a different temperature, or diverse music in different rooms, you can set it by yourself and the solution will learn it.

3. Too many different automation applications or too many remote controls.

Even if you already own  certain automation systems for automating gates, blinds, or even mobile applications that control heating and lighting, the goal of an intelligent and effective home control is a unique application from which you can control your entire house.

VIKI aims to be the brain of your home, offering not only the intelligent control functions, but due to the adaptative algorithms it generates savings on electricity and heat and the comfort and pleasure to stay at home, all in one single application.

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Meet the team

viki echipa

Two companies, ten people, different backgrounds and interests, but one common goal: to offer a unique experience in what concernes the automation of the intelligent homes.

VIKI means more than a project for us, VIKI has become a part of our team and we hope it will become a  “virtual member” of every familly who will receive it in their homes.

QSound Soft and Napoca Software are both IT companies located in Cluj-Napoca, operating on the Romanian and international market for over ten years.echipa VIKI

Napoca Software has developed and implemented projects for romanian customers such as Commercial Manager, a radio advertising automation application, or Columna, a inventory managing application for retail stores. The company founded in 2003 is also developing complex projects with clients from other countries.

QSound Soft  in known for the most used radio automation and broadcasting software in Romania, having more than 250 radio stations as clients. Apart from the radio software modules,  another field of activity is dedicated to in-store music systems for HoReCa and Retail operators, and InfoTrafic, our own radio station.

Dan Chiuzbăian, CEO QSound Soft and Project Manager for VIKI is the man behind the idea. Dan & Rhynno“In the last years the development of IoT (Internet of Things) exploded, many equipment manufacturers and interconnecting technologies reaching the market. The attention of market players focused on developing products but also interconnecting them. Our project tries to bring more value to this growing market: artificial intelligence that imitates  the human behavior. Since the beginning of the project (2012), the team developed algorithms that analyze the context in which the user is, evaluate possible actions and determine the known preferences of the human factor, then acting to satisfy them. This is the major innovation of the project and the way in which VIKI is different from other home automation solutions. “

Florin Roman is theTechnical Manager and the man responsible with the implementation and coordination of the team.Florin

“VIKI means a daily challenge both for me and for the team. We joined with confidence into this project, driven by the idea that in this field you can always discover something new, something that no one has  thought yet. “

Our motto “None of us is as smart as all of us.” and a lot of  work.

The VIKI team 🙂

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More than just an intelligent home. A lifestyle

viki a1

VIKI, the house of the future lives in  Cluj and VIKI, the smart house butler  are two of VIKI’S  media appearances of this week.

VIKI confirms each passing day  that yes it can be done. We started with an idea that seamed taken from a science fiction film but with the clear purpose of bringing the future at home as a user-friendly smart home  solution. Easy to operate, intuitive and with a great “sense of observation” given the multitude of sensors installed in each room, VIKI gives  the necessary intelligence to the objects connected to imitate the human behavior. It would be a unique product that not only controls the equipment in the house through mobile phone or tablet, but able to learn and reproduce human behavior in what concern the use of electronic devices.

Far for being only a technical solution which opens and close doors with a multitude of strange looking devices all around the house , VIKI should be looked at as a way of living. We wish  that the entire family would “adopt” VIKI and feel confortable using it,  be it wife,  children and even pets for which we have developed a special feature.

More now you can take your preferences stored by VIKI  at home, at the office or in vacation. The preferred settings for temperature, lights and music scenarios, will be automatically transferred to the new location, be it a hotel or a vacation home with the Mnemoniq function. The condition is to have installed a VIKI system even there.

And because pictures say more than a thousand words, we present you the interview we  gave to Antena 1 news (romanian only):VIKI, majordomul virtual

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If we talk about intelligent confort, we talk about VIKI

viki control multimedia

Although more and more intelligent devices make their appearance in our homes in order to improve our lifestyle, there is always a risk that the whole process of automating our homes, becomes to demanding for the user. The reason? Too many devices and apps  lacking a common language that can create a really smart and interconnected environment.

rsz_multiThis is the problem for which VIKI is the solution. An intelligent system able to integrate different automation systems and various technologies into a single solution with multiple automation functionalities, all in a single interface.

Relying on comfort and simplicity, VIKI will integrate and automate all smart electronic devices in the house giving users precise control over the home’s environment. Convenience, comfort and security are essential things for anyone and  VIKI’s main objectives.

Lighting, climate, security and multimedia, are all functionalities that can be controlled from your mobile phone, whether you’re home, office or maybe thousands of kilometers away. More than that, VIKI is not only a system that is configured when it is installed and after that the same settings are applied, VIKI is a system that will learn and adapt all the time. If your habits and configuration changes so does the smart house.

Beyond the technical aspects of the solution, the single most important benefit is the safety that comes from  the full control you have on your house and “peace of mind ” it brings.

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Home is where VIKI is!

One thing is certain, home automation will change the way we live forever. Although not yet widely spread,  with the development of Internet of Things and the rising number of smart home electronic devices that we buy,  the smart home solutions will become a necessity.

Home automation began with a programmable coffee machine , with devices that can be controlled by specific applications and evolved into complex solutions, such as VIKI  which connects multiple devices from different manufacturers and can run more efficiently without human interaction.

The question you most likely ask yourself at this point is how complicated it will be to install and interact with such a solution?

Installing a smart home solutions

While it may seem a complex process, the installation can be done by a qualified person in less than a day without the need for major changes or adjustments in your home. The smart home that you desire can be an apartment, a house under construction, a house under renovation or fully furnished.  Your only concern is to decide what  additional functionalities  would you like, beside automatic lights, climate, multimedia and security.

The functioning of a smart home solutions equipped with artificial intelligence

Once you close the door behind the VIKI specialist, you will have a virtual butler, a client service phone number  and the user guide. What should you do next?

You might get closer to the control panel, put VIKI on Dinner Mode in the living room, then manualy adjust the light from the dimmer, turn off the TV from the remote control, turn on the music from another remote.

Nothing special untill here, but extremely important for the learning function of the system. The next day VIKI will know that around 20:30, you are getting ready to have dinner in the living room. It will  diminish the intensity of lights at the point that you have set it the previous day, or if  we are talking about  several days,  it will be at the intensity most used in the majority of days. After that  it might asks you  with a message on your phone or tablet if it is ok to turn off the TV and play the ambient music, as you did it the day before.

The ability of memorizing and saving the user actions and habits and later implement them by itself, this is what makes VIKI a truly intelligent solution. Furthermore,  the fact that a single solution will be able to control almost all electronic devices which communicate throught internet  without the need of multiple remotes or other applications it is what makes it very useful.

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