Eficienta Energetica | Blogul VIKI

Friday November 20th, 2015March 12, 2019

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.

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.

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Thursday October 29th, 2015March 12, 2019

Home Automation: from Vitamine to Painkiller

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:

“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.

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Tuesday October 20th, 2015March 12, 2019

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.

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.

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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Tuesday October 6th, 2015March 12, 2019

The smart heating control

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.

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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Tuesday July 21st, 2015March 12, 2019

More than just an intelligent home. A lifestyle

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):

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Thursday June 11th, 2015March 12, 2019

Imagine a world in which…

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.
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.

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Friday May 22nd, 2015March 12, 2019

VIKI, Internet of Things and 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.

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.

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Tuesday April 21st, 2015March 12, 2019

Home sweet automated home!

What does your dream house look like? Certainly at least once you’ve imagined how big it should be, the design that you want to adopt, and how will you customize your personal corner. But have you thought about home automation?

Safety, comfort and more time for your little pleasures are just three of the reasons why you should choose a home automation solution. Energy efficiency and automation of all the intelligent electronic devices directly from the control panel support those mentioned above and the picture is complete after we add the artificial intelligence.

Home is where you should feel most safe, so with permanent video monitoring, motion sensors and VIKI which warns you when you forget any window or door opened, this is possible. And if we talk about vacations, your home is on “good hands”. The flowers will get light and water on time, and the air conditioning will not work more than it should, all under the supervision of VIKI.

About the confort such a solution offers you, would be much to say, but perhaps the most important is that after a long day when you return home, the room temperature is right, the blinds are drawn, the music is playing softly and the lights are dimmed. You just need to add a cup of hot tea or a glass of wine and relax.

As important as those mentioned above, energy efficiency is another solid reason for you to choose an automation system, with no lights or other multimedia devices forgotten on and effective communication between all connected devices even when not at home.

Whether it’s about an apartment or a house do not forget to include in your plans a system for smart homes, because the future is now!

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Thursday April 9th, 2015March 12, 2019

Apparently, appearances do matter!

White or Dark? City or Nature? If you have no idea what we are talking about, let us introduce you little by little into VIKI’s world.

12:38 PM, a sunny day with plenty of light flooding the house. It’s lunch time, and some music will go just fine. VIKI displays a screen in light tones. Some time later, with the night falling over the city, the office lights went on, sign that is time to hit send for that last email, and to take a relaxing break before dinner, while watching the news. But something is changed in VIKI’s display mode! The screen is darker, which makes it easy to be read. That’s because VIKI knows that evening came and it’s time to change the theme from Light to Dark. Nice job VIKI!

But maybe outside it’s a gloomy day, and all we want is to leave behind all the tasks of the day, and to go somewhere into the nature. How not always possible, we can at least select a Skin, according to our mood. Nature, it is!

As you can see from these shown above, VIKI display mode can be customized according to your preferences, but VIKI also knows and identify whether it’s day or night, without any additional command adopting thus the most appropriate display theme.

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