Josh Ai

[Cyknight]

LOL

[eggzlot]

2 hours ago, zaphod said:

Also depends on how long Josh lives as it probably has a shorter life expectancy than most people.

Depends on Josh’s age I suppose

[WisC4]

This Josh.ai integration with Crestron looks ahead of C4 - any sense if there might be a way to integrate into new T4s utilizing the more advanced microphones?  

https://www.crestron.com/Partners/Integrated-Partners/josh-ai?ext=.

Maybe someday we'll have a remote like this with a voice control button.

 

 

[ERDrPC]

Looks awesome. I'm waiting to see what happens in the next 6 months before deciding on Josh vs Amazon vs Google home voice and C5

[WisC4]

11 hours ago, ERDrPC said:

Looks awesome. I'm waiting to see what happens in the next 6 months before deciding on Josh vs Amazon vs Google home voice and C5

It would seem like the capability is there to incorporate josh into both T3/T4 and perhaps a future gen of Neeo remotes (if a mic is ever added).  Josh can use the mic in a mobile device and a Crestron remote, so seems like it should be possible.

[WisC4]

Four further thoughts on Josh:

1. The game changer moment will be when Josh allows for room to room intercom, so one can call and speak back and forth with someone in another room utilizing the in room mic/speakers (same with door station).
2. They seem to be in the midst of a pricing structure shift, where licensing will be based on number of rooms total in your C4 project, not number of mics at play.  So you get dinged for rooms you have no intent to control with voice and would never actually have a mic there to begin with (i.e. maybe wine room, master closet, hallway, etc).  Pricing is going up on Jan. 1.
3. Crestron does have a more advanced integration into their touchscreens and remotes, but both require the user to button press.  It's a question of if a future C4 Neeo "Gen.2" or T4 has the hardware capability to offer an always-on mic listening function for a wake-word.
4. At the moment it seems to me that Josh is a bit like pay radio.  Certainly a luxury nice to have service, but the market won't bear their expected price point.  SiriusXM I think started out by trying to charge $25+/month for service and now it's a fraction of that.  It's tough to compete when competition is free (yes, even if Google/Amazon/Apple free comes at a cost of privacy, and reliability).  

Just my .02

[WisC4]

1 hour ago, WisC4 said:

Four further thoughts on Josh:

1. The game changer moment will be when Josh allows for room to room intercom, so one can call and speak back and forth with someone in another room utilizing the in room mic/speakers (same with door station).
2. They seem to be in the midst of a pricing structure shift, where licensing will be based on number of rooms total in your C4 project, not number of mics at play.  So you get dinged for rooms you have no intent to control with voice and would never actually have a mic there to begin with (i.e. maybe wine room, master closet, hallway, etc).  Pricing is going up on Jan. 1.
3. Crestron does have a more advanced integration into their touchscreens and remotes, but both require the user to button press.  It's a question of if a future C4 Neeo "Gen.2" or T4 has the hardware capability to offer an always-on mic listening function for a wake-word.
4. At the moment it seems to me that Josh is a bit like pay radio.  Certainly a luxury nice to have service, but the market won't bear their expected price point.  SiriusXM I think started out by trying to charge $25+/month for service and now it's a fraction of that.  It's tough to compete when competition is free (yes, even if Google/Amazon/Apple free comes at a cost of privacy, and reliability).  

Just my .02

one more: It strikes me that Josh could be sold at the control level (Crestron/C4) not end-user.  For example C4 could offer an annual $100 4Sight Basic or a $1000 annual for 4Sight Premium with Josh and perhaps some other perks.  

[ejn1]

Anyone know what this Josh Core device is?   I was thinking you could run Josh without a separate controller?

[WisC4]

11 minutes ago, ejn1 said:

Anyone know what this Josh Core device is?   I was thinking you could run Josh without a separate controller?

As I understand it, the current product is the micro which has on board processing and doesn't require a controller.  The next gen product out Q2 2021 is a much slimmer wall mount and offloads all the processing and control work to the rack mount core device.  So the micros can be stand-alone or used with a core but the next gen nanos require the core for processing.  Core i think retails for $1500 and is also what will allow for tapping into an audio matrix for in room speaker feedback.

[DWRobinson]

 

[ejn1]

1 hour ago, WisC4 said:

As I understand it, the current product is the micro which has on board processing and doesn't require a controller.  The next gen product out Q2 2021 is a much slimmer wall mount and offloads all the processing and control work to the rack mount core device.  So the micros can be stand-alone or used with a core but the next gen nanos require the core for processing.  Core i think retails for $1500 and is also what will allow for tapping into an audio matrix for in room speaker feedback.

Thanks...  makes sense on the new micro.  On the video they didnt single out the micro, just said it made everything work fast.

[malelan]

the issue is the micro has a speaker on it, and the nano (their new tiny device does not) right now wiht a standard control 4 system, there is no way to broadcast josh replies (and responses) through the c4 in home audio (the system was designed for sonos)  the josh core has audio outputs that can go into a c4 matrix and allow the responses from josh to speak/announce over the in room speakers in places where a micro isn't present,  and even in places where a micro is present if that is preferred (and it generally is, as the micro speaker fidelity is like the early versions of google mini/echo dot, which is kind of garbage)

hope this helps, i am currently using josh with control4. and i'm very happy, but do acknolwedge that it is a bit of a luxury in what it offers over google/amazon today.  but i do like the custom programming aspect, and it is a really seamless solution.

[GregCAMS]

Concur with @malelan.  

I actually sold all but 1 of my 5 T3's with and replaced with Josh Micro's in 3 locations and awaiting the Nano's and Core for this 1 spot and 4 other locations.  I never once used the intercom feature from T3 to T3 in the home but no kids or large family here so that need is not warranted in my case.  The T3s' were only used for music, lights and shades for the most part here and that is much easier to use on the Josh when hands are full or just walking into a room.  Fortunately was able to sell the T3's at a price that made the cost of the Micros and the 5 year unlimited license was only a fractional expense.  Having used Google and Amazon Alexa in testing the Josh is a much better option and the pricing reflects it.  Just IMO a matter of preference and reliability.    The custom scenes and programming is very easy to use, the natural language is very nice and its intuitive way of working has been a good experience.

[ejn1]

1 hour ago, gregheard said:

Concur with @malelan.  

I actually sold all but 1 of my 5 T3's with and replaced with Josh Micro's in 3 locations and awaiting the Nano's and Core for this 1 spot and 4 other locations.  I never once used the intercom feature from T3 to T3 in the home but no kids or large family here so that need is not warranted in my case.  The T3s' were only used for music, lights and shades for the most part here and that is much easier to use on the Josh when hands are full or just walking into a room.  Fortunately was able to sell the T3's at a price that made the cost of the Micros and the 5 year unlimited license was only a fractional expense.  Having used Google and Amazon Alexa in testing the Josh is a much better option and the pricing reflects it.  Just IMO a matter of preference and reliability.    The custom scenes and programming is very easy to use, the natural language is very nice and its intuitive way of working has been a good experience.

So just to make sure I understand,  If a room has a Micro in it and you talk to it,  it will respond to your command back via audio out of a built in speaker in that Micro (and no need for C4 room audio or a Core).   You only need a Core with Nano's due to no speaker and you then have to tie into a C4 audio Matrix for responses back?

[GregCAMS]

13 minutes ago, ejn1 said:

So just to make sure I understand,  If a room has a Micro in it and you talk to it,  it will respond to your command back via audio out of a built in speaker in that Micro (and no need for C4 room audio or a Core).   You only need a Core with Nano's due to no speaker and you then have to tie into a C4 audio Matrix for responses back?

Correct.  If you have a Micro the microphone and the speaker are both built in and all that you need.  You would not need a Core at all.  

If you decide to get a Core you get a few functions:

• Faster processing of commands
• If paired high availability (more reliability)
• The ability if desired to tie into your audio matrix to have the VoiceLink which would broadcast on any matrix-connected speakers in the home

If knew they were introducing the Nano's I would have only gone with them and 2 Core's in the rack.  The Micros work great it's just not as clean on the walls even with a Wall Smart that I installed.  They aren't as bad wall acne with other artwork obscuring them but the Nano's can be paint-matched optionally to the point you can't really see them as showcased in their keynote address.  

[malelan]

I'm also awaiting the nano, as i'd much rather have it broadcast over the in home speakers (all rooms that have josh today with the exception of one, have their own in wall speakers already)

keep in mind that core/nano has not shipped yet, and while there is info available, as far as i know, no one has these in their system yet.  

 

 

[WisC4]

5 minutes ago, malelan said:

I'm also awaiting the nano, as i'd much rather have it broadcast over the in home speakers (all rooms that have josh today with the exception of one, have their own in wall speakers already)

keep in mind that core/nano has not shipped yet, and while there is info available, as far as i know, no one has these in their system yet.  

 

 

I spoke to someone at Josh earlier in the week who stated "late Q1 or Q2" for the new products.

[cnicholson]

This Nano/Core setup seems pretty slick.   Do we expect a Control4 driver will be available to handle the routing of the "feedback" audio from the Core to the appropriate rooms?  Seems like that would require some orchestration to do smoothly.

Probably a naive question, but can Control4 matrix audio switches do "mixing" of the currently-playing source together with another source (in this case, the analog audio output from the Josh Core)?  

[ejn1]

1 hour ago, cnicholson said:

This Nano/Core setup seems pretty slick.   Do we expect a Control4 driver will be available to handle the routing of the "feedback" audio from the Core to the appropriate rooms?  Seems like that would require some orchestration to do smoothly.

Probably a naive question, but can Control4 matrix audio switches do "mixing" of the currently-playing source together with another source (in this case, the analog audio output from the Josh Core)?  

I'm thinking any type of audio delay going through the Core to c4 switch to speaker would negate the audio quality issues of the micro...

[am350z]

Never seen Josh.ai till I stumbled across their keynote on Youtube. Looks really slick and has renewed my interest in improving our C4 system.  I only wish C4 had this built in.  Kind of crazy you have to pay extra for a user friendly front end.  The free solutions with Alexa and google home just aren’t that great.  

[wnpublic]

Seems like a great way to pour more money down the c4 money-hole. Does anyone genuinely believe this will still be a company in three years?

[msgreenf]

2 minutes ago, wnpublic said:

Seems like a great way to pour more money down the c4 money-hole. Does anyone genuinely believe this will still be a company in three years?

People have been saying that since they started in 2015. They're still here...

[malelan]

I think its very reasonable to expect this to work 'out of the box', the control4 driver for Josh.ai is very functional today, and didn't require much setup at all.  They have a very solid grasp on audio/video matrix/routing through control4, so i would imagine its as simple as binding the core outputs to your matrix and making sure the systems are aware of these connections.

To the comment up above about removing t3s/t4s, i thought about this, but i use them pretty often to display cameras,  its pretty nice to tell josh to 'show me the driveway' and have it pop up on the navigators.

If anyone has josh specific questions, i'll do my best to answer,  i've spent a ton of time playing with it and using it for a few months now.

I'll be installing the nanos/core once available as well.

The biggest difference for me over alexa/google was as follows

- not being locked into the ecosystem was a bonus

- reserved commands in alexa/google were annoying

- not being able to play music throuh anything expect the google/amazon speaker i'm talking to,  i realize there are some hacks you can do to get this to work better with chromecast audio, etc, but it always required a non intuitive command to initiate.  - one of my big gripes (and something my wife could never understand) was why we couldn't just say something like "Listen to Metallica in the living room" and get it to play over the speakers.   additionally, as we're spotify users, we wanted the ability to listen to a specific song "listen to enter sandman by metallica in the living room" .  This was the simple request,  Josh has taken this a stop further as i no longer have to even specifiy the living room if i'm in the living room, and i have a micro (or future nano) in the same room.  

With Google/Alexa i found myself going out of my way to initiate and use voice control, it was a cool novelty when people came over and i got to show it off with a very specific set of pre-set commands.  and occasionally, if i went into the baement with my hands full and i needed the light on, i'd say "Turn the basement on, Turn the basement light on,  turn the light in the basement on" until the light came on,  sometimes it took a few tries.  With the Josh stuff it's been better, I find myself using it out of convenience more than just forcing it into my routine.  In situations where my phrase doesn't do what i want it to do, its as easy as logging into the josh web portal, finding what i said int he history log and making sure it knows what that means for next time..

I know i probably sound like a salesman, so i'm going to go through some of the negatives below.

- Josh and control4 don't really have a great way to exchange information between the systems with the exception of device status.  Meaning they can tell each other when a light is on , etc,  but if i needed to pull the status of my alarm system from Josh, there isn't really an easy way to do this (some work arounds)

- Devices that are natively supported by Josh need to be setup on both sides (control4, and again in Josh)  specifically Roku, Sonos, etc.

- Josh is missing a ton of internet functionality that Google and Alexa have.  Look up information (Alexa, how old is gary busey?)  Josh cannot do any of this stuff, we used it once in awhile and it was handy,  Additionally we used the google home in the kitchen to set timers for various cooking tasks.  The language recoginition around this in Josh is not as well built out as it is in the other systems.

 

 

[am350z]

36 minutes ago, wnpublic said:

Seems like a great way to pour more money down the c4 money-hole. Does anyone genuinely believe this will still be a company in three years?

The cost of the Josh system and license is relatively trivial to overall cost of most systems if it adds significant functionality.  

[GregCAMS]

in looking at their evolution it is foreseeable that their long-term vision is to serve 2 purposes:

1. Offer a standalone operating system apart from C4,Crestron, etc
2. Integrate services to be a complimentary function to these same companies

Based on the number of deep integrations they have with the different companies it isn't something that's going to be here today and gone tomorrow.  It is well positioned for growth based on the amount of venture capital they raised earlier this year.  In addition the technology packaged could be attractive for acquisition at some point in the future.