voicepod Posted August 31, 2016 Share Posted August 31, 2016 All: As many of you know, we've been testing our VoicePod for Alexa app for many months and the feedback has been very positive on our sophisticated cloud-based app solution. Yet, you have probably noticed that there doesn't seem to be much movement on it. Unfortunately, as of today we have decided to close the voicepod business and all servers and services have been shut down. The venture was never profitable and all principals have moved on to more promising ventures. We also believe that Control4 is going to be releasing their own support for Alexa soon and this discouraged us from investing further. We are proud to have been pioneers in voice controlled home automation. But at this time, with the "big boys" including Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon all working on this technology, it's hard to know how and where to invest. R&D for cloud-based solutions can be very expensive and selling drivers for a few hundred dollars can be a difficult business model. We've had a good run with VoicePod but we're not investing further in it at this time. If any of you have serious interest in acquiring our code base and taking over the VoicePod legacy, we'd be happy to chat about that topic. The tabletop product will continue to function but the mobile products and Alexa beta programs are shut off and closed as of today. Thanks for understanding. Ted Rosenberger Co-founder HouseLogix and VoicePod, LLC ted@voicepod.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msgreenf Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 So was voice pod not purchased by snap when houselogix was? Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chesterwilson Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 Interesting that Alexa might be able to control our control4 system natively. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 Sorry to see it go Ted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alanchow Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 It's a shame. VoicePod is an excellent product. Nice to see you guys utilise your resources in a more promising venture though. Best of luck with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seth_j Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cybuch Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 Sorry to hear that Ted. You guys did a fantastic job on the alexa driver and I will definitely miss it. I have hear feedback on the C4 version, and it falls short of your version. I will still enjoy my table top units! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
South Africa C4 user Posted September 1, 2016 Share Posted September 1, 2016 Sorry to see VoicePod go - good luck with your future endeavours... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
voicepod Posted September 1, 2016 Author Share Posted September 1, 2016 VoicePod was split off into a separate company several years ago. We we close to being acquired several times by big players but voice recognition is such a difficult business that every deal fell apart. Thanks to all of you for your understanding. I have a long history of building successful enterprises and we put six figures and years of effort into all the flavors of voicepod. But in the end, it's the domain of the big guys. Amazon reportedly has $100M invested in Alexa. If I could get my hands on their code, it would be amazing as we have many innovations they could use. But they are non-responsive to our requests and I'm tired of the chase! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.