Posted on

Home Automation Trends for 2016

With the beginning of the year and the information that arrived to us from the latest CES (Consumer Technology Association) where large electronics manufacturers presented their latest products,  we decided to make a list of what 2016 looks for the home automation environment.

1. From Smart Home to Intelligent Home

A smart device is more or less a gadget that can be automated and controlled via the Internet from a phone, tablet or application. Instead, a intelligently device comes  with a series of algorithms which gives it a kind of its own intelligence, and it’s capable of undertaking a series of actions according with our previous behavior. In the scenario where a user listens to music in a given weekday, in a certain time frame and in a particular room of the house, VIKI will know to reproduce this behavior, even without user’s  intervention, at exactly the right moment and the favourit playlist.

2. Live Smart. Save Energy

Starting with  thermostats that automate the control of  the temperature, applications that let you do this remotely, we reach to a more complex system that monitors consumption and reminds you when you should stop and start the heat.  VIKI not only that  identifies when someone is at home and maintains a certain temperature in the rooms, but knows when you’re about to get home and is waiting for you with a warm and welcoming home.

Moreover when you go on vacation and forget to announce it,  it stops automatically the heat and keeps it at a level favorable for the plants.

3.  Home Safe Home

Security is a major concern for any family and must be an important feature for every home automation solution. Starting with various security systems that operate individually and are designed more to supervise,  we get back to VIKI who has the role to tell you when you forget your windows or doors open or to facilitate the access to the house only with your mobile phone.

Therefore,  although the home automation market is growing and more and more smart devices appear every day, for the users,  the only thing that remains important is to make their lives easier giving them comfort and security.

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

VIDEO: How to control your TV using the smartphone or the tablet

viki control multimedia

Developed with the purpose of making our time in front of the TV more enjoyable, remote controls have become absolutely essential, just too many and too often lost.

You can’t find your remote? Surely your phone or tablet are always at your fingertips where you have VIKI’s multimedia control feature  from which you can control your TV, the audio system, and the home theatre.

Possibility of on / off directly from your phone or tablet tv,  all available channels list and with the possibility to change them with a simple click. See the video below:

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

From a connected home to a smart home

viki learning

What does a smart home really mean? Can we name a ”smart” home any home with a few gadgets, like thermostats, locks and different sensors connected to a router? Is it enough to buy different online automation equipment that allows temperature control or notify us when we forget the lights on? In any of the above situations we are talking about a connected house, but not a smart house, because intelligence implies interoperability between all these devices, and not a fragmentation on criteria regarding the communication of these devices.
Moreover, it is not enough for these devices to communicate with each other, this communication must also be smart and this is what VIKI is trying to do, to create a common language while integrating various electronic devices and teaching them how to operate under its ”wand”.
A ”smart” home means a complete system for analyzing human behavior, lifestyle and events in the area, thus generating scenarios that mimic our behavior in interaction with the home, but which can also give us suggestions for improving our lifestyle. such as a shopping list, a weather warning or even dinner recipes based on the nutrition plan.
A question that arises here is related to privacy. If we are being watched 24/7 and all of our behavioral information gets stored somewhere in the cloud, how comfortable will we feel about it?
In our vision, the VIKI smart home is like a personal assistant, friendly, loyal and keeping your secrets “safe”, because it stores all the information about you in a cloud of the house, which can only be accessed by the users designated by you. Like a personal assistant, VIKI will have to be taught how to behave and what its tasks are, which is easy to do in the first weeks after installation. You just need a little consistency in learning the system, and in a few weeks you will no longer need your tablet or phone to manage things.
Therefore, a smart home like VIKI means more than just a set of smart objects, it means orchestrating them so that we can save energy, optimize costs and increase comfort.

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

VIDEO: How to control your home acces with VIKI

One of the main facilities of a home automation solution is the security of the home, and when it comes to safety one thing we must pay special attention is the house acces.

Lost or misplaced keys, the front door forgotten opened  or facilitating access to the house for someone when you’re not nearby are  situations that we all have been into, and for which VIKI is the solution.

With the Access Control feature you can open or close the door  with a simple click on your iOS or Android smartphone and also you can view the status of the doors and windows even from hundreds of kilometers away.

How easy is to operate it you can see in the footage below where we used for demonstration a YDM 3168 (Yale) lock from ASSA ABLOY. (romanian language only)

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

MnemoniQ: makes you feel at home, no matter where you go

If until now we have talked about the ways in which VIKI can improve our lifestyle and the  time we spend at home, you should know that we are implementing a solution even for those who travel a lot.  The goal: to feel like home anywhere; The name: MnemoniQ.

Be it a hotel or vacation home where you often go with your family, now it’s very easy to take your home automation preferences with you. If at home you’re accustomed to a certain temperature, light settings or a relaxing audio ambience  while dinning, using MnemoniQ you can have the same facilities wherever you go.mnemoniq

With this feature, the preferences that VIKI had learned and applied at home can be replicated by means of the smartphone to another location, where it will operate identically. The only condition is to have a VIKI system installed in that location too.

“HOME is where VIKI is!“ is not just a status, but rather a purpose  for VIKI – to give you the best experience at home or wherever you might go.

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

Home Automation: from Vitamine to Painkiller

viki iot large

In less than 10 years a typical family house will contain somewhere around 200 smart objects, from the refrigerator to the washing machine,  all devices with a certain  level of “intelligence” and “communication skills”.

The solution for the control of all of the device’s is not a specific application for each device but rather one solution that controls everything and which anticipates your action and your preferences based on your previous behavior – a Connected Home

From here arises the need for home automation, a need that did not exist until now and that is why it was difficult for the industry to develop. Although the home automation solutions have emerged more than 20 years, there is still a small percentage of the population using them.

But with the significant growth of electronics and the gadgets we buy, intelligent home control is a must, as confirmed by the studies below:

iot“How the next evolution of the Internet is changing everything” the Cisco report which highlights the fact that by 2020 there will be about 7 internet connected devices per capita.

And according to Strategy Analytics, 30% of  Western Europe homes will hold  by 2019 a certain degree of  inteligence. What the people who look for an automation solution consider as essential? Firstly the  safty of their homes  and the energy efficiecy.

The Smart Home report results performed on a sample of 1,600 people in the US and Canada confirms this:

  • for 90% of respondents security and personal safety and that of the family is the main reason for which they would purchase such a system.
  • 70% are led by lower energy costs through  smart monitoring and control.
  • and for 48% the motivation comes from the usefulness given bz automation itself

As one of the first developers of smart homes in Romania, we are delighted by the fact that we managed to raise attention and to make people want to benefit from a smart home solution.

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

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.

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

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

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

Imagine a world in which…

viki monitorizare casa

Imagine a world in which your home is a oasis of relaxation after a busy day.  It’s not about a house on the beach, but exactly your home, where you can spend the whole year in the most pleasant ways if you choose to integrate a intelligent home automation system.

Why should you take into consideration a smart home system?

You only need to know that according to MarketWatch, until 2020, there will be 29.5 million devices from refrigerators to cars connected by the Internet of Things, as opposed to 10.3 million in 2014 . And if you are a new technologies passionate using various gadgets and  spending 1/3 of your every day time on the Internet,  a smart home solution it will be just what you are missing.

How can a smart home help you?

We choose to emphasize just three main reasons:

  • The system “learns” from user behavior and choices which are made in the period after the installation. After that VIKI will work according to the user preferences expressed before.
  • Connectivity, accessibility and  permanent monitoring: You can 24/7 monitor whatever is happening at home, whether it  pets being left alone or plants that need to be watered while in vacation.viki pic
  • Smart appliances: just imagine that you dont’t have to wake up 10 minutes earlier anymore to make the coffee, because at the moment when you step out the bed, VIKI has already “communicate” the task to the coffee maschine, and the TV in the living room is turn on on the news channel.

All this will help you save time, energy and enjoy the time you spent at home.

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary
Posted on

VIKI, Internet of Things and Downton Abbey

viki casa downton abbey

Probably most of you have seen at least one episode of the already famous British series Downton Abbey, which focuses on the Crawley’s and their life at the castle in the late 1930s. Just as likely you’ve been impressed by the multitude of servants and valets who provide services and maintain order of the daily tasks. But if Downton Abbey would be a smart home, fully automated, how do you think this would change the screenplay?

Certainly we all have favorite characters, but we will have to give up to some of them, because tasks such as opening doors, turning on lights and heat or playing ambiental music will be successfully met by this new intelligent valet equipped with learning capacities. No, we will not give up, Carson, the main butler because VIKI needs the right instructions in order to learn to operate  according to the house rules. Carson will certainly be delighted by the decrease in electricity bill and with the fact that VIKI warns him if any window of door remains open over night.Automated Downton Abbey

The question here is whether the smart home system will handle such a large number of interconnected objects and persons who are in constant motion, and  even pets?   The answer is yes, up to 230 equipments and an unlimited number of users.

Certainly the castle and the story would not have the same charm, as no house automated in this way was  possible in the 1930s. However now that we no longer have butlers and valets, there is Internet of Things concept (IoT) which involves the interconnection of all smart devices and smart communication between them.

Basically starting with your phone, TV, lights, kitchen appliances and in the not too distant future your car will all speak the same language.

If you don’t have  already an automated home, certainly in 10 or 20 years, this will be a must, and VIKI an option to take it into account starting from now.

Ţi-a plăcut acest articol?
 
Summary